When CBS canceled Blue Bloods in 2024 after 14 seasons, it lost more than a beloved primetime drama — it lost a series with a certain kind of appeal. The show’s popularity seemed to stem from the way it juxtaposed a modern New York City and its 21st-century challenges and politics with the type of tight-knit, Irish-Catholic family drama that wouldn’t have been out of place in the 1960s.
The show’s exit left a big void in the network’s schedule, not to mention a juicy hunk of underexploited IP. Then, in a stunning bit of serendipity, the ideal showrunning team appeared with an idea that, it turned out, would extend the Reagan family saga. But with a big twist … .
That team was Brandon Sonnier and Brandon Margolis, known as "the Brandons." As Sonnier recalls, "After we heard that Blue Bloods was ending, we walked into CBS with a pitch, hoping to fill the void of a police procedural with a family core in the lineup." That pitch posited a Los Angeles detective heading to Boston in search of his estranged son, who’s also a cop. Then, Margolis says, "The idea was floated by CBS to Jerry Bruckheimer Television to us: 'What if that cop from L.A. was actually Danny Reagan instead?' And we were like, 'Are we allowed to do that? Because yeah, we would do that!'" Sonnier adds, "Best network note we’ve ever gotten."
Getting to shepherd the Danny-centered spinoff, Boston Blue, proved a payoff for the Brandons after a long professional journey marked by interventions both auspicious and catastrophic. They spoke to emmy about it all via Zoom — Sonnier from the team’s Sherman Oaks headquarters, Margolis from a trailer near the show’s Toronto soundstages.
Boston Blue's Sonequa Martin-Green (left) and Donnie Wahlberg
Boston Blue’s pilot has Danny (Donnie Wahlberg) rushing to Beantown after his son, Sean (Mika Amonsen, Reacher), a fresh-from-the-academy beat cop, is gravely injured on the job. The near calamity gives the two a chance to reconnect and inspires Danny to make a new start, both as a BPD detective and as a guiding, nurturing elder. "So much of Blue Bloods was about the family, the legacy and being police officers, and Danny fit in that mold — but as a sibling or as a son, never as a father," Margolis notes. "So, this opened up a completely untapped mine of stories for Danny." Boston Blue debuted in October and shortly thereafter was greenlit for a second season.
Sonnier once called Blue Bloods "a family drama dressed up as a police procedural." That’s true of Boston Blue as well. As he puts it, "We love telling cop stories. We love the action, the investigation, but at the end of the day you know that your good guys are going to catch the bad guys. But what you don’t know is: Is that relationship going to bend? Is it going to break? Is this the last time he’s ever going to have a fight with his son? What’s happening in the core of the family is really what brings the audience back week after week."
In Danny’s story, the Brandons have embraced the representational changes in both American culture at large and the entertainment business since the Reagans first sat down to Sunday dinner in 2010. Boston Blue finds Danny partnered with Detective Lena Silver (Sonequa Martin-Green, Star Trek: Discovery), whose mixed-race, mixed-faith family, like the Reagans, is a quasi-dynastic presence in Boston’s law enforcement and judicial firmament.
Also like the Reagans: The Silvers gather for a weekly family dinner, but theirs is a Shabbat meal served up on Friday evening. "This is the world that we live in," Sonnier says of the diversity the show reflects, which was inspired by his own life. "We didn’t set out to artificially imbue any sort of integration into that world. I loved Blue Bloods, I watched Blue Bloods, but I also sit around a table with my white Jewish wife. I have children who are of mixed race, who are being raised Jewish."
Blue Bloods’ weekly dinner scenes, both heartwarming and unexpectedly fresh for a 21st-century TV landscape, were especially beloved by fans, including the Brandons. "It’s one of the things that drew us to the show to start with," Sonnier says. "We want the audience to wish they were at that table, [to hear] what the family issues are, what the family conversation is, what the family drama is … and also very much enjoy the investigation and the action of the cop work."
Before getting to carry the Reagans’ story forward, the Brandons did their share of dues-paying, albeit via very different routes. Margolis was born in New York, grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and after a stint at Boston University, found himself studying screenwriting at Brooklyn College. Having resolved to become a feature writer, he moved to L.A., where he found a job in the mailroom at talent agency The Firm. There, he struck up a fast friendship with Sonnier’s girlfriend at the time, and now wife, Sarah.
"She would come home from work every day talking about ‘work Brandon’ — ‘He’s so funny. He’s such a cool guy, I think you’d really like him,'" Sonnier remembers. "Meanwhile, I’m at home going, 'I have to fight this dude — he’s trying to steal my girlfriend!'"
Turns out it would be his meet-cute with Margolis that led to a life-changing relationship. The two got together for a drink, after which they both reached for a matchbook on their way to the exit.
Sonnier recalls, "I said, ‘I always grab a matchbook when I’m at a bar, because when I get killed later tonight, the detectives who are investigating are going to want to know the last place I was at.'" Margolis jumps in: "And my response was, 'Oh, that’s interesting, because when my night turns into Die Hard, I’m going to need these matches to light the fire that’s going to save the day.' So we were both like, 'Oh, you’re an idiot like I am.'"
Sonnier says, "What we realized in that moment was that, yes, we were on the same creative wavelength — but from opposite sides, which we found very interesting."
