Blue Bloods is coming to an end after 14 seasons, but star Abigail Hawk still remembers meeting costar Tom Selleck for the very first time.
Hawk, 42, exclusively revealed to Us Weekly that while Selleck, 79, is an icon — known for playing the lead on Magnum P.I. among other roles — she never called him “Magnum” or “Boss” even though he plays her supervisor on Blue Bloods.
“He’s just always been Tom,” she said, noting that when they met at the start of season 1, which aired in 2010, she was only 28 years old, and she didn’t call him “much of anything” because she was “too terrified.”
Hawk plays Abigail Baker on the police drama, who is the assistant and longtime confidant of Selleck’s Police Commissioner Frank Reagan. While their interactions are part of the charm of the series, the actress was very nervous to act alongside Selleck.
“I would go up to the PA and be like, ‘If I wanna go talk to him, am I allowed to, like, approach him or should I just not?’ They were like, ‘I don’t know, it’s my first day too lady, like, why are you looking at me?’” she recalled. “And of course, he ended up coming to me and saying, ‘Hey, you know, we’re doing this thing. Let’s figure out some, some context.’ He just put me at ease right away.”
Hawk has since become close friends with Selleck and learned a few of his secrets. “He’s very shy, which may not surprise people, but I think people assume that he commands the space just like Frank Reagan does,” she shared with Us.
She continued, “When in all actuality he just wants to be doing what he does with what Frank does with [his dad], Henry (Len Cariou), sitting in an armchair working on a crossword. For Tom, that would be working on his farm and working with his dogs and working on a script.”
While Selleck’s Frank Reagan is a strong, stern commissioner of New York City it’s his family-man side that is most similar to the actor himself. Hawk remembered getting to know her costar even better while he was writing his memoir, You Never Know, which is when she learned about his deep love for his mother.
“I love that he would tell us his struggles through that [process] and show us the pictures that were going in the book. We got to see those before anybody else did,” Hawk said, getting choked up over their bond. “He would tell us the stories behind all of them and how he worshiped his mother.”
She explained that Selleck’s mom “shaped his entire life,” which many might not guess based on his public persona.
“I just think for somebody who is the literal embodiment of, like, the Marlboro Man [a.k.a. the smoking cowboy] and the Brawny Man [which was a lumberjack figure], and [a] mustached icon that so many of us are like, ‘That’s a man.’ He loved his mom, you know?” Hawk told Us. “I just feel like getting to see those little snapshots of the man behind the legend is what I treasure the most about him.”
Hawk’s memories with Selleck stretch far and wide, but finishing out Blue Bloods, which ends on Friday, December 13, is something she’ll never forget.
“We did have an amazing, like, final 1PP team dinner at Elio’s, which is Tom’s Go-to place,” she said, looking back at the last few days as a cast. “He would go there literally every single day after work. So they knew him. He has his own little table in the corner.”
While at the dinner with the show’s 1 Police Plaza team — which is also made up of Gregory Jbara’s Garrett Moore and Robert Clohessy’s Sid Gormley — Hawk said the “coolest thing” was seeing Selleck’s signed memoir up on the wall.
“I’m sitting across from this like, living history and going, ‘Wow, that’s so cool,’” she continued, adding that over the years they created a father-daughter relationship, which extended to discussions about politics and popular topics.
Hawk noted that she and Selleck “will always have differing viewpoints politically [and] personally on things,” but she treasured his banter over current events.
“He always had a seat at the table for me, even though I was like way down here in terms of me having knowledge about anything. And I’m a big feeling person. Tom is a fact person,” she shared. “So I would be like, ‘Oh, what about this?’ And he was like, ‘All right, but what are the facts?’ And I was like, ‘OK, you’re right.’ But it was always with a gentle hand.”
She gushed, “I can’t say enough good things about him. He is a credible person. Truly.”