‘Blue Bloods’ Boss Reveals How He Created Frank Reagan & Those Family Dinners

Ileane Rudolph September 6, 2024, 10:49 am

Tom Selleck in Blue Bloods — Craig Blankenhorn / CBS via Getty Images

In 2010, just five episodes into Blue Bloods’ run, Kevin Wade interviewed with Leonard Goldberg, Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green, cocreators of the promising family police drama, about a writing job. “The meeting centered around developing Tom Selleck’s character,” Wade recalls. “I offered that New York’s police commissioner is more of a CEO to 35,000 cops than a cop himself, and that his conflicts, dilemmas, strengths and vulnerabilities should reflect that. They responded positively, and I started the next day. Although any crime-story chops I might have were wholly unproven, I was drawn to the challenge.”

Those challenges included “two requests written in stone” by Goldberg, Wade explains: “Each episode must wrap up the crimes of the week by that show’s end, and no matter how deep the conflicts between family members, they would have dinner together on Sunday at Frank and Henry Reagan’s home.”

As a result, multi-episode arcs have been rare, with major exceptions like the first season’s search for the killer of Frank’s (Selleck) eldest son, police officer Joe and the final season’s uncharacteristically intense storyline with youngest son Jamie (Will Estes) deep undercover. As for Sunday dinner, Wade, who’s been an executive producer since the second season, says, “It quickly became the show’s touchstone and came to be felt as both nostalgic and aspirational to people all over the globe.”

The show’s cast was cohesive from the start, with extraordinarily little churn. Though only Selleck and Steve Schirripa had long-running television shows behind them — Magnum, P.I. and The Sopranos, respectively — with time to grow as a character, the other actors “found inventive, invigorating and entertaining ways to keep exploring within the strict framework of the show,” says Wade. “I like to think that [most of our] actors stayed so long because they enjoyed playing the stories we wrote for them.”

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Not every story was a hit. The death of Danny’s (Donnie Wahlberg) beloved wife Linda (Amy Carlson), who was killed offscreen in a helicopter crash, was difficult for viewers to digest. (The actress chose not to renew her contract after Season 7.) But the writers also found ways to shake up the Reagan family tree. Writer and executive producer Siobhan Byrne O’Connor “came up with a way to energize the dynamic and legacy storytelling in an ingenious way,” says Wade.

In Season 10’s finale, O’Connor introduced Frank’s unknown grandson, Det. Joe Hill (Will Hochman), whose father was Joe Reagan, Frank’s late son. The character proved popular, despite his sometimes fractious interactions with his newfound family. “Will came on and hit it out of the park on his first at-bat,” Wade says, “and kept growing.”

It was also important, despite his integrity, that the commish faced pushback both at home and at One Police Plaza. “His father Henry [Len Cariou],” says Wade, “is a character with the same vocation, but from an older generation, with wisdom earned but opinions to be tested,” and often debated over a glass of fine scotch. But an inner circle of trusted advisers, aka the Dream Team — Det. Abigail Baker (Abigail Hawk), Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Garrett Moore (Gregory Jbara) and Lt. Sid Gormley (Robert Clohessy) — “was added early on to offer [Frank] advice that sometimes goes counter to the boss’ own take,” Wade notes.

The longtime EP won’t choose which character was the most fun to write, but he did pick two favorite scenes: “The Season 8 finale, when Jamie and Eddie came to announce their engagement, tied with the family confronting Joe’s murderer in the first-season finale.”

In the end, as Wade (whose novel about a New York cop will be published in January) puts it, the show may not have won awards or “critical consideration,” but fans gave Blue Bloods their approval with solid ratings for 14 years. When the show was canceled, he says, “fans mailed me envelopes of blue confetti with notes imploring me to ‘Cancel the cancel’ or ‘Save Blue Bloods.’ I did greatly appreciate their affection and enthusiasm for what we did. I’m still picking little bits of confetti off something every day!”

Blue Bloods, Season 14 Part 2 Premiere, Friday, October 18, 10/9c, CBS

This is an excerpt from TV Guide Magazine’s Blue Bloods: The Special Farewell issue. For a look back on the long-running series and more scoop on the final episodes, pick up a copy of the issue available on newsstands and for order online at BlueBloods2024.com.