100 Fun Facts About Blue Bloods

How many seasons of Blue Bloods aired on CBS?

It ran from September 2010 to December 2024.

How many episodes of Blue Bloods were made in total?

The final season was split, with ten episodes in early 2024 and eight in the autumn.

Who plays New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan?

Tom Selleck wasn't looking for another weekly series, but the pilot script changed his mind: he said he liked it as soon as he read it.

The Reagans are described as what kind of family?

Irish-American Catholic: faith runs through the series, and in the final season Frank falls out with his friend the Archbishop of New York over a death-penalty case.

Which weekly family ritual is a fixture of almost every Blue Bloods episode?

Sunday dinner began with a painting: the producer who developed the show said Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving scene 'Freedom from Want' gave him the idea for the family and its weekly meal.

Who plays Detective Danny Reagan?

Donnie Wahlberg was a pop star first, a founding member of New Kids on the Block, before he turned to acting.

Who plays Assistant District Attorney Erin Reagan?

Bridget Moynahan was urged to take the part by the actor who plays her on-screen brother Danny; the two had made a 2008 pilot, Bunker Hill, together.

Jamie Reagan, the youngest son, graduated from which university before joining the NYPD?

Harvard, where Jamie studied law: he passed the bar, then gave up a lucrative legal career to follow his family into the NYPD.

Who plays Jamie Reagan?

Will Estes starred in American Dreams, and after they acted together in the film U-571, Jon Bon Jovi asked him to star in the band's 'It's My Life' video.

Who plays Henry Reagan, Frank's father and a former police commissioner himself?

Len Cariou is less than six years older than the actor who plays his son Frank, and a Tony winner as Broadway's original Sweeney Todd.

Frank's son Joe was murdered while investigating a group of corrupt cops known as what?

The Blue Templar gave the season one finale its title; Jamie spent that first season quietly digging into the group behind his brother's death.

Which part of the justice system does Jamie Reagan represent for most of Blue Bloods' run?

The beat cop: the family was built to cover the system end to end, with Frank as commissioner, Danny as detective and Erin as prosecutor alongside Jamie on patrol.

Who is Frank's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information and de facto chief of staff?

Garrett Moore runs the NYPD's press office; when a newly elected mayor pressed Frank to replace him, Frank kept him on.

Who plays Detective Baker, Frank's primary aide?

Abigail Hawk shares a first name with her character, though the first season's credits called the detective Melissa Baker before it was changed.

Danny's long-serving partner from season four onward is which detective?

Maria Baez joined Danny in season three, and by the spin-off the two colleagues had become a couple.

Why was Jennifer Esposito, who played Danny's first partner, written out in 2012?

Her celiac disease limited her hours: after she collapsed on set, CBS said she could only work part-time and put her character on indefinite leave.

Jamie's partner, whom he eventually marries, is Officer Edit Janko, better known as what?

They admitted their attraction in season seven, got engaged at the end of season eight and married in the season nine finale.

How do the Reagans learn the late Joe had a son?

A DNA match: Danny's son Sean takes a test and finds an unknown first cousin, just as the young man's mother asks Frank to move him to a safer post.

Who plays Eddie Janko?

Vanessa Ray came to the role from playing the scheming CeCe Drake on Pretty Little Liars, a part that won her a Teen Choice Award for best TV villain.

How did Danny's wife Linda die between seasons seven and eight?

A helicopter crash: Linda was airlifting a patient when it went down off-screen, an exit written after Amy Carlson chose not to renew her contract.

What was Linda Reagan's profession?

Nurse: Linda began the series as a stay-at-home mother and later went back to hospital work.

What is the real-life link between the two actors who play Danny's sons, Jack and Sean?

They are brothers: Tony Terraciano plays Jack and his younger brother Andrew plays Sean; Jack's departure for college mirrored real life, as Tony left to study at Vanderbilt.

Erin's daughter Nicky, played by Sami Gayle, leaves home in season ten to take a job in which city?

San Francisco took Nicky out of the regular cast after ten seasons, though she came back for the series finale.

By what name is the late Joe Reagan's son, revealed in season ten's finale, known?

