Where is Boston Blue really filmed? Wahlberg blames duck boats for keeping the show out of Boston
Donnie Wahlberg offered CBS half his salary to shoot his cop show in the city it's named after. The city responded the way Boston responds to everything: loudly, and from the deck of a duck boat.
Here's the truth nobody puts in the promos: Boston Blue, the Blue Bloods spinoff that moved Danny Reagan to Massachusetts, films overwhelmingly in Toronto. The Boston you see is mostly a Canadian character actor doing a wicked good accent.
Wahlberg copped to all of it on Andy Cohen's SiriusXM show: "We shoot in Toronto." And he didn't hide behind vague "production logistics" talk — he offered to personally subsidize the alternative. Half his paycheck, on the table, to stay home. The studio's answer was no, because, per Wahlberg's math problem, even 100% of the entire cast's salaries wouldn't cover the difference.
The duck boat defense
But the money is only half the story, and the other half is so Boston it should be wearing a Sox cap. Filming in his hometown, per Donnie, is acoustically impossible:
"It's literally the duck boats are going by and the duck boat tour guides have on these headsets with speakers and it's literally in the background."
And that's before the human element. He's a Wahlberg. In Boston. The set becomes a family reunion crossed with a meet-and-greet:
- Tour guides narrating over his takes through loudspeakers
- Fans screaming "oh my god, there's Donnie Wahlberg" mid-scene — after which, he admits, "I gotta run over to the duck boat and pose for pictures with everyone"
- Car horns bleeding straight into the dailies over his dialogue
- Approximately the entire extended Wahlberg family within a four-block radius
"Everybody's there, and we wouldn't get any work done. Literally," he summarized. Hard to argue.
What Boston actually gets
To be fair, the show does fly home for location shoots. In August 2025 Wahlberg was spotted chasing a fake perp across Boston Common — a trip he booked after fans complained online and he replied, "Be there in a week with cameras and crew." A man of the people. Just not, contractually, of the zip code.
Previously we wrote: Line of Fire NBC premiere ratings and review: Peter Krause got out-rated by Celebrity Name That Tune
