Tom Selleck has a lot of love for Blue Bloods and his work on it, but he is not so sure he’ll make it onto its spin-off, Boston Blue. When Blue Bloods was cancelled late last year, the cast, including the Friends alum, made no secret of their disappointment in the show ending after 14 seasons. And though the story of at least one of the Reagan family members, that of Donnie Wahlberg’s character Danny Reagan, lives on in the freshly-premiered spin-off, his on-screen dad still sees it as a different show that he’s not sure Frank Reagan belongs in.
Speaking with Hour Detroit, Tom, 80, confessed: “I don’t know if I would do Boston Blue — that’s another show,” and explained: “I think 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.”
And though he appears sure in his decision to not reprise the Frank character, he again relayed his disappointment in the cancellation of the mothership show, which aired its last episode on December 13 of last year. “It was a huge disappointment, and I still don’t know why CBS did it. If you get rid of the football, we were the sixth most popular series in all of television,” he said.
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Tom similarly told TV Insider last year: “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,” adding: “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.”
Disappointment over the cancellation and hesitation to join the spin-off aside, his former co-star Donnie has maintained he is supportive of him working on Boston Blue. Recently speaking with Parade, he shared: “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.”
“I can say, would I love for Tom to come up to Boston? Sure. Or would I love Danny to go to New York and visit Frank? Absolutely, yes,” he added, noting: “Tom’s always going to base his decisions on the work and material, and so yes, of course, I’d love to work with him on the show, and when the time comes, we will hopefully craft an idea that moves his heart and makes him want to do it.”
Donnie with his new Boston Blue co-star Sonequa Martin-Green
He also recently opened up about his decision-making regarding the show, mainly his choice to move forward with it. Speaking on CBS Sunday Mornings on Sunday, October 12, he emphasized: “I love Blue Bloods. I fought tooth and nail to keep it on the air, and here’s an opportunity to keep this character alive,” before noting: “And suddenly when I started to look at it through that lens it was like, ‘How do I not do this?’”
“If all of those millions of Blue Bloods fans don’t show up and love it, then I know we put our best foot forward,” he added.
SPOILER ALERT:This story contains spoilers from “Faith and Family,” the series premiere of CBS’ “Boston Blue.”
When “Blue Bloods” came to an end last year after 14 seasons, there were multiple questions viewers still had about what happened to the Reagan clan. Luckily, with spinoff “Boston Blue,” led by Donnie Wahlberg’s Dannie Reagan, they got one big answer in the first moments of the Oct. 17 premiere.
In the finale, Danny finally asked his longtime partner, Maria Baez (Marisa Ramirez) to get pizza. And in the first minutes of the premiere, he was shown in bed with Baez; their banter returned, this time with a romantic twist.
“Once we realized we were getting a chance to continue Danny Reagan’s story, Brandon and I looked at what the dangling threads were from the finale, and what was owed. Obviously, the big one was what happened when they went out for pizza,” co-showrunner Brandon Margolis tells Variety. “We really did want to feel like this show is continuing that story in fairly real time. It’s going to be about a year since the finale was off the air, so if Danny and Baez were together, where are they at, and what would that look like? How could that potentially complicate a journey going from New York to Boston? It was important to us we pay service to that and continue to establish that relationship.”
While Ramirez hasn’t yet signed on to more episodes, the relationship will continue, Sonnier confirms. “Long-distance relationships are a thing. I think we can expect to play that relationship through and really get a sense of where they are in the progression of this relationship that we’ve been watching for a decade,” he says. “It’s a four-hour drive!”
Mika Amonsen as Sean Reagan
CBS
In the premiere, Danny pairs up with Detective Lena Silver (Sonequa Martin-Green), the eldest daughter of a prominent law enforcement family — something he knows a thing or two about — in Boston. He’s taking on a new role with the Boston Police Department in order to stay close to his son, Sean (Mika Amonsen), after he suffers an injury while on the job as a police officer.
One big difference from “Blue Bloods” is that Sean has been recast; while Andrew Terraciano played the character for 292 episodes of “Blue Bloods,” Mika Amonsen has taken over the role for the spinoff.
We love Andrew and the work he did over the years on ‘Blue Bloods.’ Really, it came down to we’re telling a new chapter in both of their lives. It’s not just Sean who has joined the family business as it were and is turning over this new leaf, but it’s also now Danny Reagan is the father to a cop, which he’s never been before,” explains Margolis. “So there are all these new storytelling lanes to explore. It felt like there was an organic opportunity to bring in a new performance with a new energy, to help dramatize that change. It is the same character, it’s the same relationship, but it’s also completely different. We love what Mika has brought to Sean, this vulnerability, yet this desire to prove himself. It’s just been great to watch it come to life.”