Joe Hill was raised by a mother who never told the Reagans he existed; by the time they learn of him he is a young detective in the firearms unit.

Who plays Erin's ex-husband, defence attorney Jack Boyle?

Peter Hermann is back in season 13, when Jack finds a donor for Erin's run for district attorney and stirs up old feelings between the exes.

Which former Sopranos actor plays Anthony Abetemarco, Erin's DA's office investigator?

Steven Schirripa switched sides for the part: The Sopranos' mobster Bobby Bacala became a retired detective working for the prosecution.

Who plays Archbishop Kevin Kearns, a friend and confidant of Frank's?

Stacy Keach plays a churchman who brings Frank the archdiocese's most delicate problems, and who conducts Jamie's wedding Mass at the end of season nine.

In which Brooklyn neighbourhood is the house used for exterior shots of the Reagan home?

Bay Ridge is also where the scripts say Frank was born and raised his children, so the real house on 82nd Street sits on the family's fictional home turf.

Danny's precinct is eventually identified on screen as which number?

Early episodes had labelled it the 12th, the same as Jamie's first precinct.

For a four-week tryout in early 2011, Blue Bloods was moved from its usual slot to which night?

It had a brief four-week Wednesday tryout in early 2011.

Which show did Blue Bloods follow on the CBS schedule when it debuted in 2010?

CSI: NY was moved to 9 pm that autumn so CBS could pair it with the newcomer in a two-hour block of New York crime dramas.

In 2013 CBS said Blue Bloods was the first scripted Friday series in a decade to average how many viewers?

The pilot drew 15.26 million with DVR viewing included.

What did the Blue Bloods cast and producers reportedly do to secure a fourteenth and final season?

Take a pay cut: CBS wanted about 25% off the salaries of the stars and producers, and they agreed so the show and its crew's jobs could carry on.

On what date did the Blue Bloods series finale air?

Producers including Selleck had pushed CBS to extend the final season into the autumn.

Which late-night host called Blue Bloods 'basically adult Paw Patrol' in a 2022 segment on street drugs?

John Oliver, on Last Week Tonight, was mocking an episode in which an officer overdoses just by touching fentanyl, a myth he called a medical impossibility.

In the spin-off Boston Blue, Danny Reagan joins the Boston police alongside which family member?

His son Sean is already a Boston patrol officer when the spin-off begins; he is badly hurt in a fire, and Danny rushes north and ends up taking a job there.

Although set in Boston, the spin-off Boston Blue shot most of its first season in which city?

Toronto doubles for Boston in most scenes, though the cast did film on Boston Common in August 2025, two months before the CBS premiere.

In Boston Blue, Danny is partnered with Detective Lena Silver, played by which Star Trek: Discovery star?

Sonequa Martin-Green, Star Trek: Discovery's Michael Burnham, plays the eldest daughter of a Boston police family; the role was first announced as Lena Peters.

Which writing team, veterans of The Sopranos, created Blue Bloods?

Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess created the series, but Kevin Wade, who joined midway through the first season, ran it as showrunner from season two to the end.

Detective Danny Reagan is a veteran who served two tours in which war?

The Iraq War: Danny was already a police officer when it began, and took a two-year leave of absence from the NYPD to serve his tours.

Frank Reagan served in which branch of the military during the Vietnam War?

He rose through Brooklyn South and Chief of Department before becoming commissioner.

The Frank Reagan actor's breakout role, for which he won an Emmy in 1984, was which private investigator?

Thomas Magnum cost him another famous part: his Magnum, P.I. contract forced him to turn down Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Alongside Blue Bloods, the actor behind Frank Reagan kept starring in which run of television movies?

Jesse Stone is a police chief from Robert B. Parker's novels; CBS made eight of the films, and when it stopped, the ninth moved to Hallmark in 2015.

Which Ghostbusters actor plays Reverend Edwin Peters, the family patriarch in the spin-off Boston Blue?

Ernie Hudson had already appeared in Blue Bloods itself, as a different character in a 2018 guest role, before joining the spin-off as a Baptist pastor.

Who plays Lenny Ross, Frank's former partner on the force?

Treat Williams died in 2023, and the final season wrote the loss in: Frank mourns his old friend while trying to help the dead man's daughter, who is in jail.

