The Time Luc Robitaille Got Pranked on the Set of Bones

Luc Robitaille is a team player. In 2008, when his friend Barry Josephson, then the executive producer for Fox's hit TV show Bones, needed an NHL player for an upcoming episode, Robitaille answered the call. Although he was early into tenure as the Kings' president of business operations, and wasn't sure if he could afford to spend a day on set during the season, Robitaille didn't want to leave his friend hanging.
Robitaille only had one request. He wanted to make sure he had easy lines so he could nail his delivery.
"Not because I think I'm Robert DeNiro but sometimes with my French background, some of the words are hard to enunciate," Robitaille recalled. Josephson just laughed and told him that it wouldn't be a problem.

In the scene Robitaille was slated to be a part of, he was playing himself in a concussion-induced dream experienced by one of the show's lead characters, FBI agent Seeley Booth, played by David Boreanaz, after he was injured during a hockey game. Robitaille appears and while the two pass the puck around, he offers up some poignant advice to help Booth solve a murder investigation.
It seemed like it would be pretty straight forward shoot and, besides, it wasn't Robitaille's first time in front of the camera. During his first stint with the Kings, the left winger made a cameo in D2: The Mighty Ducks, along Wayne Gretzky, Chris Chelios, and Cam Neely.
The following year, as a member of the Penguins, Robitaille appeared in the action film Sudden Death in which Jean-Claude Van Damme thwarts a terrorist takeover of the Civic Arena during a Stanley Cup Final matchup between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks.
So with all that in mind, Robitaille practiced his lines and showed up at a rink in Valencia, California to film the scene. Robitaille was feeling pretty confident as he put his gear on, but Boreanaz had something up his sleeve.

"When he showed up, I told the assistant director to tell him Robitaille] that I'm suffering from a really bad back and that when I'm injured, I'm always in a bad mood," Boreanaz recently said in a telephone interview. "So we wanted to put that out there."
As soon as Boreanaz stepped on the ice, Robitaille could tell something was off.
"He said 'I've got a real bad back' and then went on to say 'I don't know how you guys do it standing on your skates all day" Robitaille remembered. "He apologized to me but it was a little bit uncomfortable."
But that's when it went from bad to worse. When Robitaille pulled out his script to start rehearsing, he noticed that it was a different colour from the pages Boreanaz had.
"So he looks at me and says 'how come you don't have the new script?' Robitaille said. "'New script?' I asked. I practiced my lines last night and that's when he told me they had changed the script."
Robitaille was starting to sweat. If they had really changed the script on him, he had no idea what his new lines were and would have very little time to practice.
Now Boreanaz was really starting to lose his patience.
"I said 'you've got to be kidding me? Why is this guy not coming prepared,'" the actor recalled. "I went on about how my back was hurting and how I didn't want to do this, so this argument kind of ensued on set.
"He got mad at everybody," Robitaille said. "It was an empty rink so it was super loud, so now I'm really uncomfortable."
But what Robitaille didn't realize, was that this was all still part of Boreanaz's prank.
"I had the assistant director help me create some new sides," Boreanaz said. "Sides are like parts of a script that you have memorized for the day and actors hold onto them. So what we did was, I told the writers to come up with some new sides for him [Robitaille]."
After someone nervously gave Robitaille a copy of the new sides, they told him just to read what he had. As Robitaille scanned the pages, he started to tense up.
"They changed every one of my lines and every one of them had words that were hard to pronounce, so I'm freaking out," Robitaille explained. "I've got to go back and learn this stuff but at the same time I had to get to work at a certain time. So all this stuff is going through my mind and I'm freaking out."
Despite the circumstances, Boreanaz recollects that Robitaille managed to keep his cool.
"He was kind of thrown but he was also trying to be respectful because he thinks I'm really hurt and I'm upset, so he starts reading these new lines," Boreanaz said. "I got the writers to make this monologue that was almost two pages long. It just went on and on."
But as Robitaille kept reading he eventually looked up and happened to notice that the episode's director, Chad Lowe, who also happened to be his friend, had a little smirk on his face. Once Robitaille realized he had been set up, he let out a few choice words and tossed the script aside while everyone on set had a good laugh.
After Robitaille regained his composure, they shot their scenes and everything went off without a hitch.
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"We had a lot of fun," Boreanaz recollected. For a hockey fan like Boreanaz, who had grown up rooting for the Flyers after moving from Buffalo to Philadelphia as a youngster, he embraced the opportunity to pass the puck around at work with a legend.
"It was a good time. He was, you know, Luc Robitaille. Not much of a stretch there. Great guy."
And as for Robitaille. His only regret was that they didn't have the cameras rolling the whole time.
"I really wish they would have filmed that because you would have seen a look of pure fear on my face."