Toni Trucks Reflects on SEAL Team Run and Davis’ Fate in Series Finale, Spills Dancing Scene Secrets
The following contains full spoilers from the SEAL Team series finale, now streaming on Paramount+.
As SEAL Team‘s seven-season run drew to a close on Sunday, Lisa Davis had to wonder what, exactly, her longtime sorta-love interest Sonny had done to clear the way for her big-time promotion to admiral’s aide.
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Rumor had it that Sonny gave away his med kit idea to the Navy, rather than make them pony up dough for the invention. But a closing montage revealed that Sonny in fact ‘fessed up to decking Colonel Decker in that parking lot after the Mali mission, costing his his Trident.
On the bright side, though it for a moment appeared that Sonny was leaving Vah Beach to move closer to his daughter, the fact is that he and Davis were last seen driving to D.C., with all of their belongings in tow, and hand-in-hand.
TVLine spoke with original cast member Toni Trucks about Davis’ incredible seven-year arc, where things ended for the character, and all of the practice that went into (albeit for naught) #Savis’ recent dancing scene.
TVLINE | What was your reaction when you got the season finale script?
Well, I was very nervous, because after 114 episodes, how am I going to be satisfied, right? And I didn’t really know what I wanted. So when I was reading it, there is this fairly big misdirect with my character and Sonny, where you feel like they’re going to go their separate ways, and I was sad when I read that. But when I got to those last two pages and see them attempt to actually give it an honest go, where they’re heading to D.C. together, truly hand in hand, I was relieved. I was happy. I didn’t think I was going to feel that way, but I was. It’s up to the imaginations, now, whether or not it lasts, but I think they deserve to give it a real go.
TVLINE | I told [showrunner] Spencer [Hudnut] that Lisa’s arc was one of my favorite parts of the final season, and I am sure that you also had to love that for her.
I really did. I really, really, really did. I love seeing Davis in tough spaces, and Spencer’s done such a good job of consistently putting her in spaces that she has to navigate through. It pays homage by giving some real love to all of the women in the military that are navigating these male-dominated spaces, their cred, but I didn’t want it to always be easy and fun and have her have back-up. I needed them to show that cunning that is required.
TVLINE | How was this role first presented to you back in 2017?
Not like this. [Laughs] I didn’t know what it was going to be. I mean, Davis started out packing parachutes, and making sure the guys have their favorite candy bar on the mission, you know? It was really quite pedestrian.
TVLINE | You were like Blackburn’s right-hand man.
Totally. I was Blackburn’s sidekick. So, every season got me increasingly more excited that they actually had some vision and a plan for her, and especially a plan with a lot of upward mobility. Going from a petty officer to a lieutenant feels like an achievement, you know? We kept kind of slipping in promotions, to the point where we had to kind of make reference to them and move on. “Hey, congratulations! By the way, we have a mission.” We didn’t have time to keep up with them, but it was really, really, really cool.
TVLINE | Have you had experiences where people come up to you on the street and thank you for giving women this role model, giving women in the military this role model?
I have, and that is so exciting. I love when they come up and are like, “Oh, my gosh, I just we love your character. She’s badass.” Some years ago, in maybe the second or third season, somebody posted on Instagram that they had dressed their daughter up as Lisa Davis for Halloween, and I was like, “That’s it. I’m out. I can die now. I’m a Halloween costume.”
TVLINE | Wow.
The interaction with the military community, I think, has probably been the biggest gift coming away from this. It enriched our performances and made the stakes so much higher, knowing that we were kind of tethered to this real, live, breathing community. To make them proud, and to have them kind of checking our work every week, has been its own wonderful, rewarding, sometimes frustrating experience.
TVLINE | As you’re reading the very final script, and all these misdirects are sneaking up on you…. Ray ends up with Jason’s job, Jason stays with Bravo, Sonny didn’t give away his med kit to the Navy but turned himself in….
They were all coming fast and furious! Like, if we had had our druthers, we probably would’ve had five more episodes to really enrich all of those stories, but yeah, I was getting slapped with them left and right, too, and I love that it leaves something to the imagination. Because, for me, I’m going to miss playing this character, and I know it sounds silly, but in a way, I’ll wonder about her. Like, “What’s Davis up to?”
TVLINE | Answer me this: Couldn’t Lisa have just told the higher ups, “Hey, I really, really looked into the Decker thing, and… I simply don’t know who did it, so let’s move on”?
Well, remember, the only thing is that I’ve got a bit of a wildcard with my friend from Season 6, the one that gave me the file [about Decker being to blame for the Mali mission]. So if I perpetuate that lie, that means I could potentially take him down with me, and I have to be relying on the fact that he’s not going to ever tell. If it was just me lying, knowing Davis, I can definitely see a scenario in which her loyalty would test the scales of her responsibility, and she might lie, but with other people involved, she had to find a way to keep her integrity about her.
TVLINE | Or… maybe Decker could stop being so precious.
Or maybe Decker could stop being so precious. Truly, yeah.
TVLINE | People do get punched in 7-Eleven parking lots, you know?
Yeah, but we’re living in, God forbid I say, the Trump era, where people have got to pay, because it’s all pride and pomp. People really get all in a twist about name calling on the playground. Wild, right? So, I think it probably tracks more to have somebody be like, “You’re not going to punch me and get away with it. Not on my watch.”
TVLINE | Lastly, give me an anecdote about filming the undercover dancing scene for Davis and Sonny in that recent episode.
God…. Well, I should tell you that you probably wouldn’t know it to see the final product, but we had like three dance lessons to do that scene — and AJ will kill me, but I do plan on releasing the footage of all of our dance lessons! But when we finally got onstage, in Colombia, to do it, he was like, “Yeah… I’m not doing that.” I’m like, “But we practiced so hard!” He’s like, “I’m just going to do what I’m going to do,” so he wasn’t trying to do anything. He’s like, “Sonny doesn’t dance.” I’m like, “OK, well, all my musical theater training just went out the window!”
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