Which singer of beach anthems guest-starred as both himself and a con man impersonating him?

Jimmy Buffett played the real star and Dickie Delaney, a lookalike who tricks Danny into paying for his meal at an expensive restaurant and gets chased for it.

Which British channel was the first UK home of Blue Bloods?

Sky Atlantic showed the pilot on its own launch night, 1 February 2011; later seasons moved to a sister channel, Sky Witness.

Which actor plays the young firearms-unit detective revealed in season ten to be Frank's grandson?

Will Hochman arrived as a guest in the tenth season's finale and stayed for the last four seasons, later returning as Danny's nephew in the spin-off.

Which streaming service carried every Blue Bloods episode in the US as of 2025?

Paramount+ is CBS's sister streaming service, so all 293 episodes sit there, and the final season streamed on it live as it aired.

What happens to Danny's family home in Blue Bloods' season seven finale?

It burns down: a drug cartel firebombs it in revenge for a bust, and in the season eight premiere the other Reagans surprise Danny and his sons with a new house.

Before playing Danny Reagan on Blue Bloods, the detective's actor found fame singing in which boy band?

New Kids on the Block counts him as a founding member, and he later played another police detective in three of the Saw horror films.

A TV contract cost the actor who plays Blue Bloods' Frank Reagan which famous adventure-film role?

Indiana Jones went to Harrison Ford because the producers of his new detective series would not release him to film Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Which crooner sang a duet with Carrie Underwood at Mayor-elect Poole's party in Blue Bloods' second season?

Tony Bennett appeared as himself to perform the standard It Had to Be You with the country star, in the episode where Jamie begins his first undercover assignment.

Which Hollywood star plays Regina Thomas, the City Council Speaker who spars with Frank Reagan in Blue Bloods?

Whoopi Goldberg plays the Speaker as an adversary who is sometimes Frank's ally, and the two clash in season eleven over protests against police brutality.

The actor who plays Blue Bloods' Frank Reagan was Monica's older boyfriend Richard in which sitcom?

Friends cast him as Richard Burke, a divorced eye doctor and friend of Monica's parents, and the guest role earned him an Emmy nomination in 2000.

In Blue Bloods, Henry Reagan habitually calls his son Frank by which more formal name?

Francis is the commissioner's full first name, the formal version favoured by his father, who once held the same top job.

The Blue Bloods pilot opens with which milestone for Jamie Reagan, a recent law graduate?

His police academy graduation falls on the same day a nine-year-old girl is abducted on her way home from school, the case handed to his brother Danny.

What is the title of the Blue Bloods series finale, in which Mayor Chase is shot?

End of Tour brought the drama its biggest audience in 20 months as the Reagans' story came to a close.

What news do Jamie Reagan and his wife share as the Blue Bloods finale ends?

They are expecting a baby, their first, and the spin-off Boston Blue later reveals that the child was a boy named Joey.

Which country singer plays Texas Ranger Waylon Gates, Danny Reagan's occasional out-of-town partner in Blue Bloods?

Lyle Lovett first arrives in season ten to chase a Texas fugitive tied to a New York drug gang, and his Ranger trades barbs with Danny while earning his respect.

Which corrupt detective, his own partner in the Warrants Squad, murdered Joe Reagan before Blue Bloods begins?

Sonny Malevsky led the ring of dirty cops that Joe was investigating, and Joe's shield number was retired after his death in the line of duty.

Mark Snow, who scored Blue Bloods, is best known for composing the theme of which sci-fi series?

The X-Files gave him his signature tune, and he scored that show's original nine-season run long before he set the Reagans' cases to music.

The actor who plays Blue Bloods' Erin Reagan made her TV debut as Natasha in which HBO comedy?

Sex and the City cast her as Natasha, whose marriage to Big ends in divorce, a year before her film debut as a bartender in Coyote Ugly.

How do the Reagans first discover in Blue Bloods' tenth season that late son Joe had a child?

A DNA test taken by Danny's younger son for a school project on family ancestry flags an unknown first cousin, who turns out to be serving in the NYPD already.

Which rapper plays Mario Hunt, the jailed gang leader Frank Reagan visits for information in Blue Bloods?

