“Bones” star Emily Deschanel nearly broke down in tears as she recalled the time she was nearly fired while filming the show’s first season because the show’s grueling work schedule caused her to have panic attacks.
“I didn’t know I was having panic attacks, but I was basically having panic attacks at the time,” Deschanel, who played Temperance “Bones” Brennan on the Fox series, told David Duchovny on his podcast “Fail Better with David Duchovny,” a series that highlights how failures shape a person’s personality and professional life.
Explaining the root of her panic attacks, the actress shared that filming the first scene was incredibly difficult because of her brutal schedule and tight turns for the actors.
“We were working insane hours, longer than just a normal show. You’re working 14- to 16-hour days, and then I had to memorize the lines,” Deschanel explained. “So I would stay up late at night memorizing lines. I joke that I would go home and cry in a bathtub every night because I was so overwhelmed. I would come in and try to remember the lines that… I didn’t sleep, and I wasn’t trying to remember the lines that I had memorized the night before and then had them in my head and couldn’t remember them.”
She shared that there were instances where she would have the entire production team looking at her as she struggled to remember her lines, which was a pain point for the crew members.
“The room would start to close in,” she said. “I’d be on set and I’d look around and see the whole crew looking at me kind of expecting me to know my lines, to say my lines, which is complicated dialogue. And I’d remember, a friend who’s a crew member I knew from other jobs said that crews hate it when actors forget their lines. Like, it’s a pain.”
Eventually, “Bones” creator Hart Hanson entered her trailer with heart-warming criticism from the studio after she arrived late due to an apparent traffic accident.
“You don’t realize that the studio sees the production report and they see that ‘Emily Deschanel was 30 minutes late… They know when I walk into the hair and makeup trailer. They know exactly what time—they know if someone caused a delay. Also, becoming a producer on the show also made me very self-aware. After that conversation, I’m never late again.”
She continued: “Hart knocked on my trailer door, which wasn’t a usual thing, he wasn’t knocking on my door often. He took me aside and says, ‘The studio has concerns about your work.’ They said I was late and unprepared.
As she recalled how the moment felt, she began to get emotional: “It was like, you’re not a professional.”
The actress quickly composed herself.
“I get emotional thinking about it now because it’s probably embarrassing,” she said. “I mean, I was a wreck. I was such a fragile person at the time. I was hardened doing this show for so long. I wasn’t sleeping, I was so stressed. I was already, I’m an emotional person, so I was on my own.”
Discovering Deschanel, Duchonvy said her behavior was being misinterpreted as reckless: “And that’s not you, so you’re being misunderstood. And that hurts.”
While it was a dark day for her, there’s always tomorrow. Good news came in the form of the show being picked up for nine more episodes. And with that came extra assistance for Deschanel on set.
“That’s how I got someone to help me run the lines with me,” Deschanel explained. “They said, ‘You need to go to your trailer,’ because I would never go to my trailer unless I was moving.’ And they gave me a bigger trailer… they did a lot of things to help me not be a nervous wreck.”
Ultimately, Deschanel said the studio and production took home a lesson of their own: don’t overwork your talent.
“We had great actors,” Deschanel said. “They realized how they could utilize them more, and they also realized that you don’t put eight people in an eight-page lab platform scene.”
“Bones” aired for 12 seasons after its premiere in 2005.
Check out the full conversation above.
