Tom Selleck's Blue Bloods Salary Is a Far Cry from His Magnum P.I. Days
Nowadays' TV stars got nothing on Selleck's 80s era paycheck.
Recent news about how much Henry Cavil earned for his cameos as Superman in Black Adam and Flash made us once again to revisit some of Hollywood A-listers' salaries (for those living under the rock – those cameos made the actor $500,000 richer).
While we have no idea how much he could have got should his Supermen stayed in the DCEU universe, we know his paycheck for The Witcher. Getting $400,000 per episode for Season 1 does not sound all that much especially for such a popular actor but it turns out that the salary was not that bad after all.
Meet Tom Selleck, an American star portraying the character of New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan in the popular Blue Bloods show. Selleck's paycheck is $200k per episode. This is half of what Cavill made per episode of The Witcher Season 1.
So, when people say that Cavill agreed to a paycut only to get the role of Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher, which he adores so much, think about Selleck and his pay for Blue Bloods.
But it was Tom Selleck's lead role in The Magnum P.I. series, which aired from 1980 to 1988, that made him truly famous. The crime drama show followed the adventures of an ex-NAVY officer turned a Hawaii based private detective. The series was a smash hit in the 1980s and Selleck, whose net worth is now estimated at $45 million, played the Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV character.
Blue Bloods star was paid much more back in the 1980s and an episode of Magnum P.I. normally brought him $500k. Mind you, this was 40 years ago and in today's economy it would be $1.2 million.
This puts Selleck on par with Cavill, who made $1 million per episode of The Witcher Season 2 and other Hollywood heavyweights such as Robert Downey Jr. who got an astounding $2 million per episode in The Sympathizer series, and Chris Pratt, who earned $1.4 million per episode of The Terminal List show. Then there's Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, who were paid $2 million each per episode for the Apple TV+ The Morning Show, which premiered in 2019.
Now the question is why certain popular actors agree to being paid less? One of the possible answers might be that the wealth they have amassed over time gives them freedom to shift focus from the financial side, so they can choose projects based on what they simply like to do.