If you ever watched Tom Selleck cruise around Hawaii in that red Ferrari, you already have a warm spot in your heart for the man. Good news: at 81, he is heading back to television.
Selleck has joined the guest-starring cast of an upcoming Apple TV+ comedy series starring Elizabeth Banks, according to Deadline. The show does not have a title yet, but the cast alone is enough to get excited about.
Banks plays Heidi, a woman fresh off a messy divorce who is working to build a new life for herself and her kids. Along the way, she ends up coordinating her father’s romantic adventures at his retirement community and landing in an unlikely alliance with her father’s girlfriend’s son.
And who plays Heidi’s father? None other than Ted Danson.
That pairing will ring a bell for anyone who saw Three Men and a Baby back in 1987. Selleck and Danson sharing a screen again, decades later, feels like a reunion worth watching.
The rest of the cast is just as stacked. Rob Delaney, Katey Sagal, Jared Goldstein, and Spencer Moss are also on board. Hamish Linklater, Michelle Buteau, and Simu Liu will appear in recurring roles.
Before Blue Bloods, of course, Selleck spent eight seasons as Thomas Magnum in Magnum, P.I., the show that ran from 1980 to 1988 and made him a household name. He later played Dr. Richard Burke on Friends, and then spent 14 seasons as NYC Police Commissioner Frank Reagan on Blue Bloods alongside Donnie Wahlberg and Bridget Moynahan.
He Almost Walked Away From Magnum
Here is something you may not have known about that iconic role. In a recent episode of the podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson, Selleck revealed that he nearly refused the part.
“The show, incidentally, was called Magnum. And I hated it. It was terrible.”
He was contractually obligated to take the role, but the writing was not what he wanted. It was Rockford Files star James Garner who gave him a push. Garner told him he would never have more leverage than he had right at that moment, while the studio needed him.
So Selleck said no. He met with three different writers to find someone who could take the show in a new direction.
The one who clicked was Donald P. Bellisario. Over lunch, Selleck told him what he was looking for.
“I want to do something like Rockford Files. I want a character with flaws and some heart.” Bellisario told him, “Say no more.”
About two weeks later, Bellisario came back with a new script. Selleck called it the best TV movie he had ever read at the time. That script became Magnum, P.I.
“Jim Garner, in a way, just kind of saved my life,” Selleck said. “I would have been long gone from that version of Magnum.”
Forty-some years later, he is still at it. And honestly, we would not have it any other way.
