‘SEAL Team’s Beau Knapp on Drew’s ‘Breakthrough Moment’: ‘You Shed Part of Your Soul to Get There’

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for SEAL Team Season 7 Episode 5 “A Perfect Storm.”]

Put a team of SEALs in an abandoned restaurant without air conditioning for days, a storm raging outside, and tensions already high before all that, and it’s the perfect pressure cooker of a situation. Such is the case in the latest episode of SEAL Team, which results in Bravo’s newest member, Drew Franklin (Beau Knapp), revealing why he’s been keeping himself at a distance from the rest of the team.

It turns out that Drew was part of Echo—he wasn’t with the rest of his team when they were killed in Jalalabad. But even after opening up, he’s not ready for anything to change or to be anything but professional, he stresses. The episode then ends with Jason (David Boreanaz) surprising the team by revealing they’ll have to continue without him—he’s heading back to be with his son, who needs reconstructive surgery after a hockey injury.

Below, Knapp talks about Drew’s vulnerability, filming that key scene, and what’s coming up.

Drew finally opens up to Bravo, but it’s in the middle of this pressure cooker situation. Talk about filming that scene.

Beau Knapp: That episode was very special. Jessica Paré directed, and she was incredible. She was very intimate, everyone knowing each other. And it was funny, we were trapped in that room for five days straight. You’d go into that room just to film and they set it up to where it would drive you crazy to be in there. And there’s all these intense things, everyone going after each other and everything, so there was some real emotion happening in that room.

Michael Moriatis / Paramount+

It was definitely a moment for Drew that I was nervous to—not nervous, but I was heavily anticipating this moment for Drew in the series because I do think it’s that breakthrough moment for him, or at least for the audience to understand who he is, why he is the way he is, and he’s not just a complete asshole and that they all have something in common. While we were filming, we did a few takes, everyone was very fluid, and then that real stuff comes down when you just kind of shed part of your soul to get there. And it was beautiful because for four episodes, my character Drew would just go head-to-head with everybody, and it was so refreshing to just kind of be vulnerable and open up for a change. I know that he’s wanted to—I think that’s why he pushes back so much, even if he is making progress with the team, is that he feels a connection starting to be made. He feels like a team member and he doesn’t want that because he doesn’t want to get hurt again, and he puts so much responsibility on himself for what happened with Echo that to experience anything like that again or to open up like that again to a team is very hard.

What do you think it would’ve taken for him to open up without this situation? Would he ever have just sitting around?

Maybe if we had 22 episodes and he’d be able to kind of take some more time with it. But I think it happened at the perfect time and no, I don’t think—I think he was so stubborn, had so much guilt and shame and insecurity, and I mean it all comes out through cockiness and he has his guard up all the time, but I felt like Drew saw that this team was falling apart that he actually cares about deep down inside. I think it was a way for him to bring everybody together again or to show that we’ve made some progress here and that we need each other. And like Clay said, that everybody needs a team. I think he just finally understands that.

And it’s funny because it was such an emotional moment that Drew, obviously he’ll go back to his ways of being an asshole or cockiness, but there’ll always be that moment where you see him as a human being. Hopefully, that just gives him the opportunity to open up more and to really be on a team and to really build that trust with everybody and be open to living again and open to trusting and fighting the good fight.

Will the dynamic with the rest of Bravo change or because he’s going to go back to how he’s been, not really?

I can’t give away too much, but I think it’s like we spoke about before where if he feels himself getting closer to anybody or vulnerable or any sort of connection, it triggers him to go, I need to destroy everything. I need to push. I need to burn every house down every bridge. Because building connections and building that trust and caring for these people just sets up the opportunity to be hurt again, to lose people again, and I don’t think that Drew thinks that he can handle that loss again. I think it’s questionable where he doesn’t know if he could suffer through that again. And so yeah, I think it’s a time where he definitely opens up and he shows his true colors and that he’s the same as Jason and Sonny [A.J. Buckley] and all these people. He’s scared but he’s strong-willed and brave and all these things, but I think that’s going to go through the season where the more he connects, the more he’s got to equally push back, and then hopefully, he figures it out by the end and everyone’s friends.

