‘Blue Bloods’: Family Dinner Brought Out Vanessa Ray’s Nervous Habit
Most Blue Bloods fans would agree their favorite part of the show is the Reagan family dinner scene. Vanessa Ray says when she sat down for her first dinner scene, one of her nervous habits was triggered.
Vanessa Ray was nervous about her first family dinner
Ray had been on Blue Bloods for a few seasons before her character, Eddie Janko, attended the Reagan family dinner. During The Pink Lemonade Stand podcast with Nicole Kaplan and Heidi Webster, Ray reveals she was very nervous during the first couple of dinners. She was concerned about doing something wrong.
“When I got engaged to Jamie on the show, Will Estes, I got to go to family dinner, which was a huge rite of passage,” says Ray. “I had been on the show for so long and everyone knows the show for the family dinner. I was so intimidated. I was like, ‘Don’t say the wrong thing. Don’t chew too loud [during someone else’s line]. I was so afraid of doing everything wrong.”
Vanessa Ray’s nervous habit was triggered during family dinner
Ray mentioned during the podcast that she has a nervous habit. It was triggered during the early days of her attendance at family dinner.
“This is kind of like a silly thing, but my legs are short,” she tells Kaplan and Webster. “So, they put me on a chair with a bunch of cushions, and my feet couldn’t hit the ground. So, in every scene I was kicking my legs in nervousness.”
Ray says one of the Blue Bloods costumers spoke to her about her habit. “I was so nervous all the time, and finally, one of the costumers was like, ‘Vanessa, you need to stop kicking your legs. It looks crazy; you look so nervous.’ And I’m like, ‘I can’t reach the floor and I don’t want to tell anybody. I don’t know what to do.’ All of my stress was coming out.”
Vanessa Ray reveals whether she could be a real police officer
Ray also discussed the ways she isn’t like her character. When asked if she could ever become a police officer in real life, Ray says she doesn’t think she could.
“Do I feel like I could be a real cop? Absolutely not,” says Ray. “It is the hardest job in the world. They run toward problems instead of running away. It is high stakes; it is 0 to 100, 100% of the time. They’re heroes.”
Furthermore, Ray says she feels tense whenever she has a scene where her character has to take out her gun. Although she received training for her role on Blue Bloods, Ray says she never handled guns before joining the cast.
Vanessa Ray on her relationship with Will Estes
Ray says she and Estes got along right away and they’re like brother and sister. “The chemistry was there real quick,” Ray tells Kaplan and Webster.
“He has the strongest character of any person I have ever met,” she continues. “He has a love for his family and his mother that anybody would be so lucky to have that, and he’s really funny. I don’t think people know how funny he is. There’s nobody in the world who makes me laugh harder than Will Estes. I love that man so very, very much. And I have so much respect for him.”
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