Emily Deschanel was scolded on ‘Bones’ for being ‘late and unprepared’

Dr. Temperance Brennan showing up late and unprepared? Never!

But there was a time Emily Deschanelwho played the meticulous forensic anthropologist through 12 seasons of Bonesgot scolded for being just that — and the memory still makes the star emotional.

The actress got candid about the reprimand, and her struggles with anxiety and panic attacks early on in the show’s run, in an honest conversation with David Duchovny on his podcast, Fail Better.

Deschanel, who was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia as a child, found herself struggling, especially in the show’s grueling first season, with learning all of the intricate anatomical jargon her character frequently spewed.

“We were working insane hours, longer than just a normal series. You’re working 14- to 16-hour days, and then I had to memorize the lines,” Deschanel explained. “So I’d be staying up late night memorizing lines. I would joke that I would go home and just cry in a bathtub every night because I was just so overwhelmed.”

She continued, “I’d come to set and I would be trying to remember the lines that … I got no sleep and trying to remember the lines that I had memorized the night before and then I had them in my head and couldn’t remember them.”

It all came to a head when an accident during her commute caused her to be 30 minutes late to work one day.

“Hart (Hanson, series creator) knocked on my trailer door, which was not a usual thing, he wasn’t knocking on my door often,” she recalled. “He took me aside and says, ‘The studio has concerns about your work.’ They said that I was late and unprepared. That to me — I get emotional just thinking about it now because it was probably shame.”

She continued, “I mean, I was a wreck. I took it so hard. I was such a fragile person at the time. I got hardened up doing that show for so long. I was not sleeping, I was so stressed out. I was already, I’m an emotional person, so I was just beside myself.”

For the record, Deschanel clarified that after that conversation, she was never late again. And, as luck would have it, the very next day, they learned that the show had been picked up for more episodes. And of course it would go on to get a lot more than that — in all, Bones ran for 246 episodes across 12 seasons.

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Things got better for Deschanel from then on with the help of Hanson, who made sure to get her a bigger trailer for more privacy, and more downtime to work on lines.

“Hart helped me find ways to be better, get my job done in terms of learning my lines and remembering them,” she said, concluding, “and a lot of it was having downtime or having some scene that I’m not in, etc. He’s just a good one. We were so lucky.”

Watch Deschanel’s full episode of Fail Better above.