Filming in Boston Is a Total Circus — And Donnie Wahlberg Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way

When Donnie Wahlberg and the cast of Boston Blue head out to film on the streets of Boston, things don’t always go as planned. The CBS star is now opening up about why shooting scenes in his own hometown can be a total challenge — and it has everything to do with how much the locals love him.

During the Wednesday, April 22 episode of Live with Kelly and Mark, Wahlberg sat down with hosts Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa to talk about life on set. He quickly admitted that filming in Beantown is anything but smooth.

“It’s crazy,” the 56-year-old actor told the hosts. “We don’t get anything shot.” Every single take gets interrupted, he explained — right in the middle of a scene, fans start shouting his name from the crowd.

One of the biggest disruptions? The famous duck boat tours that cruise through Boston. Wahlberg described how tour guides spot him on location and immediately start pointing him out to their passengers — sharing stories about growing up near his family.

Host Kelly Ripa laughed and said she once heard plenty about the Wahlberg family on one of those very same tours. She even joked that the family should just get their own duck boat at this point.

In Boston Blue, Wahlberg plays a veteran NYPD detective who moves to the Boston Police Department to stay close to his son Sean, played by Mika Amonsen. It’s a big switch from his previous role on Blue Bloods, where he spent 14 seasons playing a Brooklyn-based cop — and had to ditch his real Boston accent to do it.

He said the New York crew on Blue Bloods never made it easy for him either. Whenever the New England Patriots beat the New York Giants, he’d walk into work the next day to find newspapers and posters plastered all over the set. “They never let up on me,” he said with a laugh — adding that those years actually taught him how to give it right back to Boston fans, even though he is one himself.

And despite all the on-set chaos, Wahlberg clearly loves every bit of it. According to a March interview with PEOPLE at the iHeartRadio Music Awards, he was the one who personally called every single castmate to share the exciting news that Boston Blue had been renewed for a second season — the show is currently still airing its first.

“Every cast member got tears in their eyes, every single one of them, and so did I,” he told PEOPLE. He also shared that calling his wife Jenny McCarthy about the renewal turned into an emotional moment, with the two sharing what he described as “a nice cry.”

As one of the show’s executive producers, Wahlberg made sure he was the one to deliver the big news to the team himself. “I said as one of the EPs, I’d like to be the one to tell them — and everyone agreed,” he said.

Boston Blue airs every Friday at 10 p.m. ET on CBS and is available for streaming the following day on Paramount+.