Tom Selleck and his BLUE BLOODS cast members took large cuts to their pay in Season 14 in a group effort to keep the show going — but CBS still canceled it.
“BLUE BLOODS was a labor of love…I think for everybody,” Selleck said recently on Ted Danson’s podcast. “The real truth to that is, in the last year of [BLUE BLOODS], at our last family dinner, everybody wanted to come back.”
At that point, everyone reduced their paychecks by 25%.
“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.”
Selleck still doesn’t understand why the network cut the show.
“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,” he said.
Selleck insists BLUE BLOODS was special. Unlike a lot of shows that may be very unpleasant behind the scenes, the BLUE BLOODS cast were family.
The BLUE BLOODS spin-off, BOSTON BLUE, is alive and well with Donnie Wahlberg and Sonequa Martin-Green.
“We’ve been talking about Mr. Selleck for a long time,” Martin-Green said. “He is always getting asked, and as Donnie always says, the door’s open.”
She wants him there not only to make fans and the cast-members happy but to make sure that the story makes sense.
“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,” she said.
Last year, sources close to Selleck revealed they were very concerned about his health until he started taking things slow.
“Tom’s finally taking his foot off the gas, and it’s a huge comfort to everyone who cares about him,” a source told Closer Weekly. “For years, he was go-go-go around the ranch, tearing around on his ATV, and taking on projects like he was still in his 40s, but these days, he’s embracing a much more low-key routine.”
However, they know that he’s happiest when he’s working. And he does have another project lined up — a new JESSE STONE movie.
Selleck teased to TV Insider that it’s not “a final one because everybody loves it. Jesse is a great character, and it would be fascinating to find out where he is quite a few years later.”
The project is still in the early stages of development.