Tom Selleck Was Fired From Charlie's Angels By His Blue Bloods Producer

Tom Selleck dropped an interesting nugget of television history Friday on The Drew Barrymore Show, when he was asked about his appearance on an episode of the classic 1970s series Charlie's Angels, after discussing how he got his start in hygiene ads and insisting he drew the line at hemorrhoid commercials.

"They were trying to experiment with boyfriends for the Angels, and I was going to be Jackie Smith's boyfriend," Selleck explained. "My boss on Blue Bloods... Leonard Goldberg had a lot to do with Charlie's Angels, and I always remind him that my part didn't end up recurring. They fired me after the first episode. So my boss on Blue Bloods actually fired me from Charlie's Angels. I like to kid Leonard about that."

Selleck also talked about how the Sunday dinner scenes on Blue Bloods keep the cast closer than most, to the point where it's sometimes hard to get the work done. "On a lot of television shows, I could go weeks and weeks and not see a lot of my cast members because they're doing different scenes and everything else. On our show, once a show, we have a family dinner. Look, I love these people, we're all close friends, so we have a family reunion once a week on the show, but we also have a personal reunion, and one sometimes gets in the way of the other." 

He also shared a story about learning hard lessons about work-life balance back when he did Christopher Columbus: The Discovery back in 1992 with Marlon Brando while his daughter was hospitalized with viral pneumonia. "It actually wasn't a really very good script, and it turned out to be a lousy movie," he said. "I was so thrilled about the idea of working with Marlon Brando that I just said I gotta go... yeah, I went and did the movie. The movie wasn't really worth doing, frankly. I think Marlon was really in it for getting five million dollars for two weeks' work, and it just bothered me. So I took a year off, and a year off turned into three." 

People are talking about Blue Bloods in our forums. Join the conversation.

Andy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed @AndyHunsaker if you're into that sort of thing.