BONES: Karine Rosenthal on Writing the Booth and Brennan Wedding Episode, ‘The Woman in White’

BONES’ Booth and Brennan are now officially married!

It took 172 episodes, years of banter, a few other love interests, more disgusting bodies than any human should ever recall — and a last-minute fire to the church and case to solve — but Booth and Brennan swapped vows in Monday night’s episode, “The Woman in White.”

The hour was a big one for the series, and to make sure it was given its proper due, they brought back former BONES writer/producer, Karine Rosenthal (who was with the show from 2006 until 2012), to pen the long-awaited nuptials.

It’s no secret I absolutely adored the hour, and Rosenthal was gracious enough to hop on the phone to chat about returning to the series, what she did to prep for the episode, what didn’t make the cut, and more…

I have to ask — were you checking social media to see what fans were saying as the episode played out?
Karine Rosenthal: You know, I tried to resist, because you can get sucked into [it] — I did a little bit.  Just enough to see the overall response was very positive. And that made me happy. I think once you get into what each person wanted differently, I wanted to respond and each person individually and go, “I know! And we thought about that. But here’s the reason why we did that. Or here’s what happened.” You could drive yourself crazy.

Yeah, I can imagine it would be easy to get sucked into that for hours.
KR: Yeah. We care about the fans and people have been waiting a long time. You just want to make sure it was satisfying.

Understandable. And for me, for what it’s worth, it absolutely was.
KR: [Laughs] Oh, good!

I know you returned to BONES specifically to write this episode. What led to that decision?
KR: That was just complete good fortune. I am still good friends with everyone at BONES and keep in touch with them, and so, I had talked with Jonathan Collier, one of the EPs who is in charge of figuring out who is going to do which episode, and working with [BONES creator] Hart [Hanson] and [executive producer] Stephen [Nathan] to make sure all the scripts are written on time and how the stories work out and things like that. So we had talked about the possibility of me doing a freelance episode, and he said, “Would you be open to that?” And I said, “Probably.”

When I left the show, I didn’t think I’d be back to do anything else, but after I had been away from a year, it felt like enough time had passed that it felt like a sweet, fun thing to do, as opposed to “Wait, I just left, why am I going back?”

So [Jonathan] called me and said, “Okay, well, we have an episode we want you to do.” And then he told me it would be the wedding episode. And I was so touched they would even ask me to do that. Because it’s such a big deal, and I feel, having worked on the show for so long, I feel so close to the characters. Much closer than the actors probably realize, because the writers don’t get to spend a lot of time on the set, but we’re always aware of the actors and the characters, and watching the scenes and watching the episodes, so I was just so happy this was going to happen, that they were finally going to get married, and yeah, I couldn’t imagine a better episode to get back and do.

Absolutely. You did have a long history with the show, but was there any episode you went back and rewatched before you wrote this script?
KR: I rewatched almost all of the pivotal moment episodes, because we wanted to pay off a lot of things in this episode. We paid off a few — the main thing we paid off was the letter from the Gravedigger episode [from “Aliens in a Space” that was used as Brennan’s vows] — and there were versions, earlier iterations of when we were working on the story where any loose thread from the past, we were putting in [to tie up], but ultimately we took them out. Maybe they’ll come later, but maybe they won’t. So, I kind of watched all the big moments for Booth and Brennan from the get-go.

I also rewatched one of everyone’s favorite episodes from the first season, the Christmas episode [“The Man in the Fallout Shelter”], just because it was a similar case, where we weren’t going to be meeting any suspects or things like that. Just to see how that worked, when the true story of the episode is different from the case story.

It ended up feeling seamless, which is nice, because when the big event of the episode isn’t a case, it can sometimes feel clunky. I didn’t get that impression here.
KR: Oh good, I’m glad it came out that way.

Was there talk of what kind of case it should be? Or was the Emily Dickinson angle always something you guys were looking to explore and it fit in here?
KR: That was a good lesson in trusting the unconscious, which a writer has to do, and it can be kind of scary: I just had this idea of — when I first started working on the episode — that the murder would have something to do with Emily Dickinson. And I don’t know where that came from, it just came in my mind — I think it’s a librarian, it should be Emily Dickinson-related.

We tried a bunch of different directions with that, and ended up with the case that you saw. And the more I read about Emily Dickinson and her love life and these theories on her life, it got more and more interesting. It seemed to work well for the episode. And then it was one of those things, where you know how all of our episodes have those names — “The Boy in the Tree,”  “The Girl in the [etc],” and so on — and so when we had the whole story and we were thinking of the name of the episode, we realized that Emily Dickinson, because she always wore white, and that’s how she’s referred to in a lot of text, as “the woman in white,” we were like, “Oh my gosh, it’s the wedding episode, and we came up with a story about the woman in white.” It was one of those, “Oh maybe that’s why Emily Dickinson was in my mind!” [moments]. I have no idea. But it worked out really well.

