They may have been playing the Reagan family for the last 14 years, but none of the Blue Bloods stars were strangers to TV when they started on the CBS cop procedural.
The first, most obvious example is Tom Selleck‘s hit series Magnum, P.I., which ran for eight seasons from 1980 to 1988. But Selleck has more credits than that. Here, we unpack the Reagan family members’ diverse résumés, from an alien comedy to a boy band.
Will Estes
If you think tracking down New York’s scariest criminals is a wild gig, imagine what the future Jamie Reagan had to contend with during 1997’s bonkers (and short-lived) CBS comedy Meego!
Will Estes costarred with a pre-Gossip Girl Michelle Trachtenberg and a post-Jerry Maguire Jonathan Lipnicki as motherless siblings who discover a stranded alien (Bronson Pinchot) and convince him to become their nanny.
Marisa Ramirez
A police uniform may not be the most glamorous outfit, but as Det. Maria Baez, Marisa Ramirez makes it work. That’s probably due to her former days on the catwalk. The Los Angeles native was discovered during her teenage years by modeling scouts and soon landed in the pages of catalogs and on runways around the world (right, Ramirez in Maggie Barry’s 2003 show) before transitioning to acting with roles on soap operas General Hospital and The Young and the Restless.
Tom Selleck
At the age of 20, a clean-shaven Selleck failed to get the girl on a 1965 episode of The Dating Game, but he definitely won our hearts years later when he cowboyed up (complete with the ’stache!) in NBC’s 1979 Western miniseries The Sacketts. The man who would eventually become the commish played a former lawman who tries to maintain the peace while heading to Santa Fe in 1869 with his two brothers.
Bridget Moynahan
Could it be that the most buttoned-up member of the Reagan family got her start getting down and dirty in a room full of rowdy dudes? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we present to you Exhibit A: Bridget Moynahan had a role as tiny as her wardrobe (in her feature-film debut) when she played one of the New York drink-slingers who danced on the bar and dished out disses in the 2000 campfest Coyote Ugly. Frank would have shut that place down quickly!
Vanessa Ray
Even Officer Eddie Janko would have a tough time cracking the case of Vanessa Ray’s previous role on Pretty Little Liars. Just imagine the paperwork you’d need to explain that her CeCe Drake was actually Charlotte DiLaurentis, the cyber-stalking cousin/adopted sister of the teen drama’s central bad girl…and that CeCe secretly dated her own relative Jason (Drew Van Acker) and was actually assigned male at birth?!
Donnie Wahlberg
If you didn’t know the tough guy behind Det. Danny Reagan was also a founding member of boy band New Kids on the Block, go straight to jail.
The “Hangin’ Tough” crooners reached fame in the late 1980s and were still touring as recently as summer 2024! But we’ll let you go with a warning if you do know that Donnie Wahlberg also played A) a cop in three of the Saw movies and B) the patient who (spoiler alert) killed Bruce Willis’ character in The Sixth Sense.
Len Cariou
Grandpa Reagan has a history of working in law enforcement…and appearing on long-running shows. The Broadway vet who won a 1979 Tony Award for starring in the musical Sweeney Todd opposite Angela Lansbury made several guest visits to her popular CBS series Murder, She Wrote during its 12-season run. As Irishman Michael Hagarty, a former British MI6 agent, he repeatedly called on mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher to help close a case.