Michael Moriatis / Paramount+

Does hearing about Jason offering up his trident for the team change what Drew thinks of him? Because Drew has been very vocal about that, especially for a new member of the team.

It’s a facade to an extent. It’s that his armor is cockiness, his armor is arrogance, and that he doesn’t need anybody to get by, that he knows what he’s doing. And I think underneath it all, he will always respect Jason, Bravo 1. He’s definitely walking that line and pushing buttons and trying to see where it leads because it’s to get attention, to kind of see where you stand with the team, and it is just disrespecting authority—he’s against authority in every way. But yeah, I think hearing he offered up his trident, I think he takes it like, that’s probably the most courageous thing somebody can do for his team besides just the ultimate sacrifice of dying.

But then again, Drew will take it and use it as ammunition to be like, nobody wants to be on this team. Nobody wants to fight anymore. Ray [Neil Brown Jr.] doesn’t want to go down range anymore. Am I the only one that just wants to fight? But truthfully, it’s the opposite. He probably wishes he could be as courageous as that or as, I don’t know, loving. He wants that connection again, wants a team again. He had a family, he wants it again, but losing everything is just so hard. But deep down, it’s like that’s the ultimate thing. It’s just finding those brothers again, that family again.

Then the episode ends with Jason leaving to go take care of his son after all that tension. How is Bravo in Episode 6 when Jason’s not there? 

Yeah. Six is an interesting episode because David directed it. So he had a few scenes with his son and everything. DB will get the best out of us because he knows us because he has worked with us. He sees our strengths, our flaws, how we work, and he’s able to, not manipulate, but get us to a place where we shine.

But yeah, not having B1 there is really complicated because you’re like, who’s in charge? Is Ray in charge? It’s almost like a free-for-all. It is such an action-packed episode, and so we stay busy with— when we’re sitting around a table, at the cages or whatever, we could talk and be personal and talk s**t and all that, but when it comes down to it, when we’re in a fight, all that stuff’s forgotten. What they talk about is, can we trust Drew? Can I trust Sonny to have my back when the bullets start flying? All this stuff. But yeah, I think [Episode] 6 is probably a time where we all come together the most, besides closer towards the end. It’s like after [Episode] 5, we went through it and now we’re in all this situation. And in 5, Drew’s like, let’s just be professional, let’s never talk about this moment again. I don’t want to f**king hear it from you guys. Nothing. This never happened. So there’s a respect between everybody after that. It’s like going through something together. And even if it’s unspoken afterward, we all know. There was truth told, secrets told, and yeah, I think they’re definitely closer than ever.

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Then there’s the matter of Drew’s family and that podcast that came up earlier in the season. What’s coming up there?

Drew’s family is just the worst. He comes from a very privileged background, but a very unloving childhood. He lost his mother really young. She was probably the only person that he loved. And it all is just how Drew was made. It’s just another thing where he went out looking for a family. But yeah, podcast with her, I think things will definitely heat up with those two, but anything can happen. Drew is always trying to destroy a good thing. So we’ll see.

What can you preview about Bravo’s last mission on the show?

It’s epic. Speaking with the showrunner Spencer Hudnut, we went to Colombia to shoot, and he told me, “I’ve been dreaming of this moment since we started this thing, of just being in that jungle and just the fights”—and I can’t really say much. I just know that what we did in Colombia is really special and I really think the audience is in for a wild, wild ride.

I know a lot of people, or at least some are like, this season is unlike any other season to where we’re not at war. We’re not fighting really overseas. I mean, we’re doing this fentanyl stuff and everything, but we’re not in Afghanistan or wherever they were. It’s a season of really finding out who these men are underneath, who these men are back home, which I know they’ve touched on in the past, but they’re coming to this, Bravo’s last ride, and we’re seeing what, over the seven years, which I’ve been a huge fan of, the battles have done to them in good and bad ways. But yeah, I think people are like, when are we kicking doors, when are we blowing s**t up? And there’s been a lot of that still, but I think they’re in for a real treat by the end of this.

What can you tease about how the series ends in general and for Drew?

I think that anything could happen to Drew. He figures out a lot of stuff and we just don’t know if Drew will make it out clean, if he’s ready, if he’s able, if the loss, if the wars, if everything is just too much for him, and the pain of just even personal relationships and everything.

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