It’s not often that TV shows about first responders or military officers actually cast folks with real-life experience in those roles. It makes sense, though, as actors can best convey the emotions necessary to carry a story and develop a character. But what if an actor actually had those experiences themselves? Taylor Sheridan does this with his character Travis Wheatley on Yellowstone (Sheridan himself was a cowboy before he was a filmmaker), proving that this is entirely possible. But before Sheridan showed up in a cowboy hat on Yellowstone, SEAL Team gained traction for casting a real-life Navy SEAL as a part of the show.
What Is ‘SEAL Team’ Really About?
Developed for television by Benjamin Cavell, SEAL Team is based on an idea brought to CBS by former Navy SEAL and executive producer on the series, Mark Owen, the same man whose helmet lead star David Boreanaz sports in honor of the real SEALs they represent. The series details the lives of the members of Bravo Team, both on and off the battlefield. One of the most impressive parts of the CBS-turned-Paramount+ series is its commitment to accurately portraying the complicated lives of the men and women who serve in the U.S. military — particularly how it deals with the hardship and trauma of combat and how soldiers can bring that home with them.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
“One thing that makes our show a little more interesting is the fact that it follows the family lives,”Owen explained in a SEAL Team special feature. “As many friends as I’ve lost in combat, I’ve lost a lot to suicide and dealing with things when they get home. It takes a lot to sacrifice so much, and that’s really why I think this show does so well…” It’s these struggles that SEAL Team is committed to highlighting, and is part of the reason for Clay Spenser’s (Max Theriot‘s character) complex and heartbreaking arc in Season 6.
‘SEAL Team’s Mark Semos and Tyler Grey Are the Perfect Men for the Job
SEAL Team Season 2Image via Paramount+
SEAL Team‘s commitment to authenticity shows itself in a variety of ways, one of them being hiring actual military veterans as cast members who can help navigate the subtleties of combat on set. One such cast member is Mark Semos, a former Navy SEAL who played John “TJ” Monero during the second season of the long-running series. Starting in Hollywood as a stuntman, Semos landed work as the stunt coordinator for the Peter Berg film Lone Survivor, which opened the door for a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “A few years later, I had the opportunity to work on the pilot episode of the TV show SEAL Team, the production brought me on as a Consulting Producer at first and now I am a Writing Producer on the show,” Semos told ATRG in 2020.
Serving behind the scenes as a writer and producer on the series, Semos helps guide the story of Bravo Team based on his own experience as a SEAL. He even returned to the screen in the Season 6 episode “Fair Winds and Following Seas” as Devgru OP #6, albeit briefly. “The authenticity level of SEAL Team is truly a team effort,” Semos later elaborated. “It starts in the writers’ room, and every single screenwriter works hard to maintain the standard and still tell the stories we need to tell. Then, on set, the effort continues with our directors and actors all striving to maintain the standards. Tyler Grey usually holds down the fort on set.”
That other guy Semos mentions, Tyler Grey, is a former U.S. Army Delta Force operator and Army Ranger sniper who ended up finding his way to SEAL Team as well. Though not a former Navy SEAL, Grey has plenty of combat experience himself, and after being injured in the field, he was forced to go on medical leave, leading him ultimately to Hollywood. “It completely changed who I thought I was,” Grey told Los Angeles’ CBS affiliate. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the industry; I just knew I wanted to work in the industry.” Eventually, Grey moved on from being an advisor on the show to playing the recurring Bravo Team member Trent Sawyer, who has appeared in all six seasons. From there, he even graduated to the role of director with the Season 3 episode “Unbecoming an Officer.”
‘SEAL Team’ Is Known For Hiring U.S. Military Veterans
SEAL Team castImage via CBS
In addition to Semos and Grey, not to mention Mark Owen himself, SEAL Team is known for hiring a host of other veterans to make their story possible and believable. “What we’re trying to do as a group is make something that’s not real, obviously, but make something that’s authentic,” Grey explained on a 2017 edition of CBS This Morning. And he’s right. Of all the military shows that have aired on network television and on streaming, SEAL Team is often considered one of the most authentic, and that’s largely due to the folks they’ve hired to tie it all together.
“We’ve hired almost 100 veterans… that have been a part of our show, and we relish that,” David Boreanaz once told Rachael Ray. “The people—we don’t like to call them technical advisers; we like to call them producers—[are there] from the concept of the story all the way through to the finish.” Without people like Owen, Semos, and Grey–not to mention the countless others who are always on set–SEAL Team would be just another run-of-the-mill military show that doesn’t bother to double-check their work. Thankfully, that’s not the case here.
