You Have Tom Selleck to Thank for Crucial Blue Bloods Character
Tom Selleck could have rested on his laurels by the time he was offered to join Blue Bloods.
The lead role on Magnum P.I. brought him money, fame and a shower of Emmys and Golden Globes, and since then he played in a bunch of other series and made-for-TV movies. Or he could have treated his new role as a gig allowing him to easily earn some more money before final retirement.
But he not only worked hard to make his character, Police Commissioner Frank Reagan into the most important character of Blue Bloods ( to the point that, as we've covered before, the show is very unlikely to go on without him), he also did his best to make the new show succeed when off-camera.
He actively worked with the showrunners on various details of Blue Bloods' world.
For example, it was he who suggested just about everything about the character of Detective Abigail Baker (Abigail Hawk), who serves as Frank's primary aide throughout the show and works closely with him, eventually becoming one of the more important characters outside of the Reagan family. Originally, she was just named "Detective Mel" or "Melissa" in the scripts, and was pretty much a background extra.
As Abigail Hawk revealed in an interview with Starrymag, "Originally, she did not have a last name. She did not have an age. She did not even have a gender. She did not have a race. She did not have an anything."
But then Selleck decided that this character might be more.
"I got the role and about two to three episodes in Tom [Selleck] decided to change it to Abigail because he thought Melissa was too ordinary, which I guess is a compliment – so I'll take it".
For the last name Baker, Selleck then personally cleared things through the legal department. He felt that it was important for Abigail Hawk's character to have a name, a background and a personality: "He obviously thought it was very important for me to have a last name since I was a person on the show. So, they gave me a full-fledged identity and that was all him."
As subsequently plots of several episodes were centered around Detective Abigail and her own family that was clearly a sort of input which helped the show to continue and prosper.