Tom Selleck is speaking out again about the “frustrating” Blue Bloods cancellation, this time highlighting the fact that he and his costars took big pay cuts for Season 14 to help alleviate costs, a move they were willing to make again to keep the show running. However, CBS still ended the series after 14 seasons. Now, the Reagan family lives on in Boston Blue, a spinoff for which the stars are hoping to recruit Selleck as a guest star.
Selleck discussed Blue Bloods‘ cancellation in an interview with Ted Danson on his podcast called Where Everybody Knows Your Name.
“Blue Bloods was a labor of love… I think for everybody,” Selleck told Danson. He starred in the CBS family drama alongside Donnie Wahlberg. Bridget Moynahan, Will Estes, Len Cariou, and more, and everyone was committed to returning for another season, according to Selleck.
“The real truth to that is, in the last year of [Blue Bloods], at our last family dinner, everybody wanted to come back. We’d already taken a 25 percent cut in salary,” Selleck shared with Danson. “We’d already done all sorts of things to keep the show going.”
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“It was very frustrating because… out of the top 100 shows on broadcast television, Blue Bloods was number six in our fifteenth year,” Selleck continued. “Nobody wanted to leave. Everybody was gonna stay on. That’s hard to get. It may be some kind of record to have the same cast intact for that length of time. Usually, if it wasn’t a family, it would be different, but you couldn’t very well replace Jamie or Danny or anybody with another actor.”
According to Selleck, they all wanted to continue working on Blue Bloods because they all still enjoyed working together; they didn’t want to give that up.
“Maybe people don’t realize, but a lot of shows become miserable to work on,” Selleck admitted. “You get a lot of egos and ‘I’m not coming out of my dressing room until he’s coming out’… and it’s miserable. Blue Bloods was never that.”
Wahlberg now stars in the Blue Bloods spinoff Boston Blue with Sonequa Martin-Green. The first season featured guest-star appearances from Marisa Ramirez, Moynahan, Cariou, and Will Hochman, and Martin-Green says they’re eager to have Selleck join them if and when he’s ready.
“We’ve been talking about Mr. Selleck for a long time,” Martin-Green told Woman’s World. “He is always getting asked, and as Donnie always says, the door’s open. We would love to have him and we will make sure the story is just right because Tom is so adamant about the story, as he should be and as we all should be. I think it would be great if we can have him, and I’m excited for whatever story it ends up being if he does come.”