Sonequa Martin-Green as Lena Silver, Bridget Moynahan as Erin Reagan Boyle, and Donnie Wahlberg as Danny Reagan
CBS
The show will have a similar tone to “Blue Bloods” and will likely include more familiar faces. Bridget Moynahan’s Erin Raegan appeared in the premiere, arriving in Boston to make sure Danny was okay, which seems to be just the start.
“Can we expect some family members? Can we expect some visits and some trips? Yes, we can,” co-showrunner Brandon Sonnier adds. “We truly mean that we are an expansion of the universe. It’s not just a run-of-the-mill spinoff. It is a different look at a different dynastic law enforcement family through the eyes of the Reagans. But the Reagans exist. They are still out there in the world, living those lives that we watched for so long.”
Plus, every episode will feature a family dinner — the Silver family’s Shabbat dinner, which was part of the premiere, which Danny and Erin excitedly joined.
“We will have Shabbat dinner every episode. We hope to honor the original show and their Sunday dinners were so much a fabric of what that show was about, what that family was about,” says Sonnier. “One of the things Donnie would always tell us about was how many real-life law enforcement people he would meet over the course of working on ‘Blue Bloods’ would express how much they appreciated that the Reagan family reminded them of their family. They would sit down and they would have dinner. This is an organic way to continue that universe. It’s something we do. I sit down to dinner as often as possible with my family. I have four young children. Everyone’s got baseball and dance and all the things that people have. But as often as we can, we sit down and we do celebrate Shabbat, so Friday is our time that we get to connect as a family.”
“Boston Blue” airs at 10 p.m. ET on CBS and streams on Paramount+ the next day.
For 14 years, Donnie Wahlberg starred as Detective Danny Reagan on the CBS police procedural “Blue Bloods.” The hit drama about the Reagans, the fictional first family of the New York Police Department, had a loyal following. “I was stopped on airplanes, on trains, on the street, at basketball – you name it. Wherever I was, somebody would tell me they love ‘Blue Bloods,’” said Wahlberg.
Now 56, Wahlberg is sitting at a new family’s dinner table, in “Boston Blue,” a “Blue Bloods” spinoff set in a city the actor knows well.
Donnie Wahlberg as Detective Danny Reagan in “Boston Blue,” a spinoff of the long-running series “Blue Bloods.”
CBS
Wahlberg grew up the eighth of nine kids in the working-class Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. “We were poor,” he said. “There were nine kids, a dog, a cat, and a grandma in the basement, and my mom and dad for a while. There were kids coming and going, running away, being arrested. There were arguments, fights, alcohol. I definitely learned from some of my older siblings that, here’s a clear path of what not to do.”
Wahlberg says he was the family peacemaker. “I don’t like to use the term (’cause I don’t wanna insult my other siblings), but one of the adults. My role was to get everyone together and be happy by any means necessary.”
The discord wasn’t just inside the house; 1970s Boston was a cauldron of racial tension. A controversial court-ordered desegregation program bussed students to schools outside their neighborhoods. As a first grader, Wahlberg was sent from Irish-Catholic Dorchester to predominantly Black Roxbury.
He describes it as “probably the most important thing that ever happened in my life.”
Donnie Wahlberg, star of “Boston Blue.”
CBS News
Because? “Because I don’t know what I would’ve not been exposed to, had I not been on those buses. In my neighborhood, if I woulda said, ‘Yeah, I wanna be a singer one day,’ I could think of five kids in the neighborhood who would punch me in the face. And two of them lived in my house!”
It was after hearing hip hop in the fourth grade that Wahlberg caught the performing bug. “I would listen to ‘Rapper’s Delight,’ I just would start writing my own raps and making up my own songs,” he said.
That helped Wahlberg earn an audition, at just 14 years old, with Maurice Starr, the local impresario who’d founded New Edition and was starting a new band. “Maurice was looking for the equivalent of the Osmonds to the Jacksons,” he said.
What did his parents think? “My mom was super supportive,” he recalled. “And I said, ‘Dad, I’m gonna start this music band.’ And he said, ‘Well, I tell ya’ what: If you ever do make it big, and you come home, and you’ve changed, I’m gonna kick your ass.’”
