BONES: Carla Gallo on Daisy’s Grief, Filming ‘The Conspiracy in the Corpse,’ and More

October 1, 2014 by Marisa Roffman

The BONES characters were thrown for a loop when Sweets was killed in the season 10 premiere, but no one was more devastated than squintern, Daisy, Sweets’ off-on love — and the mother of his unborn son.

I spoke with BONES’ Carla Gallo (Daisy) about her off and on-screen devastation about Sweets’ death, filming “The Conspiracy in the Corpse,” and more…

How did they pitch you what Daisy would be going through this season?
Carla Gallo: I have a feeling I pitched them a little bit! I don’t think [Daisy’s pregnancy] was necessarily in the cards; I think they had called to get me for the first episode, and my manager was like, well, she’s humongously pregnant. And they were like, we’ll call you back. And they said, yep, we’ll work it in. Which was pretty unbelievable. Most actors don’t have the luxury of having a job that will do that for them?

Did you know before you got the script for the premiere that John Francis Daley (Sweets) was leaving the series?
CG: I feel like I knew. Oh, yeah, I ran into Josh Levy, one of the producers, at Bed, Bath & Beyond. [Laughs] I knew I was doing the episode, but no one had told me. At that point, I was still, like, “Wow, I can’t believe they’re writing in the pregnancy.” I just would have thought they won’t use me for this episode. I thought, why is it so important for me to be in this episode? And then I found out why. He told me and I was shocked. I was very sad.

I got the script, and no joke, I got a little teary. Usually, I don’t read a script and get [that way] — it’s a script, it’s work — but I got teary as I read the end of the episodes.

We’ve spoken for years about how much you truly loved Daisy and Sweets together. While this obviously wasn’t the ending you hoped for, what does it mean to you that Daisy was his final love?
CG: I’m definitely glad for that. As you know, I was always like, well, maybe they’ll get back together. And then when I would come in for work, they were like, “No, no, no, no, they’re not getting back together. Don’t play it like you’re getting back together.” But I always wanted them back together.

I’m really glad that’s how it ended. I don’t know, I always thought they should be together. And when I shot the episodes where they weren’t together — I’m sure it was different for John [since he was there every week] — but for me, it always felt like something was missing. That was part of who the character was for me, from day 1. She wasn’t just an intern, she was an intern and Lance’s girlfriend. It was very strange for me to be there — something was missing when I didn’t have that part of the character. So I was really glad they brought them back together, but of course, given the choice, I’d have preferred he survived, and they got to be together.

What was it like filming your final scenes with John?
CG: I only got to do the one scene with him. I actually only got to do the scene in his apartment with Booth. And obviously I knew he was leaving, and it was weird, and sad. The odd, personal, fact is that I shot that day, and then went into labor six hours later.

Oh my God!
CG: I came back 11 days later, which is also insane. But by the time I came back, they had pretty finished him out. So it was really like mourning him while we were shooting. I think everyone felt that way, and I certainly did. He was gone. The last thing he shot was the body bag thing, and it’s so sad. The real last thing he shot was being dead in a body bag. They shot our coverage [later]…I guess because I had the baby. They shot his part, and then went in [after] and shot our coverage. It really was like mourning him.

You could not tell you weren’t in the same room together.
CG: [Laughs] Thanks! I agree. I watched looking for it, because I had known how it was shot. We had done the walk down the hallway into the room, and I had been there for like 12 hours or more, and Emily [Deschanel (Brennan)] — who is amazing — was like, “Okay, that’s enough, you have to let Carla go. She has an 11-day-old baby in the trailer.” And my boyfriend was there [with the baby], so it was OK, but [Emily] wanted me to have a break, so we didn’t finish shooting it. But didn’t it look really good?

It looked really good. Traumatic, but I never would have guessed John wasn’t there with you.
CG: Wasn’t it? Didn’t John[‘s wounds] look — I don’t know if it was makeup or CGI or whatever, I guess it was makeup — but how real it was? I hadn’t seen that. Because he wasn’t there when I shot it, when I watched the episode, it was the first time I saw him in the body bag. It was so sad.

You joined Twitter to live-tweet the premiere with the fans. What was that experience like for you?
CG: It was surreal. We knew what was coming, and we knew they didn’t know what was coming, and that was the part that was sad: there was all this excitement over Daisy and Lance having a baby, and in the room, we’re all going, “Oh, God, oh God. Here it comes, here it comes. They’re going to kill us, they’re going to be so upset. Or they’re going to kill [BONES showrunner] Stephen Nathan.” And then he dies, and what was most interesting, it was almost as if we were watching the episode with the fans.

I’ve never been privy to what their actual feelings are about [things], what their reactions are. I’ve seen snippets — people commenting on like IMDB or things like that, but I don’t think that’s true [commentary]. On IMDB, I find, comments are kind of nasty. But on Twitter, there was just so much love all around. There was love for Daisy, there was love for having a baby, there was love for Sweets, there was heartbreak over him dying. It was actually a really good experience to live-tweet.

What can you tease about how Daisy’s grief will play out in this week’s episode, “The Lance to the Heart”?
CG: I think it’s really no surprise that she’s devastated. In the last episode, she said, I have to help, I need to help, and the best I can tease is she does come into the lab and work on solving the case. At one point she does say, I can’t be at home, alone. So she is there in the lab.

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Check back on Friday for more from Gallo!

BONES airs Thursdays at 8 PM on Fox.

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