Their first collaboration came about when Margolis had Sonnier read his script for a zombie film, which Sonnier persuaded Margolis to turn into a TV series. Together they banged it into shape and set out to sell it. "This was a year or so before The Walking Dead had been optioned by AMC," Margolis recalls. "We got a ton of meetings around town, and the note was, 'We love this, but you can’t put zombies on television — what else do you have?' And now we know what they were saying was that you two can’t put zombies on television." Undaunted, they resolved to stick with the partnership.
Margolis continued to bounce around, eventually landing a job as an assistant to producer-writer-director Paul Feig during The Office’s fifth season, which, while fun and educational, did nothing to further Margolis’s screenwriting dreams. "I was sort of in this existential crisis," he says. "I’d been out [in L.A.] for several years. Brandon and I had been doing good work, but the meetings weren’t happening, and the things we wrote after our zombie spec weren’t getting a lot of attention."
That led to Margolis’s return to New York and another fateful meeting — a blind date with Michelle, an entertainment publicist who would eventually become his wife. She’d bring him along on trips to L.A., setting him up with a hotel room where he and Sonnier could have meetings. The experience, Margolis says, "reaffirmed my passion" and led to another East-to-West relocation. "I’m one of those rare folks," he notes. "I didn’t pack up and move to L.A. to be a writer once — I did it twice."
Sonnier’s path to the big time was a bit more direct. Born in Houston, Texas, he’d dreamt of making movies as a child. In high school he shot short films and wrote and directed plays, and on the strength of that won a full scholarship to the undergrad program at USC School of Cinematic Arts. When it came time to find work, he recalls, "I told myself I’d never take a job that was not in this industry, so I was the guy who worked at the video store who watched all the videos. I worked at a movie theater — all the things you do as an aspiring film student."
By the age of 21 he’d produced, written and directed his first feature, The Beat, which made it onto Sundance’s 2003 slate, learning how to edit along the way. Post-Sundance, newly inflated résumé in hand, he went in search of a job cutting reality television and landed on the staff of the Tori & Dean reality series, and later, Ancient Aliens. "I loved my time editing reality TV," Sonnier says of those six years, appreciative of what he learned about the mechanics of narrative. "It was such a great [training] ground for how to put together story — what part you may not need, what should hit the floor. Now, as a writer and director, I call on those years all the time."
Back then, however, he recalls, "Margolis and I were writing, and nothing had really taken off. Then we got this opportunity with the NBC Writers on the Verge program, and I had to go to my wife and say, 'Look, it’s a 12-week unpaid fellowship, but if I’m going to focus on it, I can’t be an editor right now. I have to go and try to make this thing happen.' My wife said, 'Good, because I didn’t marry an editor, so you should probably do that.'" Margolis was also accepted into the program, and the two found themselves at The Blacklist, first as writers and eventually as supervising producers.
They went on to create and run the Jessica Alba and Gabrielle Union–led policer L.A.’s Finest, which aired for two seasons (2019–20). While they were shooting that show’s first-season finale, a horrific accident occurred.
During the filming of a car chase, one vehicle slammed into a shipping container, which fell on Sonnier and Margolis, who had been watching the action on a monitor in video village. Sonnier remained pinned underneath for so long that his right leg had to be amputated below the knee.
Determined as ever, he was back on the set in a matter of weeks. Business as usual professionally, but not spiritually. Devoutly religious, he was inspired by the experience to finally follow through on the decision he’d made years earlier to convert from Catholicism to Judaism. "It really did solidify my faith," he explains. "It wasn’t God that did that to me; it was a thing that happened, but it would be God that could help me." And an important part of his healing, he knew, would happen around the dinner table. "The fact that we continued having Shabbat even though I was freshly home from the hospital is exactly how we practice our faith. These are the things we do to remember who we are, and it reminded me who I was."
Reflecting on the catastrophe from a partner’s perspective, Margolis says, "To a large degree, the Brandon Sonnier that I work with is 99% the same guy he’s always been, but you go through a trauma, things change." He continues, "When we came back for season two, he was going through a lot of physical stuff and getting prosthetic fittings, but at the end of the day, the room … I don’t know if it was an escape for him, but being able to just talk story and talk about the show was sort of a refuge."
Looking ahead, the Brandons know their television history, and they know it’s entirely possible, even probable, that somewhere down the line there will be a major criminal case that will require the BPD and the NYPD to work closely together. Bloods’ Len Cariou and Bridget Moynahan, who played Henry and Erin Reagan, respectively, have already cameoed on Boston Blue, and Moynahan has directed an episode. Might there be others? Margolis says, "I would say that the difference between plans and dreams for everybody else is really the distinction. We would love to continue telling stories about the Reagan family as well as the Silver family, and that door is always creatively open." He continues, "If the story makes sense and the actors are interested, that’s a conversation we’re always willing to have."
Then, as if to sum up the pair’s guiding ethos, he adds, "We never like to say no to a good idea."
The article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #5 2026, under the title "True Blue."
Boston Blue is executive-produced by coshowrunners Brandon Sonnier and Brandon Margolis along with Donnie Wahlberg and Jerry Bruckheimer and KristieAnne Reed for Bruckheimer Television. The series is produced by CBS Studios.
