And the ax fell after the cast had already agreed to slash their salaries by 25 percent to save the show.
“The real truth to that is, in the last year of Blue Bloods, at our last family dinner, everybody wanted to come back,” he revealed. “We’d already taken a 25 percent cut in salary. We’d already done all sorts of things to keep the show going.”
But it wasn’t enough.
CBS killed Blue Bloods anyway – a decision that still seems to baffle Selleck because the veteran series remained one of TV’s biggest draws.
“It was very frustrating because … out of the top 100 shows on broadcast television, Blue Bloods was number six in our 15th year,” Selleck said. “Nobody wanted to leave. Everybody was gonna stay on.”
“Blue Bloods was a labor of love … I think for everybody,” he said, adding that the tight-knit cast avoided the backstage warfare that often destroys long-running hits.
“Maybe people don’t realize, but a lot of shows become miserable to work on. You get a lot of egos, ‘I’m not coming out of my dressing room until he’s coming out,’ and it’s miserable. Blue Bloods was never that.”
Selleck was publicly fighting to save his TV family months before the finale. “I will continue to think CBS will come to their senses,” he defiantly declared in 2024.