Tom Selleck on the future of “Blue Bloods”

It’s hard to beat the panorama on the highest hill at Tom Selleck’s California ranch. You could say, at 79, the actor is very familiar with the view from the top.

For the past 14 years Selleck has starred in the hit CBS show “Blue Bloods,” as the head of the NYPD, and the head of a strong (and often headstrong) family. The show is set to end this year, but there’s been some pushback on that, most notably from Selleck himself.Tom Selleck as New York Police Commissioner Frank Reagan in “Blue Bloods.”  CBS

Asked if “Blue Bloods” is ending, Selleck replied, “Well, that’s a good question. I will continue to think that CBS will come to their senses. We’re the third-highest scripted show in all of broadcast. We’re winning the night. All the cast wants to come back. And I can tell you this: we aren’t sliding off down a cliff. We’re doing good shows, and still holding our place. So, I don’t know. You tell me!”

It’s not the first time Selleck has been at odds with the powers-that-be, in a career that’s been long and legendary. In his most famous role in the ’80s, the character Thomas Magnum wore a Detroit Tigers baseball cap – a nod to the town in which Selleck himself was born.

Long before Magnum, and the mustache, he was an athlete at the University of Southern California, and after a less-than-stellar academic career, he found work in ads, selling products like Ban Basic and Safeguard Soap.

Smith asked, “You told yourself early on, going to auditions and interviews, you would literally say to yourself in the car, ‘You’re good enough, Tom.’”

“I’d say, ‘You’re enough,’ but – thank you – maybe that ‘good’ would have helped! But I didn’t think of that.”

“But, ‘You are enough, Tom,’ you’d say that to yourself?”

“I did, I did.”

But little of what he did in his early career was ever enough: not the soap opera gig on “The Young and the Restless,” nor the six TV pilots he made.

And then, he was signed to do “Magnum, P.I.” And around the same time, Selleck was offered another role from Steven Spielberg. “Steven said, ‘Here’s the script, go read it. Tell me if you like it, ’cause we want you for Indiana Jones,” Selleck recalled. “So, I got to about page 8 in Steven’s office and I just went, Oh, ****, this is really good!”

But, in a story that’s become legend, he was forced to turn down “Raiders of the Lost Ark” for “Magnum.”