In 1984, Donnie and his younger brother Mark became the first two members of New Kids on the Block. But the family affair was short-lived, as Mark quit. “He didn’t like singing,” said Donnie. “He couldn’t sing. There’s a scene of him as Dirk Diggler in ‘Boogie Nights’ singing horribly. That’s actually better than he sang as a member of New Kids!”
With four other members in place (including some of Wahlberg’s schoolmates), the group struggled at first to find its footing. But by the late 1980s, they appeared to have the right stuff:
While the band was popular, it was far from critics’ choice. “I really struggled with the criticism of the band – we couldn’t sing, we were puppets, we were fake,” said Wahlberg.
To feel better about himself, Wahlberg focused on writing and producing, not just for the New Kids, but also for his brother Mark. Soon enough they had a #1 hit, “Good Vibrations.”
Donnie said, “Marky Mark and my brother’s career and his music was really when I started to get my head screwed on right of how I could really prove myself.”
Prove himself … and protect his kid brother. “My brother was getting in trouble and my mom was like, ‘You gotta help your brother and get him out of the streets,’” said Wahlberg. “I don’t like to wear the Marky Mark and my brother’s career as some kind of badge of honor. He worked very hard for his career. But I really did, you know, help him in a big way, and helped myself in a big way in doing that.”
After the New Kids broke up in 1994, Wahlberg turned to acting, breaking through in “The Sixth Sense.” Other roles followed, including “Band of Brothers” and “Boomtown,” along with reunions for New Kids on the Block, which still keep him busy.
Wahlberg now lives outside Chicago, in a home he shares with his second wife, TV personality Jenny McCarthy.
“We have very similar upbringings, which really helps,” said McCarthy. “I think we’re both people-pleasers, which could also be bad if you’re not in therapy about it!”
“Lotta therapy we’ve each had, and together,” said Wahlberg.
“But we’re caretakers, you know, of our family, which I think is something to be proud of,” McCarthy added.
They may now live in McCarthy’s hometown, but Boston is never far from Wahlberg’s heart, as evident in his home office, which features mementoes from Bill Belichick, Bill Russell and Larry Bird.
And then there’s his new show which he wasn’t sure he wanted to do after “Blue Bloods”‘ cancellation. “I love ‘Blue Bloods,’” he said. “I fought tooth-and-nail to keep it on the air. And here’s an opportunity to keep this character alive. And suddenly, when I started to look at it through that lens, it was like, how do I not do this? If all those millions of ‘Blue Bloods’ fans don’t show up and love it, then I know we put our best foot forward.”
Between his TV work and concerts, it’s a busy life for Donnie Wahlberg. “People say to me, ‘Oh, gosh, when do you sleep?’ You want me to complain? Everything I ever wanted, I’m doing it. I wanna work harder, I want to be worthy of it. I want to be worthy of … the gift that so many people give me of their time. How can I not work my ass off to repay that?”
But he says he’s just doing what he’s always done: “My childhood was spent trying to bring joy and love to a large group of people amidst chaos and confusion and pain. And it’s what I do for a living right now. It’s what I’ve grown up to do.”
To watch a trailer for “Boston Blue” click on the video player below:
The cast of Blue Bloods were reunited on Thursday night for the annual PaleyFest in New York. The likes of Marisa Ramirez, Vanessa Ray, Tom Selleck, Len Cariou, Donnie Wahlberg and Bridget Moynahan came together at The Paley Museum, where guests watched an advanced screening of one of its final episodes followed by a conversation with members of the cast and creative team.
In photos taken at the event, the cast are pictured smiling on the red carpet with their arms around each other. Other images see the stars posing for pictures with fans.
Blue Bloods stars Marisa Ramirez, Vanessa Ray, Tom Selleck, Len Cariou, and Donnie Wahlberg at PaleyFest in New York
The event comes after Donnie said he was “all for” a Blue Bloods spin-off after the show’s cancellation. In November last year, it was announced that the drama would end with its 14th season, split into two parts and 18 episodes.
Chatting to TV Insider, the Danny Reagan actor said: “I, for me personally, would say whatever happens next, if it’s done with the spirit of Blue Bloods and done with the care that we tried to put into Blue Bloods every week, it would be something that I would look forward to watching or being a part of either way.
“I’ve heard stories of prequels, sequels, you name it. For me personally, I love the show. I’ve enjoyed working on it for 14 years and like I said, whatever comes next, as long as it has family at its core and the spirit of Blue Bloods, then I’m all for it,” he continued.