That’s kind of amazing. In the year you were off the show, BONES did introduce a handful of new characters, some of which were in your hour. Was there any particular character that was maybe a little more difficult for you to get in their head?
KR: There were some of them I hadn’t written for, but I had at least seen enough of or seen enough of their episodes [to get them]. It was such a treat to write for all of those characters. To get Pops, and Max I’ve written for before, but it was just wonderful to have everybody.

The one person, when I started writing the actual script, the person I hadn’t written for was Finn — who ended up not being in the episode anyway. [Laughs] But in my first draft, he was. So I sat down at the computer and was at a scene, and I suddenly thought, “Oh my God.” So I had to call our script coordinator and be like, “Can you send me three scripts that have Finn in them?” And I had to reread them to get his voice, because I had never written for him. I was concerned about that because there’s a dialect that you want to sound authentic, so I will say I worked hard on that, but it never ended up in the episode. [Laughs] Oh well!

That’s too bad! Given the sheer number of guest stars in the episode, how did that actually end up working out for you? Did they give you a list of who was available for filming and you went from there? Or were there more cases like Finn where you wrote characters in, and then had to adjust the script each time someone became unavailable?
KR: We started with a list of everyone we wanted in the episode and the people we knew wouldn’t be able to be in it, so we wouldn’t waste time with people we knew wouldn’t be in it.

When we were working on the story, we still thought Stephen Fry (Gordon Wyatt) might be able to do it, so we had an early version of the story where Stephen Fry was in it. I would say, there was just a lot of rewriting and rebreaking the story as we learned more and more who was going to be available and who wasn’t.

There was a moment when we thought we knew who was in it, we put holds on all the actors — which is something casting directors do to let the agents know to hold them for these days because we want to use them. We had all of these actors on hold, but once the studio and the network saw the outline for the script, they went, “Oh, this is going to be such a great episode, are you sure you want to put it on that date? Can we move the date?” And they wanted to change when it would film and air. And we thought about it for a few minutes, and then we thought, “Oh my God, if we change anything, it will be a huge mess of dominoes that will go down if we do that.” So we realized we had to film it on those days or we would have to completely change the story yet again.

Wow. That being said, it is incredible how many actors the team was able to coordinate for the episode.
KR: It was great, because it also makes it feel like an authentic wedding. There were people who weren’t there, and in the too-wordy version of the script, there were explanations for why they weren’t there: for why [Brennan’s brother] Russ couldn’t come, why [Booth’s brother] Jared couldn’t come, things like that. But it just starts to slow down the story, and you just have to hope that viewers trust [that] “I’m sure there’s an explanation and we’re just not hearing it on-screen.”

Can you share why they weren’t there in what you wrote?
KR: [In real-life] it was actor availability. But when we had it in the script explaining why, it was that Russ’ parole restrictions wouldn’t allow him to come, and that Jared is working overseas. He sent something with his best wishes, and there was a little bit more about would it be Jared or Parker as the best man, but Parker was always going to be the best man, anyway.

I know Booth and Brennan’s daughter, Christine, was originally intended to be in the episode, but it didn’t end up working out the way you hoped. Is that something you’re bummed didn’t come to fruition, or do you feel fans get that she was there and just not shown?
KR: I think that’s one thing I’m glad for social media [purposes] that everyone now realizes why she wasn’t there. I was on the set that day, it was wonderful, but the little girls who play Christine — any two-year old gets freaked out at a normal wedding. We tried so many things. The original thing was she was going to be the flower girl, and when there was no one around, she would do it; she would sprinkle the flowers, having fun. But as soon as there were other people around, it would be terrifying. And then we thought she could walk down with Parker, but that didn’t work. And then we thought we could get a shot of her playing with the petals in the corner, and that didn’t work. And in the limited amount of time we have [it couldn’t be done.] And also, if you want to feel like a prick, force a little kid to do something that terrifies them for the sake of a television show. There’s a certain point where you’re saying, “Poor kid. We’re not doing any of this. We’re done. She won’t be in the episode, it’s OK, let her go play.” It was just one of those cut your losses [things].

Which is absolutely fair.
KR: And I think they did release a photo of her in her little dress, so hopefully that will make people happy.

True. Was there anything that was shot that didn’t make the final cut of the episode that you wish had gotten in?
KR: Let me think about that. [Pause] I don’t think so. I don’t think there were any moments I felt were lost. It’s just with an episode like this, if this was the ’70s, it would be so fun to do the big two-hour event. We could have done lots and lots more. We could have had the reception, and we could have done more stories for all of the other characters. It would have been fun if all the squints and squinterns had even more story going on with them around the wedding. But with the limitations that we had, I really think we got everything we wanted.

