The final episode of the beloved police drama Blue Bloods aired last Friday after fourteen years and 293 episodes. In the wake of this, the show’s star Tom Selleck is speaking out to admit that he’s having a difficult time saying goodbye to the show.
Selleck Calls Out CBS
“I’m grateful to say, and the writers continued to see the evolution in the characters and let them grow and change,” Selleck, 79, told Entertainment Weekly the day after the series finale aired. “Fifteen years is a long time, and you change physically, you change every other way. You’re just older. At a certain point, all those things entered into what I’ll put in my little actor’s handbook and use, because I certainly don’t intend to stop working.”
Selleck went on to say that he is still confused as to why CBS cancelled Blue Bloods, which had been on since 2010.
“My biggest goal is to make sure people realize we went out in rather spectacular success,” he continued. “It wasn’t tired, it wasn’t anything else. Somebody may be able to tell me someday why CBS wanted to end it, but I haven’t had a good answer yet.”
Selleck ‘Can’t Figure It Out’
Selleck made similar comments the day before the Blue Bloods finale aired.
“I can’t figure out why they didn’t start streaming it, do 10 episodes a year,” he told Variety last Thursday. “But I’m not the boss. Everybody wanted to come back. And I think with this cast, it would have been a gift for the audience. I don’t make those decisions. I’m prepared to celebrate and commemorate this show, but I’m still getting used to it.”
This is a difficult time for Selleck, as he’d typically be filming the next season of Blue Bloods right now. Sadly for him and his fellow cast-members, however, there won’t be a fifteenth season of Blue Bloods.
“The thing that tugged at me most in adjusting and will continue is the family of actors we had and the friendships we formed,” Selleck admitted. “And you always say it’s kind of like high school graduation. Everybody says they’ll keep in touch and things happen. Well, that happens in movies too. You say you do a movie, establish relationships, and then it’s over.”
“This is a more complicated one,” the former Magnum P.I. star confessed. “It’s a 15-year relationship with most of those people, and it just doesn’t go away that fast. It’s hard — on a movie, you always say, ‘Well, let’s get together,’ and then you get busy or you work somewhere else and a couple of years go by, but this is just a bigger adjustment.”
Related: Tom Selleck, 79, Vows To ‘Keep Working’ As ‘Blue Bloods’ Comes To An End – ‘I Need To Regroup’
Selleck Fought To Save Blue Bloods
One thing is for sure, and that is that Selleck didn’t go down without a fight when it came to this show. Indeed, Selleck spent much of this year desperately trying to save Blue Bloods from cancellation.
“I’m kind of frustrated,” Selleck told TV Insider back in October. “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!”
“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,’” Selleck continued. “Well, there was no Monday. It’s just going to take a while.”
Sadly, Selleck was not able to convince CBS executives to change their minds when it came to cancelling Blue Bloods. This was a show that celebrated both family values and law enforcement, making it a rarity in television these days. That’s why millions of fans will be missing Blue Bloods just as much as Selleck does.
While we’re sad that Blue Bloods is over, we can certainly still smile that it happened. Please join us in saying a prayer for Selleck as he struggles to come to terms with this iconic show ending!
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