Giovanni Rufino/CBS ©2016 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.(NEW YORK) — Actor and recording artist Donnie Wahlberg has three hits on his hands at the moment. The seventh season premiere of Blue Bloods hits the small screen on September 23rd on CBS, and his other family business — the burger franchise Wahlbergers, that is, not Hollywood — is booming, too, and has spawned a popular A&E reality show of the same name to boot.
“Vegas is the 11th location,” Donnie tells ABC News of the punnily-named burger joint owned by he, his chef sibling Paul, and their Transformers series star brother Mark. “There will be 15 by the end of the year, open,” Donnie adds, “and I think there’ll be another hundred within two years.”
The New Kids on the Block performer says Blue Bloods is, “another incarnation for me,” adding, “for years…when people saw me in the street, they’d say, ‘Oh! My sister loved you!’ Now it’s every day — I can’t really go an hour without somebody saying, ‘We love Blue Bloods,’ or ‘the family dinner [scenes]’ or ‘we watch it together as a family.'”
The series has been very popular for some time now, the actor beams, adding, “but now that it’s gone into syndication, it’s just gone to another level.”
Wahlberg adds that the seventh season finds his Detective Danny Reagan, “In hot water again…because he’s sort of an old school cop in a world where those ways don’t really work — and while they may be effective in getting the bad guy, they also, you know, walk the line — and sometimes cross the line.”
Blue Bloods airs on CBS on Fridays at 10 p.m. Eastern time.
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