Tom Selleck says 'Blue Bloods' cast took pay cut to avoid cancellation
Tom Selleck says 'Blue Bloods' cast took pay cut to avoid cancellation
Anthony Robledo, USA TODAYThu, July 30, 2026 at 12:43 AM UTC
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Tom Selleck is detailing the lengths the cast of "Blue Bloods" took to avoid cancellation.
On the Wednesday, July 29, episode of the "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" podcast, the "Magnum, P.I." alum, 81, explained why the show's cancellation after its 14th season in 2024 was especially brutal. He revealed that the cast and production team took a sizable pay cut to lower the budget for Season 14.
"The real truth to that is in the last year of ['Blue Bloods'], at our last family dinner, everybody wanted to come back. We’d already taken a 25 percent cut in salary," Selleck told podcast host Ted Danson. "We’d already done all sorts of things to keep the show going."
However, the financial sacrifice was not enough as CBS canceled the show in late 2023. The final season, which was split into two parts, aired in December 2024.
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"It was very frustrating because… out of the top 100 shows on broadcast television, 'Blue Bloods' was number six in our fifteenth year," Selleck added. "Nobody wanted to leave. Everybody was gonna stay on. That’s hard to get. It may be some kind of record to have the same cast intact for that length of time."
The Emmy-winning actor said the cast truly felt like a family, which is likely why the cast remained intact for so long, adding that many shows become miserable to work on after a while.
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"You get a lot of egos and, 'I'm not coming out of my dressing room until he's coming out,'" he said. "And it’s miserable. 'Blue Bloods' was never that."
Tom Selleck previously said 'I'm not done' with 'Blue Bloods'
After CBS announced the show's cancellation in November 2023, Selleck revealed he was not ready to stop playing New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan.
"I see a lot of very upset people out there. We'll see what happens," Selleck told USA TODAY in February 2024. "Whatever happens, it's not going to be a whole season of endless soap operas winding down."
Premiering in September 2010, "Blue Bloods" featured an ensemble cast that included Selleck, Donnie Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan, Len Cariou and Will Estes as a multi-generational family of NYPD cops (with Moynahan playing the one legal outlier in the district attorney's office).
"At the time, lasting 14 seasons wasn't even conceivable," Selleck said.
It was Selleck's long-running hit after "Magnum, P.I.," which aired for eight years on CBS from 1980 to 1988. He won an Emmy for his role as Thomas Magnum in 1984.
"We really started catching on and found our groove in 'Blue Bloods' somewhere in the first season," Selleck said. "I said to myself, 'I can't be this lucky twice.'"
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tom Selleck says 'Blue Bloods' cast took pay cut to avoid cancellation
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
