Tom Selleck is slated to return to TV screens for the first time since his hit show Blue Bloods was canceled.
Selleck, 81, will guest star on a currently untitled Apple TV+ comedy. The show stars Elizabeth Banks and Ted Danson, the latter of whom starred with Selleck in the 1987 film Three Men and a Baby.
The role marks Selleck’s first since the CBS series Blue Bloods was canceled in 2024. Selleck starred on all 14 seasons of the police procedural as Frank Reagan, New York Police Commissioner and patriarch of a multigenerational family of police officers.
The final Blue Bloods episode aired in December 2024 despite protestations from the show’s stars.
Since the show’s conclusion, Selleck has spoken out about his efforts to keep the series going.
“Blue Bloods was a labor of love… I think for everybody,” the Magnum, P.I. star said on a recent episode of Ted Danson’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast.
“The real truth to that is in the last year of [the series], at our last family dinner, everybody wanted to come back. We’d already taken a 25 percent cut in salary,” Selleck admitted, adding that they had “done all sorts of things to keep the show going.”
Still, CBS chose to axe the show, announcing in 2023 that the 14th season would be its last.
Touting the show’s viewership success, Selleck claimed that “out of the top 100 shows on broadcast television, Blue Bloods was number six in our fifteenth year.”
“Nobody wanted to leave. Everybody was gonna stay on,” he said. “That’s hard to get. It may be some kind of record to have the same cast intact for that length of time.”
Blue Bloods also starred Donnie Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan, Will Estes and Len Cariou. Following the series finale, the cast bid an emotional farewell to the long-running drama.
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 day
New subscribers only. £9.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled.
ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
Selleck previously expressed his disappointment over the show’s cancellation. “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,” he told TV Insider in 2024.
“I’m not going to turn into a bitter old guy saying, ‘Get off my lawn!’” he said. “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.”
Explaining the decision to cancel Blue Bloods once and for all, CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach previously insisted that the network “loves” the cast’s “passion for the show,” but “all shows have to come to an end. It’s important to us to refresh the schedule.”
“We really want to thank the cast and crew, everyone involved in the show,” she continued. “We absolutely will miss the family dinners. It is important to give the show the send off it deserves.”
Blue Bloods debuted in 2010, with its season 14 renewal making it one of the network’s longest-running procedurals.