At the start of Blue Bloods, Tom Selleck admitted that playing patriarch Frank Reagan was no easy task.
“This is the first time I’ve played dad to grown-ups,” Tom, 79, said during an interview with Collider during the show’s first season in September 2010. “I felt a little intimidated. I had such a good dad. Maybe I’m drawing from that, but I’m still getting used to that.”
“I see my fellow actors, and I’m way older than some of them,” he continued. “I don’t feel that much older, so I’m just getting used to the idea of playing a parent to grown-up kids. It’s a real interesting challenge for me. I’ve played a father to teenagers, kids and babies, so it’s a new thing for me, and I like that challenge.”
During the interview, the Emmy winner also explained that his “biggest hurdle” about doing Blue Bloods was accepting the “idea of the show.”
“The first question out of my mouth was, ‘Where are you shooting it?,’ and then we tried to discuss how that would work,” Tom explained of the New York City-based crime drama. “It never works the way you plan it, but that wasn’t the attraction of it. It’s really hard to argue that this isn’t a better show, shot on the streets of New York. That excited me.”
Flash forward 14 years later, and the TV icon has no regrets about signing on for the series. Blue Bloods is currently airing its final episodes on CBS, and Tom expressed that he wished the show would continue on after season 14.
“I’m kind of frustrated. During those last eight shows, I haven’t wanted to talk about an ending for Blue Bloods but about it still being wildly successful. In a Top 100 Shows of 2023-2024 (in total viewers, we were No. 9 out of 100), if you discount the three football shows, we’re No. 6!” he told TV Insider in an interview published on October 3. “I’m not going to turn into a bitter old guy saying, ‘Get off my lawn!’ I don’t believe in holding grudges, but if you were to say to the television network, ‘Here’s a show you can program in the worst time slot you got, and it is going to guarantee you winning Friday night for the next 15 years,’ it would be almost impossible to believe.”
“My frustration is the show was always taken for granted because it performed from the get-go. So how do I feel? It’s going to take a long time to sort all of this out. I remember after the weekend [of the final episode’s shoot], I said, ‘I’ve got to get to bed early tonight because I have to do my dialogue for Monday,’” he remembered. “Well, there was no Monday. It’s just going to take a while.”
Tom also explained that the cast grew extremely close while working on the show over the years, something viewers always appreciated about Blue Bloods.
“The family of actors is as close as the Reagan family and the characters that they play,” the Friends alum told the outlet. “There’s isn’t a single one of them who didn’t want to come back. Most shows don’t end that way — there’s petty jealousy and all sorts of things– and we seemed to overcome that. It’s something for everybody to hang their hats on and be proud of.”
