How Blue Bloods’ Cancelation Dashed Donnie Wahlberg’s Dreams For Danny?
When Donnie Wahlberg learned Detective Danny Reagan and the rest of the cast of Blue Bloods would not be solving crimes past season 14, his hopes for his best-known character were dashed. Blue Bloods, the CBS police procedural, premiered in September 2010 and lasted for 14 seasons before its cancelation. The first 13 seasons of Blue Bloods are all contiguous, while the 14th and final are split into 10 and 8-episode halves. Blue Bloods follows the Reagans, an NYC-based Irish American family who have traditionally worked in law enforcement.
The series stars an ensemble cast, and among them is Donnie Wahlberg as Danny Reagan, the eldest son of the Reagan clan. A talented and hardworking detective, Danny Reagan’s hot-headedness in Blue Bloods often gets him and his fellow officers into trouble.Blue Bloods is the New Kids on the Block singer’s most recognizable character of his career, arguably more important than Wahlberg’s memorable role in The Sixth Sense, and his surprisingly internal and affecting performance in Band of Brothers. It’s no wonder that Wahlberg was disappointed when the series was canceled.
While 14 seasons may sound like a lot of show, it was not enough for Donnie Wahlberg. In fact, he would have liked to have the series match another long-lived procedural. In an interview with US Weekly, before the series was canceled, Wahlberg talked about what show he would like to be able to compare Blue Bloods to:
Wahlberg goes on to concede that working on a series for several years can be “hard” for some actors “to keep doing”. Law and Order: SVU, along with its parent series Law and Order, are two of the longest-running TV shows of all time. For Blue Bloods to continue on that marathon track, the main ensemble would probably have to be on board. Tom Selleck, Bridget Moynahan, Will Estes, Len Cariou, and others would have to commit to a long career on TV. However, it appears that many in the cast would have been happy to keep going.
While his optimism was eventually proven to be misplaced, the fact Wahlberg was excited about the prospect of continuing as Danny Reagan shows that he could very well have been prepared to do many more seasons of Blue Bloods. If the show continued to run, there’s no doubt Danny would keep working for the NYPD, despite how often he butts heads with the higher-ups. Blue Bloods would not be the same without Wahlberg at the helm as a beleaguered but persistent detective.
Wahlberg doesn’t worry about what will happen to his character, however. When speaking about what comes next for Danny, Wahlberg had to say, via US Weekly,
It sounds like to Wahlberg, every opportunity he had to play Danny was a blessing and there comes a point that it’s not worth it to worry about next week when participating in a television show. The industry is so fickle that just enjoying the present is any actor’s best bet.
Tom Selleck, who plays the patriarch in Blue Bloods, New York City Police Commissioner Francis “Frank” Reagan, would also have been happy to keep the show going. The legendary mustachioed actor spoke to TV Insider after the series was canceled, and expressed some mixed feelings about the news. When asked what he thought about the show ending, Selleck said,
Selleck thought that there were plenty more stories to tell about the Reagan family and believed that the popularity of the show could have seen it run for longer than 14 seasons. As a prolific and veteran actor of TV and movies, Selleck knows how difficult it can be to keep a show running and how fortunate an actor is to star in one as long-running as Blue Bloods. Wahlberg and Selleck have graciously accepted the fact their show has ended but want to make it clear that they are always willing to work more if given the chance.
