It’s been almost two years since the final episode of Blue Bloods aired, but star Tom Selleck is still frustrated over its conclusion, a decision made by CBS amid solid ratings and fan outrage.
Now the 81–year-old actor has shared the shocking decision the cast made to try to keep the show on TV screens, revealing that they took a 25% pay cut in an attempt to keep the CBS procedural going for a 15th season and more.
Tom Selleck as Frank Reagan (Getty Images)
Pay cut
“Blue Bloods was a labor of love… I think for everybody,” he said on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast. “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. We’d already done all sorts of things to keep the show going.”
Reports suggest that Tom was earning approximately $200,000 per episode before the reduction; the final season consisted of 18 episodes.
Surprise cancelation
While Blue Bloods remained a staple of Friday night television with consistently strong ratings, its cancellation came amid high production costs which often outpace revenue generated from advertisers; a common industry problem in the 21st century.
Will Estes, Len Cariou, Bridget Moynahan, Tom Selleck and Donnie Wahlberg are seen on the set of Blue Bloods (GC Images)
“We love this cast, we love their passion for the show. All shows have to come to an end. It’s important to us to refresh the schedule. We are going to end the show come December,” CBS said at the time of the cancellation.
The series also starred Donnie Wahlberg and Bridget Moynahan, and ran from 2010 to 2024.
Solid ratings
“It was very frustrating because… out of the top 100 shows on broadcast television, Blue Bloods was number six in our fifteenth year. Nobody wanted to leave. Everybody was going to stay on,” Tom continued, sharing that it is “hard” for any TV show to keep their original cast intact for that long.
Bridget and Donnie played brother and sister, Erin and Danny (CBS via Getty Images)
“It may be some kind of record to have the same cast intact for that length of time,” he added.
“Maybe people don’t realize, but a lot of shows become miserable to work on. 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.”
What was Blue Bloods about?
Blue Bloods followed Frank Reagan (played by Tom), the New York Police Commissioner and patriarch of the Reagan clan, a multigenerational family of cops.
Blue Bloods followed a family of law enforcement officers (Getty Images)
Donnie played Frank’s oldest son, Danny, a seasoned detective and veteran, and his daughter Erin (Bridget) is an assistant district attorney. Youngest son Jamie is fresh out of Harvard Law, but gave up a potentially lucrative career to follow the family’s tradition.
It aired on Friday nights and consistently won the evening’s ratings week-on-week.
The series wrapped a funeral for a fallen officer before viewers saw the Reagan family sit down for their traditional family dinner.
Boston Blue spin off
CBS greenlit a spin-off, Boston Blue, starring Donnie, who reprised his role as Danny, who moves to Boston for a new role with the Boston Police Department and is paired with detective Lena Silver, the eldest daughter of a prominent law enforcement family.
Donnie and Lena Silver in Boston Blue (CBS via Getty Images)
Tom has admitted he is not sure if he will ever appear on the series, sharing that it’s “partly my lot in life to make sure Blue Bloods has its place in television history, but I don’t think it’s my lot in life to keep playing Frank Reagan.”
He has been supportive of Donnie and the spin-off, however, and Donnie shared that he called Tom to get his blessing immediately.
“Of course, I spoke to Tom the minute I was deciding if this was something I was going to do. And I can’t really get into the details of those conversations, but he’s been very supportive,” he told Parade.