WATCH: Donnie Walhberg reveals how he feels about Blue Bloods reunion
Abigail Hawk, who plays Abigail Baker, is also open to a spin-off. In an exclusive interview with HELLO!, the actress said she is “still grieving” the show but feels her character’s story is left “wide open”
Speaking about the new season, the 42-year-old said: “I think we’ve seen quite a bit of anger from her [this season.] We’ve seen her kind of writhing around, a worm on a hook: should I stay here? Am I being fulfilled? You’re not going to get much more drama from her specifically and I actually am very content with that.
“I think that there’s a lovely simplicity to her just being where she is – and it leaves it wide open for a potential spin-off down the road. That’s how I’m viewing it,” she continued.
Sharing her disappointment over the show’s ending, Abigail went on to say: “I don’t want to spin off right now, this is very fresh for me and I’m still grieving because we all wanted to continue, this is not something any of us wanted.
Abigail said she is “still grieving” the show
“We felt that there was so much more we could continue telling and sharing and creating, but I do think there are certain characters that could continue to have quite an amazing and interesting life beyond the world with the Reagans, and I think Abigail Baker is one of them. She’s this woman of mystery and there’s so much that we could just uncover and pull out of her.”
Tom Selleck is breaking his silence to address the upcoming conclusion of his CBS police drama “Blue Bloods,” which will be coming to an end after the current fourteenth season.
Has anyone rocked the mustache better than Tom Selleck?
Help us wish the “Magnum, P.I.,” “Blue Bloods” and “Friends” actor a happy 79th birthday! 🎂🎉
Daily Mail reported that Selleck, who turned 79 yesterday, made it clear that he is not ready to say goodbye to “Blue Bloods” just yet.
“CBS will find an awful lot of people aren’t ready to say goodbye to it,” he told TV Insider. “The show’s more popular than ever, and I think [numbers] will increase with the interest this year. We’re certainly not out of ideas.”
“I’m not counting the days so I can do something else. I love the work,” he added. “Sometimes the hours are a little harder because I’m older, but so what? I want work as long as they’ll have me.”
Selleck also talked about his iconic “Blue Bloods” character Frank Reagan, saying that “he picks fights because he’d like somebody to take the weight of this responsibility [off] his hands and fire him. But he has a hyperactive sense of responsibility and he’s stuck with it.”
Selleck Proud Of ‘Blue Bloods’
When asked what he’s most proud of when it comes to his time on “Blue Bloods,” Selleck replied, “Playing a flawed but strong father.”
“On television and commercials, Dad is usually the idiot,” Selleck explained. “It’s not my mission on the show, but the by-product is an example of an important patriarch to the family. That’s getting rarer in our culture.”
Selleck concluded by talking about how important the weekly Reagan family dinner has been to the show’s success.
“It’s the audience’s favorite part,” he said. “When I saw the eight-page dinner scene in [exec producer] Leonard Goldberg’s pilot script, I said, ‘They’re going to cut that, aren’t they?’ And he answered, ‘No, that will be a centerpiece of the show.’ He was right.”
As for what Selleck has planned for the future, he wants to spend more time on his California avocado farm with his wife Jillie Mack, who he has been married to since 1987.
“He wants to relax on his ranch, walk around his property, spend time with his wife and family, and travel a bit,” a source told Closer Magazine.
“Tom and Jillie can just sit at home, cook, go for a long walk and be very content. He adores Jillie and trusts her to schedule activities or travel plans,” the insider added. “He’s looking forward to having more free time to spend with her.”
Selleck is also preparing for the release of his memoir “You Never Know,” which is set to come out on May 7.
“It’s not a gossipy Hollywood tell-all,” the source explained. “He is sharing his experiences in (show business), (and stories about how he met) some great stars and how they affected him, and what he’s learned.”
Co-created by Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, “Blue Bloods” premiered on CBS back in 2010, and it tells the stories of a family that works in various areas of law enforcement. The show stars Selleck along with Donnie Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan and Steve Schirripa.
“Blue Bloods” has been a hugely popular show for years, and it currently holds an audience score of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes. Part one of the show’s fourteenth and final season is set to premiere on February 16, with part two airing in the fall.
Are you sad that “Blue Bloods” is ending? Let us know in the comments section.
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An Ivy leaguer, proud conservative millennial, history lover, writer, and lifelong New Englander, James specializes in the intersection of… More about James Conrad
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