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As EW reunites ‘Angel’ cast, Philly’s David Boreanaz talks about the day he thought he was being fired

Boreanaz, now the star of CBS's "SEAL Team," once took a lunch invitation from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon as a bad sign.

Entertainment Weekly covers mark the 20th anniversary of the TV show "Angel," the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" spinoff that starred Philly's David Boreanaz.The June 28 issue goes on sale on Friday, June 21.
Entertainment Weekly covers mark the 20th anniversary of the TV show "Angel," the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" spinoff that starred Philly's David Boreanaz.The June 28 issue goes on sale on Friday, June 21.Read moreMatthias Clamer/EW

Philly’s David Boreanaz is having a good run on TV.

His big break, as the vampire-with-a-conscience on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, led to the starring role in Angel, which was followed by the long-running Fox drama Bones. He’s now headlining CBS’s SEAL Team, which begins its third season this October.

But as the Malvern Prep grad tells Entertainment Weekly, he wasn’t always so confident.

For the magazine’s June 28 issue, it reunited the cast of Angel to mark the Buffy spinoff’s 20th anniversary (the show premiered on the WB on Oct. 5, 1999). Boreanaz recalled that when Buffy creator Joss Whedon invited him to lunch, he’d been working on a scene that had his character flashing back to the 18th century, and thought he was being fired.

“I think we started talking about the Grateful Dead,” Boreanaz, the son of of retired 6ABC weatherguy Dave Roberts, told EW. “Then he’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re thinking about spinning your character off.’ And I’m like ‘alright, but I’m concerned about my accent that I’m supposed to do in the scene.'”

“David’s not a great squealer; the word confetti doesn’t come to mind," Whedon said.