Method Man plays Hunt, who is serving time for killing police chief Donald Kent, and Frank's closest aides advise him against the prison meeting.

In Blue Bloods, why is Officer Janko's father Armin, a former financial adviser, serving a prison sentence?

A Ponzi scheme run through his company ruined many investors, and he later earns a lighter sentence by exposing a drug ring among the prison guards.

Detective Baker, Frank Reagan's long-serving aide in Blue Bloods, is revealed to speak which language fluently?

Japanese is one of the few personal details given about Baker, who was credited under the first name Melissa in season one, a name the show later changed.

Before joining the NYPD, Blue Bloods' Deputy Commissioner of Public Information was a reporter at which newspaper?

The New York Post was his newsroom before he became Frank's press chief, and the two often debate what information should be released to the public.

In the Blue Bloods finale, what do Erin Reagan and her ex-husband Jack Boyle decide to do?

Erin and Jack agree to remarry each other, years after an earlier reconciliation ended because Jack wanted to date without a serious commitment.

Blue Bloods executive producer Leonard Goldberg made which hit detective series with Aaron Spelling in the 1970s?

Charlie's Angels was the best known of the hits he produced with Spelling, alongside Starsky & Hutch and Hart to Hart, before he ran 20th Century Fox as its president.

The actor who plays Blue Bloods' Henry Reagan won a Tony Award for originating which Broadway role?

Sweeney Todd, Stephen Sondheim's murderous barber, won him the Tony opposite Angela Lansbury, whom he later joined in several episodes of Murder, She Wrote.

The actor who plays Officer Janko in Blue Bloods was the stylist CeCe Drake in which teen mystery series?

Pretty Little Liars was her breakthrough and won her a Teen Choice Award, and she was still appearing in it when she became Jamie's patrol partner.

How does Vinny Cruz, Jamie Reagan's patrol partner in Blue Bloods' third season, leave the show?

Killed in a gang ambush at the Bitterman housing project where he grew up, Vinny is posthumously promoted to Detective 1st Grade.

Blue Bloods prosecutor Erin Reagan earned her law degree at which New York university?

Fordham trained her in law after she had graduated top of her undergraduate class, and she rose to Bureau Chief in the Manhattan District Attorney's office.

Nicky Reagan-Boyle attends which Ivy League university in Blue Bloods, the same one her mother Erin graduated from?

Columbia is also where a hostile audience boos Frank off the stage in season six, a sign of how far public opinion of the police had turned against him.

In Blue Bloods, the grandfather of Frank Reagan's late wife Mary helped build which New York landmark?

The Brooklyn Bridge went up in the 1870s and 1880s with his help, a detail dropped into the episode Fathers and Sons.

How did Frank Reagan's wife Mary, mother of his four children, die before the events of Blue Bloods?

She died of cancer in September 2005, about four years after Henry's wife Betty, so both Reagan patriarchs are widowers when the series begins.

After the attacks of September 11, where did Blue Bloods' Frank Reagan and fellow officers sleep in the pews?

St. Paul's Chapel sheltered him during his days at Ground Zero; he had been working in the North Tower when the South Tower collapsed.

Gregory Jbara, who plays Frank Reagan's press chief in Blue Bloods, won a Tony Award for which musical?

Billy Elliot won him the Tony for originating the role of the young dancer's father, Jackie, on Broadway the year before the police drama began.

Blue Bloods showrunner Kevin Wade received his first screen credit for writing which Golden Globe-nominated film?

Working Girl earned him Golden Globe and Writers Guild nominations for its screenplay, more than two decades before he joined the Reagans' writing staff in the show's first season.

After secretly topping the promotion exam in Blue Bloods, patrolman Jamie Reagan accepts which new rank?

Sergeant came as a surprise to Frank, who believed his son had declined to sit the exam, and the promotion ended Jamie's patrol partnership with Officer Janko.

In Blue Bloods' eleventh season, Frank Reagan's newly found grandson secretly goes undercover for which federal agency?

The ATF assignment against a gunrunning outfit is known only to Frank and Jamie, while the rest of the family believes he is taking time away from the job.

