Tom Selleck Is Right About How Jesse Stone & Blue Bloods’ Frank Reagan Are Different

Tom Selleck once underlined the key difference between Jesse Stone and Blue Bloods‘ Frank Reagan, and where the line is for both characters. Prior to jumping on Blue Bloods, Selleck was busy playing the title role in the Jesse Stone TV movie series. Despite being played by Selleck, Stone and Frank Reagan are total opposites in many ways. Reagan is a religious family man who always upholds the law, whereas Stone is a nihilistic, alcoholic loner who essentially needs his job to function.

Jesse Stone’s creator laid out two rules to Selleck for the character: one is that he’s forever hung up on his ex-wife, and the second is that he will always have a drinking problem. In short, Jesse is a darker character than Frank, who has a loving family to back him up. Of course, they are similar in certain areas, including ensuring the guilty pay for their crimes – it’s just that they go about these things in a very different manner.

Tom Selleck Believes Blue Bloods’ Frank Is Alway By The Book While Jesse Stone Makes His Own Rules

Jesse Stone may have been more comfortable as a Western sheriff

Selleck originally planned to make further Jesse Stone movies while working on Blue Bloods, but the latter’s busy schedule made that very tricky. He was able to maintain that pace during the early seasons, however, and in 2011 he fronted both Blue Bloods season two and Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost. This was the seventh entry and found the unemployed Jesse at possibly his lowest point in the series. Selleck spoke with Pioneer Press to promote the TV movie and outlined the big difference between Stone and Reagan.

By necessity, [Frank] has to be a straight arrow. He probably has to enforce laws he doesn’t agree with, but Jesse is a different guy. Increasingly, I think of him as a small-town sheriff who makes up his own rules. Has he paid the price? Yes, but he’s very effective in getting the people he thinks should be gotten, sometimes by less-than-legal rules.

With the above quote, Selleck covers the core distinction between Frank and Jesse’s particular brands of law enforcement. As NYPD police commissioner, Frank considers it vital to abide by the rules of law – regardless of how he personally feels about them. He has a well-known distaste for corrupt officers and while he can be as obsessive as Jesse when it comes to pursuing criminals, there are lines he absolutely will not cross. He’s an idealist, though his own sense of self-righteousness can blind him from seeing things from others’ perspectives.

On the flip side, Jesse Stone is very willing to fracture or outright break laws to set things right. If he can’t take down criminals or killers within the system, he’s willing to threaten or outright engineer events so he can kill them instead. Selleck is correct when he states the character has “paid a price” for this; Stone spends his nights getting drunk and has few close friends or loved ones. But to Stone, his messy private life is a small price to pay for doing the right thing.

This Shared Line Highlights The Similarities Between Jesse Stone And Frank Reagan

Jesse Stone and Frank Reagan share a very specific line in common

The Jesse Stone series has many recurring lines and gags, such as gangster Gino Fish (William Sadler) ending every conversation with a curt “It was nice seeing you again, Jesse Stone.” One of Jesse’s most famous lines is “I’m the Police Chief. I know everything,” when responding to characters who can’t believe he knows certain information. Selleck carried this quote over to Blue Bloods too, where Frank often quips “I’m the Police Commissioner. I know everything.“

Reagan and Stone live by different codes, but their joint quote underlines some shared qualities too. Ultimately, they both just want to do the right thing and ensure justice is served – even if one is better at following the rules than the other. On a broader level, they are both surprisingly successful ladies men who lost the loves of their lives; Frank is a widower and Jesse is separated from ex-wife, Jenn. Frank also has a vengeful side and will doggedly pursue criminals he knows to be guilty until he gets them.

Blue Bloods’ Ending Could Finally Mean The Return Of Jesse Stone

Jesse Stone: Return to Paradise might be on the horizon

The most recent Jesse Stone film was 2015’s Lost in Paradise, and while Selleck has teased further sequels, the Paradise police chief has been quiet for close to a decade. In a 2024 TV Insider chat, Selleck sounded positive about a tenth Jesse Stone movie following Blue Bloods’ finale – while also confirming “I don’t know what’s next” when it comes to his next project. Considering the enduring popularity of the franchise and Selleck’s love for the character, it feels like the most likely option.

Despite the cast of Blue Bloods being unhappy about the show coming to a close, it doesn’t look like it will be resurrected anytime soon. With Jesse Stone, there is a sense of unfinished business, and while Lost in Paradise was a solid mystery, it didn’t serve as any kind of ending either. Plus, it would be fascinating to see where Stone is a decade on from the last installment.

Source: Pioneer Press, TV Insider

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  Jesse Stone

  The Jesse Stone franchise is a series of television films based on the novels by Robert B. Parker. The series follows Jesse Stone, a former LAPD detective who becomes the police chief of the small town of Paradise, Massachusetts. The films are noted for their character-driven plots, focusing on Stone’s battles with alcoholism, his troubled past, and the crime investigations he leads.

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  A police procedural set in New York City, Blue Bloods follows the lives of the Irish-American Reagan family, who has a strong family history and current powerful roles in the New York Police Department.