Tom Selleck is still bothered by the end of Blue Bloods, more than two years after CBS pulled the plug on the long-running police procedural. The actor detailed the behind-the-scenes circumstances of the show's cancellation during a recent appearance on the podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson.
Blue Bloods ran for 14 seasons, following the Reagan family, a multigenerational New York law enforcement family. Selleck led the ensemble as NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan, alongside Donnie Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan, and Will Estes. The series finale aired in December 2024 after the final season was split into two parts.
Selleck told Danson the cast had become genuinely close over the course of the show's run. "Blue Bloods was a labor of love … I think for everybody," he said, explaining that at the final family dinner scene filmed during the last season, every cast member wanted to return.
The cast also made financial concessions to try to keep the show alive. Selleck said that most of them had "already taken a 25 percent cut in salary" before CBS made its final decision. Despite those efforts, CBS canceled the show in November 2023.
What made the cancellation sting more, Selleck said, was how strong the ratings still were. "It was very frustrating because … out of the top 100 shows on broadcast television, 'Blue Bloods' was number six in our fifteenth year," he said. "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 know, you couldn't very well replace Jamie or Danny or anybody with another actor."
Selleck also noted that long-running shows often become unpleasant to work on, but said Blue Bloods was different. "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," he said. "Blue Bloods was never that."
Danson was well positioned to understand the sentiment. He starred on Cheers for 11 seasons and has been open in the past about the difficulties he experienced with that show over the course of its run.
