Blue Bloods cast took 25% pay cut to extend show's run, Tom Selleck says

The cast of Blue Bloods accepted a 25% salary reduction to help keep the show in production, Tom Selleck disclosed Wednesday on Ted Danson's "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" podcast, even as the procedural held a sixth-place ranking among broadcast shows in its final year. Selleck, 81, put the run at 15 seasons and 293 episodes, correcting what he called an undercounting by the network.

The concessions that fell short

The pay cut was one of "all sorts of things" the cast undertook to extend the production, Selleck said, without specifying what else was on the table. Those efforts did not save the show. Blue Bloods ended despite that sixth-place broadcast ranking and despite a cast Selleck described as unanimously willing to return. "Nobody wanted to leave. Everybody was gonna stay on," he told Danson, adding that maintaining the same cast intact across 15 seasons may be "some kind of record."

The contradiction Selleck kept returning to: the show ranked sixth among broadcast shows in year 15, yet sat outside the top 100 when measured across television as a whole. He had told TV Insider, after the final episode was shot, that Blue Bloods was "wildly successful" and had been "taken for granted because it performed from the get-go." A show that could "guarantee you winning Friday night for the next 15 years," he said, should not have lost its place.

The cast dynamic that held

Selleck credited the long run partly to a stable working environment. Television sets can become "miserable," he told Danson, with cast members refusing to leave dressing rooms over ego disputes. Blue Bloods ran differently. Playing the family patriarch, Selleck said he set an example early and the cast followed it through to the final season. At the last family dinner scene on set, every cast member wanted to come back for more.

Recasting was never a realistic path, he added. Characters including Danny (Donnie Wahlberg) and Jamie (Will Estes) were too tightly tied to the family premise to replace with other actors.

What to watch: Boston Blue

A spinoff, Boston Blue, is in development with Donnie Wahlberg attached. Selleck said in November that he is unlikely to appear. "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," he told Hour Detroit.