Daytime Emmy winner Ted King will appear on the October 25 episode of Blue Bloods, which was a long time coming for the veteran performer.
“I have been reading for those casting directors for years and they kept bringing me in, but I wasn’t right for the role for whatever reason,” says the actor, best known in daytime for playing twin mobsters Luís Alcazar and Lorenzo Alcazar on General Hospital and, most recently, The Bold and the Beautiful as Finn’s (Tanner Novlan) father Jack Finnegan. “So finally, it’s the final season, and they reached out to my representation. I submitted a digital [audition] and then the callback was when I was on vacation for spring break, taking my kids to see the Grand Canyon. So, I asked the hotel in Phoenix, Arizona if I could set up all my video equipment and lighting in this conference room and I did a live audition there for, I believe, the director and producers and the casting director. The next thing I knew, I drove back from the Grand Canyon and got on a plane to New York to go shoot Blue Bloods.”
King was thrilled to be a part of the series before it wrapped. “I literally called the casting directors while sitting on a stoop in New York City, drinking a coffee, to thank them because I was so happy to be there,” he shares. “I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.”
Walking onto a new set was made easier by the fact that he already had a connection in the cast. “After I got the role, I texted Greg Jbara [Garrett Moore], who’s one of the regulars on the show,” King says. “He and I had worked together on Oppenheimer [King played Senator Bartlett; Jbara portrayed Chairman Magnüsen]. I said, ‘I’m coming to New York City and I’m coming to do your show,’ and he said, ‘Fantastic. Let me take you out to dinner while you’re here and let’s hang out.’ That made the experience so much easier because he was very generous in introducing me to Tom Selleck [Frank Reagan] and everybody else and making sure I knew the lay of the land while I was there.”
King’s scenes are with Selleck, Jbara, Abigail Hawk [Abigail Baker], and Robert Clohessy [Sid Gormley], who made him feel immediately welcomed. “The whole cast is really lovely and fantastic; really kind people to work with,” he praises. “Mr. Selleck couldn’t have been more generous, and we had a nice conversation. He was asking me about Oppenheimer and all kinds of things and I was asking him about old auditions he used to go on before he booked Magnum, P.I. It’s always a pleasure when you get to work with someone you’ve admired for a long time.”
Finding a groove with actors who have worked together for over a decade isn’t always easy, King notes. “I remember when I shot Frasier [in 2002], I believe I came in the 10th season, and they were like a well-oiled machine and I was the cog that had to try to fit in,” he recalls. “This time was not like that. I did not feel like the cog, maybe because of the generosity of Greg introducing me to everyone and making sure I was looked after, but it was pretty seamless.”
In the episode, King plays retired cop Lt. Lawrence Cooper, a veteran of the force who was incarcerated, but gets an out thanks to the mayor. “You don’t know why he was released, or how he pulled the string with the mayor to get himself released from jail,” teases King.
This isn’t the first show the actor has shot in New York. He appeared in Season 4 of Sex and the City, filmed 2013’s Alpha House there, as well as the soap opera, The City, which ran from 1995-97. “I remember being very young and living in New York City and thinking, ‘I really want to shoot on location in the city. I don’t want to be just holed up on some stage out in Queens. I want to be on the streets, having the taxis honking their horns and having the locals yelling at us for intruding on their daily lives while we’re shooting,’” he muses. “I just loved it.”
King reports that he has been booked and busy in addition to his role on the beloved CBS series. “I shot Blue Bloods last spring and then I came back to New York City, over the last two months, to work on a new television show called Heavy Hitters, which is the baseball equivalent of Friday Night Lights,” he relays. “I got to work on Greg Jbara’s directorial debut, Original Sound, and that was wonderful, too. He had a phenomenal cast and crew that he put together and I was flattered to be there. And I worked on two films this summer. Everything’s been great, except it’s all been far from home is the only problem. But fortunately, I have a family that is very supportive.”
Blue Bloods, Fridays, 10/9c, CBS