What big step does Danny Reagan's partner take as Blue Bloods' season twelve finale ends?

She adopts the baby, a girl whose pregnant mother was killed by a bomb while in witness protection before doctors saved the child.

Which officer, Janko's patrol partner, dies in the gang shooting that opens the Blue Bloods series finale?

Luis Badillo is killed in the attack that also wounds the mayor, a hard end for an officer who had himself struggled after losing an earlier partner.

Which veteran actor plays Lorenzo Batista, the prisoner Frank Reagan questions in the Blue Bloods series finale?

Edward James Olmos guest stars as Batista, whom Frank visits in prison to learn about the gang members behind the shooting of two officers and the mayor.

Who plays Kelly Peterson, the NYPD Inspector General who grows too close to Frank Reagan in Blue Bloods?

Bebe Neuwirth's watchdog resigns in the season four finale, admitting she no longer has enough professional animosity toward the department she is meant to police.

What happens to Mayor Carter Poole at a housing-project town hall in Blue Bloods' third-season finale?

He is shot and paralysed from the waist down by a teenager whom gang members tricked into firing, yet he stays in office and later wins re-election.

What happens to Danny Reagan's Staten Island family home in the season seven finale of Blue Bloods?

A cartel firebombs it in revenge after Danny intercepts a shipment of its cash without a warrant, leaving his family without a home.

What put production of Blue Bloods' final season on hold in the summer of 2023?

An actors' strike, the SAG-AFTRA walkout, froze the renewed season, which did not reach the screen until February 2024.

In Blue Bloods' fourth season, Erin Reagan is taken hostage and shot in the arm inside which kind of building?

A courthouse arraignment turns into a siege when the defendant grabs a security officer's gun, and Danny ends it by shooting his sister's captor.

Which hip-hop DJ, famed for a duo with Rakim, plays detective squad boss Mike Gee in Blue Bloods?

Eric B. joined the cast in 2019 as a fellow detective, and his character rises to lieutenant in command of Danny's squad during season eleven.

Who plays Jimmy O'Shea, Linda Reagan's brother who drifts in and out of trouble with the law in Blue Bloods?

Kevin Dillon plays the wayward brother, one of two siblings the show gives Linda alongside an older sister named Wendy, whose daughter is a fashion model.

Who plays Charles Rosselini, the ambitious District Attorney who flirts with Erin Reagan in Blue Bloods' first season?

Bobby Cannavale's DA has his eye on higher office and shares a kiss with Erin after a date, but she lets it fade because she is reluctant to date her boss.

Off duty in Blue Bloods, Jamie Reagan drives which classic muscle car that belonged to his late brother Joe?

The Chevrolet Chevelle, a 1971 SS, is wrecked when corrupt officers sabotage it in season one, and Jamie spends years restoring it before driving it again.

In the Blue Bloods season one episode Dedication, what befalls Frank Reagan outside a restaurant?

A drive-by shooting wounds him, and the citywide manhunt leads Danny to the family of a dying crime boss who holds an old grudge against the commissioner.

Officer Janko's fluency in which language helps Danny Reagan bust a sex-trafficking ring in Blue Bloods?

Serbian came from her mother Lena, who immigrated from Serbia and still clings to a wealthy lifestyle despite her husband's conviction.

Maggie Gibson, who occasionally helps Danny Reagan solve cases in Blue Bloods, works in which unusual profession?

A medium, Maggie openly urges Danny to move on after his wife's death, which makes his partner suspicious of her motives.

In Blue Bloods' tenth season, the NYPD arrests which city official after a rowdy retirement party?

The fire commissioner, Stan Rourke, is hauled in with several of his senior officers, a low point in the testy rivalry between Frank's department and the FDNY.

The actor who plays Blue Bloods' Danny Reagan was Lieutenant Carwood Lipton in which World War II miniseries?

Band of Brothers came two years after his eerie turn as a former patient of Bruce Willis's character in the opening sequence of The Sixth Sense.

In the Blue Bloods pilot, Danny Reagan's rough interrogation saves a kidnapped girl at what cost?

The charges are dropped against the kidnapper because of Danny's tactics, which opens the show's long argument over whether his results justify his methods.