After 10 seasons of pranks, business decisions, and plenty of burgers, “Wahlburgers” will come to an end this week.
Prior to the show’s finale, the three brothers at the center of the show — Mark, Donnie, and Paul Wahlberg — sat down with “Entertainment Tonight Canada” to discuss what the show has meant to the family, and how it brought all of them closer together.
Donnie went so far as to say that “Wahlburgers” had “rebuilt” the family, allowing them to connect in person after years of living their own lives apart from one another.
“Of the many, many things that have come out of this crazy journey for us as brothers, as business partners, the best part is that it’s rebuilt our family,” Donnie told ET, tearing up. “It really meant a lot to me. When the restaurant came about, we started to connect more regularly because of the business, but it didn’t require us to be in the same place. We could do conference calls and get our jobs done without being in the same room more than one or two times a year, but the show changed that.
“Not that there were any rifts or anything, but we were off doing our own things and the farther you are physically, the easier it is to lose track of the years,” Donnie continued. “Time drifts you apart and when you have wives and kids you tend to be around your mom and siblings less because you need to be with your own family. The show reconnected us by putting us in the same room together more often and that’s changed the culture of how we run the restaurant. We make the effort to be together more and it has reconnected us in the way that the business alone wouldn’t have.”
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The three brothers also said that making “Wahlburgers” had been a positive experience for their mother, Alma Wahlberg.
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“This show, the restaurants, and all of those things gave her new purpose and it was great that that helped her,” Mark Wahlberg said. “She loved doing the show. Well, she actually complained about it the whole time, but she was so upset when I told her it was ending!”
The three-hour series finale of “Wahlburgers” airs Wednesday, July 31 starting at 8 p.m. on A&E.
Kevin Slane can be reached at kevin.slane@globe.com.