How Blue Bloods’ Cancelation Dashed Donnie Wahlberg’s Dreams For Danny
How Blue Bloods’ Cancelation Dashed Donnie Wahlberg’s Dreams For Danny
Donnie Wahlberg stars as Danny Reagan in Blue Bloods and the cancelation of the series after season 14 was a blow to fans and actors alike.
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.
Donnie Wahlberg Wanted Danny & The Blue Bloods Characters To Have The Longevity Of SVU
Donnie Wahlberg Saw Blue Bloods Airing For Many More Years
Donnie Wahlberg Saw Blue Bloods Airing For Many More Years
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:
“Law and Order: SVU, I mean, Ice-T and Mariska Hargitay have been going for gosh, so many years and we hope to last as long as they have.”
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.
In that same interview, Wahlberg discussed how he was an optimist about the show’s continued success, saying,
“I’m an optimist. I try to take every episode as it comes. I really do. I think it’s part of why I’ve enjoyed myself on the show for 13 years.”
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,
“One of the things I’ve done is I try to just stay very present in each episode and take each script that comes my way and say, ‘OK, what’s gonna happen now? You know, what am I doing this week?’ And kind of find the journey in that particular episode and not get caught up in what’s gonna happen next year, what’s gonna happen in two years.”
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.
