Tom Selleck says he just had to play Jesse Stone
(CBS) CBS confirmed this week that actor Tom Selleck will be back in New York as Police Commissioner Frank Reagan next fall when his TV drama "Blue Bloods" begins its sophomore season.
But before that happens, Selleck will take a detour to Paradise, Mass., where he will reprise the role of fired - and now rehired - police chief Jesse Stone in the made-for-TV movie "Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost" on CBS Sunday night.
This is the seventh TV movie in which Selleck has portrayed the divorced, taciturn, hard-drinking cop who leads the small police force of a Massachusetts seaside resort. Stone brings to Massachusetts the same troubles and alcohol problems that cost him his job as an LAPD homicide detective.
The early movies and the Jesse Stone character are based on a series of novels by Robert B. Parker, but this Sunday's film, like the two before it, are not based on books, but are written by a team that includes Selleck.
"I read 'Stone Cold,' from the late Robert B. Parker," Selleck said earlier this week in an interview on "The Early Show," and I just said, 'I got to play this guy.'"
Selleck, now working on his eighth Stone script, explains, "Jesse is so flawed, and he's such a mess, and yet he's a good guy. I just think people root for him and he's funny. He doesn't feel sorry for himself."