Tom Selleck Thanks CBS For Long-Running ‘Blue Bloods’ & Touts Broadcast TV As Show Heads Into Final Stretch
Tom Selleck thanked CBS for the last eight episodes of popular family cop drama Blue Bloods that begin airing tonight and, when concluded, will mark the end of the show’s impressive 14-season run.
“These eight shows that we can look forward to are because CBS agreed and wanted to do that and celebrate – not only celebrate Blue Bloods but commemorate its legacy. And I just wanted to thank them,” the actor said Thursday night during the show’s panel at PaleyFest in NYC.
The series will have aired nearly 300 episodes when Season 14, Part 2 wraps. Part 1 aired from February to May.
Deadline first reported CBS’ plans to end Blue Bloods’ run almost a year ago. Network executives said later that, “All shows have to come to an end. It’s important to us to refresh the schedule,” acknowledging that the series by EP and showrunner Kevin Wade had been a staple of the lineup. The financial burden required to keep a long-running show going likely informed the decision.
Cast members have lamented the network’s decision to shutter a broadcast television show that still commanded a large audience. Selleck, who plays NYPD Police Commissioner Frank Reagan, was less conciliatory in past comments. “My frustration is the show was always taken for granted because it performed from the get-go,” he said after the cancellation.
At the event Thursday night, the Magnum, P.I. star also talked up broadcast television, which has been shedding viewers amid streaming competition.
“I have great faith and have had great faith in broadcast television. I think it’s suffered from being put in second or third place. And, you know, I don’t think everybody in the world wants to spend an hour on their remote control looking for what they might want to see,” he said. He’s proud that Blue Bloods became “an appointment.”
“That was hard at ten o’clock at night … That’s rare. And, as much as anything, it’s a reflection of the work we do. And that’s kind of the ultimate compliment.”
Blue Bloods airs at 10 pm ET Fridays.
“I think we’re aware of the enormous amount of cliches in series television,” he said. “And we comment on them, and we bring them up, and by commenting on them it really helps with the audience because you’re, again, sharing something. Magnum had a voice-over narration. We have an audience, that, by the time we sit down to the family dinner they know an awful lot of secrets that maybe everyone at that table does not know. And that’s the sense of discovery … ‘Hey, wait till he hears that’.”
Selleck is referring to the multi-generational New York law enforcement family’s weekly Sunday dinner that anchors each episode.
Selleck started the PaleyFest evening by reading an emotional letter from the family of late Blue Bloods executive producer Leonard Goldberg, who first envisioned the dinner as core to the show.
“People come up to us and thank us for those scenes,” said Bridget Moynahan, who plays Selleck’s daughter, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Erin Reagan Boyle.
Also on stage in NYC (where the show is shot) were Len Cariou (retired NYPD Commissioner Henry Reagan), Donnie Wahlberg (Detective Danny Reagan), Marisa Ramirez (Detective Maria Baez), Vanessa Ray (Eddie Janko, cop and wife of Jamie Reagan, played by Will Estes) and Wade.
Cariou joked about being cast as Sellecks’ father, alluding to the six-year age difference between the two actors. Wahlberg said his other gig, with the band New Kids on the Block, helped the show become popular.
Mostly they talked about and sometimes teared up over the end of an era and a big chunk of the lives of all involved. “We’d be working about now on the schedule, and I really miss that,” Selleck said. “But what I miss most is my friends, my actor family.”
“That opportunity that we had, that gift of once, every eight working days, seeing everybody … You could always look forward to that. It’s two families – the Reagan family and the acting family.”
The convo followed the screening of tonight’s episode, “Life Sentence.” In it, Erin is accused of jury tampering, complicating Danny and Maria’s homicide case. Eddie bonds with a child murder witness. Frank clashes with his friend and confidant Archbishop Kearn (Stacey Keach) over the death penalty. Jamie joins forces with his nephew Joe Hill (Will Hochman) to recover his stolen car. Peter Hermann is back as John “Jack” Boyle, a defense attorney and Erin’s former husband.