Did you shoot any of the reception? Or was that something you never intended to touch on?
KR: No, we didn’t shoot any of it. Again, an earlier version of the script, it was dissolved to seeing people dancing, and little snippets of conversation, but the way the episode ultimately worked out, the story really ends at the end of the wedding. But in an earlier version, there was more room for more post-wedding fun.

In what aired, it felt like it ended at an appropriate place to leave things. We have to talk about those absolutely incredible vows…what can you share about the process that went into crafting those?
KR: I will say, when I agreed to do the wedding episode, I knew from the get-go that the vows were not going to be mine. [Laughs] This show is Hart’s baby, and this is such an important thing, that I wrote a first draft version and then gave it to Hart, and then Hart and David [Boreanaz (Booth) and Emily [Deschanel (Brennan)] really took over. They really created those vows, and they turned out so beautifully, and so perfect.

And there are things about them — I love the idea to bring up the first episode, the scene in the pilot where Emily says, “I can be a duck,” I believe David suggested that moment [end up in the vows]. And it’s wonderful he suggested that moment because it’s one of my favorite moments from the pilot. To me, that’s a moment from the pilot where you get a glimpse of who Brennan really is underneath all these defenses she has constructed, and there’s this little girl that wants to play. So the fact that David hooked into that moment, I thought it was perfect. And same with Emily wanting to make it — it’s the perfect blend of incredibly moving and so true to her voice, to Brennan’s voice. I thought they worked out really, really well.

And I was really impressed that [Brennan] was able to write that well while being buried in a car. [Laughs] It was great. My first draft of her vows was much shorter, because I was thinking, “She’s buried in a car! She thinks she’s about to die.” But Hart said, “No, she knows this is important, this is the last shot she gets; she’s going to take a deep breath and take her time.” And I totally buy it.

Hey, if anyone is going to do that, I buy Brennan doing that, too.
KR: Exactly!

It’s great you seem so pleased by the collaborative effort of the vows.
KR: The process of being a writer on a show — unless you are the creator or executive producer — is always in the service of someone else’s vision. And you know that. So you’re just giving the best material you can for those people to work with. And they will keep a lot of what you have, they might tweak some things, they might change some things, and there are always going to be things they change where you’re happy to have your name on something you didn’t do. [Laughs] Like, thank you [for the credit]!

Very true! At the end of the episode, Booth and Brennan kind of question what’s next for them and they note they have everything ahead — was that intended to be an homage to the season 2 finale where they were left standing at the altar after Angela and Hodgins had bolted from their own wedding and B/B asked the same question? Or was that just a happy coincidence?
KR: I think it’s a little more than a happy coincidence. It’s not right on, but we try to do a lot of that type of thing on this show — circular storytelling or moments that go back to something that happened a long time ago to make the show deeper and richer for long-time viewers and people who watched a lot of episodes. So I will say it was more than a coincidence, without trying to completely hit the nail on the head with, “Hey guys, remember this??”

It makes sense, because a lot of people do tend to look at marriage as the end of the road for TV couplings. This way, it kind of tips the hat to acknowledge to the audience that the story isn’t quite done.
KR: Right. And because we — and by we, I mean Hart and Stephen — decided to do the wedding now, and really doing the Booth and Brennan relationship, and the baby, and the wedding in such a different order and style than you might traditionally see, yes, it’s sort of our homage to that: that, hey, the show is not over. The relationship is not over. This is just one step in the long lives of these two people.

Are there any other tidbits about the hour that haven’t been released out there that you want to share?
KR: Oh, this is one of those happy accidents: the wedding was originally not supposed to be in the rose garden. It was just a matter of trying to find a place that was available and wasn’t too expensive, and it ended up being the rose garden. And again, that ended up being one of those things that worked out, because that was what prompted David to say, hey, this is the spot where we had that moment [in the pilot, which led to Booth’s vows]. So that wasn’t planned originally, it ended up happening due to shooting availability, and it made the vows so incredibly special. A happy coincidence.

Amazing. Is there any chance you might be popping up to write another episode now that you’ve returned for this one?
KR: [Laughs] At this point, I should never say never. It’s not scheduled, I don’t see it happening, but I think it all depends on how long the show goes. This show could go for five more years, and I could say definitely. At this point, having this extra episode — which I never expected to do — and to be able to do such a special episode, it was such a cherry on top of an already fantastic time on the show, that part of me says, “Leave it at that, how can you top that?” But I should never say never.

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So, what did you think of the BONES wedding episode?

Related:

BONES: ‘The Nazi on the Honeymoon’ Photos
BONES: ‘The Woman in White’ You Ask, I Answer
BONES: ‘The Woman in White’ Photos — Booth and Brennan Prep for Their Wedding!

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