Tom Selleck is still not over the cancellation of Blue Bloods. The actor, who played NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan for 15 seasons on the CBS procedural, opened up about the show's end in a conversation with Ted Danson on the podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name.
According to Screen Rant, Selleck recalled the filming of the show's final family dinner scene and described how the entire cast had wanted to keep going. He said the ensemble had already agreed to significant financial concessions to extend the show's life, only for CBS to move forward with cancellation regardless.
"Blue Bloods was a labor of love… I think for everybody. 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," Selleck said.
The ratings argument is one Selleck made plainly. "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 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."
Selleck also reflected on the unusually positive working environment the show maintained throughout its run. "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."
The show ended its run with a finale centered on the Reagan family dinner, a recurring set piece throughout the series. Rather than dramatically shifting the status quo, the episode closed with the announcement that characters Jamie and Eddie were expecting their first child. Frank Reagan did not retire and remains NYPD Commissioner during the events of the spinoff.
That spinoff, Boston Blue, launched during the 2025-2026 television season with Donnie Wahlberg reprising his role as Danny Reagan. In the new series, Danny relocates from New York to Boston to work alongside his son Sean, who is beginning his own law enforcement career. Boston Blue performed well enough in its debut season that CBS ordered a second season.
Selleck has not appeared in Boston Blue yet, though the show's continuity leaves the door open for his involvement. Whether Frank Reagan will cross over to the spinoff remains uncertain.
