‘SEAL Team’: Toni Trucks Says Davis Is Balancing ‘Duty & Loyalty’ With Bravo in Final Season

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Bravo is gearing up for its last mission with SEAL Team‘s seventh and final season (the first two episodes drop on Sunday, August 11 on Paramount+). And going into it, there are certainly questions about the status of the team, following Jason (David Boreanaz) publicly speaking about his TBI and other SEALs coming forward about what they’re dealing with as a result of years of combat.

So is it any wonder that Lieutenant Lisa Davis (Toni Trucks), who despite shifting roles remains loyal to Bravo, is aiming to usher in a new era of warfare against powerful rivals for supremacy on the world stage with a focus on the warfighters? Below, Trucks previews Davis’ new role this season, teases Bravo’s new mission, and shares memories from her last day on set.

Davis has a new role this season. How does it change her approach to missions and her relationships with the members of Bravo? We’ve been seeing that really evolve over the seasons.

Toni Trucks: I think the new role that she has makes her job more impactful but also makes the dynamics a little bit more tricky for her. I think that Davis’ dream has been to be in a position that is really directly impacting warfighter safety and particularly Bravo team, how can I keep them as safe as possible for global reasons and also for selfish reasons. And I think that this new position is helpful and also makes things more complicated, but it’s exciting for her ultimately. In the beginning, it’s not the cakewalk or the dream job that she thought it was going to be. She was like, this is going to be exactly what I wanted. And then it’s like, be careful what you wish for.

Especially because Bravo is her family, but in a sense, they can’t be her family. She shouldn’t be singling them out like that.

Exactly. Exactly. And I think that’s going to be, I think it’s safe to say, a theme that’s going to continue to come up this season, is that balance between duty and loyalty and how she’s going to navigate the people that she considers to be absolute family and also the job that she takes really seriously. That is her pride and joy.

Michael Moriatis / Paramount+

How does she handle any pushback that she might get? She does get some, but she stands her ground…

Oh, she does. … God, that was such a frustrating situation. I think that she didn’t anticipate getting pushback on what she thought would be like, we’re all going to be on board with this initiative. We’re all going to be on board on being more efficient and having less danger for the people involved, especially when the landscape of war has changed. And I think that she comes up against a lot of dudes, a table full of dudes, that are stuck in their ways and are just like, we are made for and trained for one kind of war fighting, one kind of way to engage with our enemies, and we’re not really interested in being clever or taking a new approach. And I think the thing that saves Davis time and time again is that she’s super smart and she believes in her objective. She believes that what she is doing is for the greater good, so she’s not easily swayed, so she’s not going to come up against someone that outranks her and be swayed that she’s not doing the right thing. She’s not going to back down. She’s just going to work harder to find a new approach. And I think that that kind of tenacity with Davis tends to help her navigate these situations again and again. And also having Lieutenant Blackburn [Judd Lormand] as an ally is also just really helpful to her. She can press the pause button sometimes and go to him and be like, okay, look, talk to me here. What are we doing?

Yeah, I’ve loved that dynamic the entire series. It’s been so good because also just to see the different parts of what they do—that can be its own show right there, what’s going on with Davis and Blackburn.

I know, thank you. We should do a spinoff.

The trailer shows Davis on the ground with Bravo on a mission. What can you preview about that mission and why does she say that it’s “one last ride with Bravo” before it’s all over?

It’s rare in these past few seasons, seeing Davis end up on a mission with the guys. I’ve really found myself in spaces that are much more strategical and intelligence-based. So the circumstances that lead me to be on a mission with them, I can, I guess, tease a bit and say, as much as I think Davis thrives in the situations when she can work shoulder to shoulder with the team, this particular situation is not her choice. And one last ride with Bravo, I think you might have to wait and see.

Does that play into why she’s joining them on this mission or is that two separate things?

They’re kind of holding hands, but the majority is two separate things. I think left to her own—Yeah, I guess that’s all I can say, but it’s not her choice, but she ends up on that mission.

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So there’s a new teammate on Bravo played by Beau Knapp, and he clashes with the team a bit, but what does Davis think of him?

The interactions that Davis and Drew have are limited, but I think that Davis is always interested in making the team as strong as possible. And I think in seasons leading up to this, we’ve seen that the team has been increasingly more fractured. And so with the input of Omar played by Raffi [Barsoumian], I think that has felt like it’s strengthening Bravo. And then now with Drew coming in—Beau Knapp plays that character so beautifully and I’m excited for audiences to get to know him. And so from Davis’s perspective, I think between Omar and then Drew, anything that makes the team stronger is good for her. So she has no issue with them being there. She likes it. There’s always the question we ended last season with, the whole TBI, is Jason fit to serve? What are we doing here? A little bit of babysitting has been happening in the past with teammates, and so I think having fresh blood in there feels good to her.

Talk about your last day on set.

Oh, gosh. So I had a little bit of a funny experience because we actually filmed a bit out of order at the end there, and we were out of the country when we filmed the last day. And we did two last days, really. Our first last day was in LA with the entire LA crew, which was really sweet. …The scene was set up that all of the cast was together. And so it was nice that it wasn’t that kind of a disjointed feeling. So we all were able to be together and be a bit celebratory.

And then from that day on, it was really fragmented because some of the crew didn’t come with us out of country. And so our real, real true last day, we were filming deep in the jungles of Colombia, which is posing for another country, but that’s where we actually were. And we were on the beach and we were just doing a really rather intense scene. And then all of a sudden it was like, that was that. And then champagne broke out. It was really wild to be in this experience. And everybody’s on the beach. They’re all already wet from being in the water and geared up.

I had wrapped actually days previous, so I just came to set that day and was able to just kind of step back and observe and do some off camera stuff for David on the radio. And he was like, “What was that? Is that actually Toni? What’s going on here?” So we just busted up. David got bottles of champagne for everybody to spray all over each other, and we hugged, took pictures, and it was sweet.

And for me, a really magical moment was walking back to base camp after we’d all wrapped up. I was by myself, and I heard this loud, loud, loud, loud ringing coming from the jungle, and I stopped one of the crew guys, and I was like, are those birds? What is that? And he’s like, no, those are the cicadas. And it was the loudest sound that I’d ever heard. It sounded like an opera almost. It was just this singing, and I couldn’t believe that that was the sound of a cicada. And it just kind of felt like I was getting serenaded off of this experience. And the sun was setting and we were walking through the jungle and it was really, really magical.

It’s all been so bittersweet. I think I’ve personally been in full denial about the thing. I’m just like, I’m going to see them next week. It’s not a big deal. And then slowly, slowly as the summer goes on, I’m like, am I ever going to see these people again?

SEAL Team, Seventh & Final Season Premiere (two episodes), Sunday, August 11, Paramount+