BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Tom Selleck is happy to be on a prime-time TV show -- and even happier his new series isn't shot in Toronto.
There was some talk that "Blue Bloods," which premieres this fall on CTV and CBS, would be produced in the Canadian city; talk the former "Magnum, P.I." star was quick to discourage.
"No offence, Toronto," Selleck told reporters Wednesday at the semi-annual network press tour in Beverly Hills, "but I've shot there, and it's a lovely place to shoot, but it's different."
Different in that it is not New York, a city that is almost a character in "Blue Bloods."
Selleck plays veteran New York police commissioner Frank Reagan on the drama. His father (played by Len Cariou) was also a respected cop, and his sons Danny and Jamie (Donnie Wahlberg and Will Estes) are members of New York's finest. Occasionally, they clash with their sister Erin (Bridget Moynahan), who happens to work in the New York district attorney's office.
Executive producers Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green, the husband and wife writers who helped craft "The Sopranos," saw Selleck as the perfect fit to play the heroic figure at the centre of their new TV family.
"We did the antihero all those years," Green told critics. With so many dark, deeply flawed anti-heroes on TV today, Green wanted to go in a different direction.
"I became very interested, sort of as a curative after 'Sopranos,' to find out what a hero is today."
CBS wanted Selleck as their new top cop. The actor loved the script as well as the chance to work with top actors in the cast. He was okay with leaving his California ranch to make the series happen, but not down with crossing the border.
"Look," he says, "it's difficult for me to argue that shooting a show about New York won't be better shot in New York."
That Selleck got his way speaks to his enduring star power. As CBS programming president Nina Tassler told critics Wednesday, "Tom Selleck is a big draw. We want people to watch that series."
Selleck has proved he can still pull in viewers with his recent series of "Jesse Stone" TV movies. Based on the Robert B. Parker novels, the seventh in that series about a transplanted lawman will air this fall and an eighth is in the planning stages.
Selleck, who is also a producer and even a writer on those films, proudly points out that DVD sales for the previous titles are very robust ("Jesse Stone: No Remorse" just hit stores this week). He made continuing "Jesse Stone" another condition of signing on to "Blue Bloods."
That he has to cross the border to do it is just fine with Selleck. "Jesse Stone" shoots in Halifax.
"I love Halifax," says Selleck, who discovered the Maritime city while shooting the 2004 TV movie "Reversible Errors" with William H. Macy.
"There's so much history there and so much tradition. The people are really interesting and tough," he says, remembering a chilly week where "our crew members kept working in T-shirts in freezing weather and we're all dying."
Selleck points out that the series provides roles for many Canadians (including Leslie Hope and Stephen McHattie).
"We draw a lot from Toronto and the unions have been very good to us," he says.
"We counted about nine recurring roles with Canadian actors in the show so far. They've earned that."
It's been 30 years since Selleck first got behind the wheel of his red Ferrari as private investigator Thomas Magnum.
"I prefer to think 22 years removed since our last show," says the well-preserved 65 year old, who is proud to be part of TV history.
"It was the first series to show Vietnam veterans in a positive light," he says.
"That's why Magnum's Detroit Tigers hat and Hawaiian shirt are in the Smithsonian, next to Archie Bunker's chair."
The role made the actor one of the biggest stars in television, but it also cost him an iconic film role -- Indiana Jones. He'd already shot the "Magnum" pilot when Steven Spielberg and George Lucas offered him the role of their dashing archaeologist adventurer. He told the filmmakers that he was pretty confident "Magnum" would be picked up as a series, but they figured they could work around his CBS deal and went ahead and shot a screen test. Selleck still remembers being blown away by the script.
"It was all there," he says.
CBS, it turned out, would not let Selleck out of his contract. As fate would have it, an industry strike that season delayed production on the series.
"It turned out I could have done both," says Selleck, who was devastated at the time but is philosophical 30 years later.
"Things didn't work out so badly," he says, adding that Harrison Ford, who ultimately got the Indy part, "is sick of listening about this. He's indelible as Indiana Jones. I'm just proud I didn't drive my car into a wall to get out of my contract."
