Earlier than enjoying patriarch Frank Reagan on “Blue Bloods,” Tom Selleck starred within the beloved Eighties crime drama “Magnum, P.I.” — and he even pushed CBS to reshape the collection into one thing very totally different from its unique idea.
In line with an AARP interview with Selleck, personal investigator Thomas Magnum was initially conceived as a James Bond-style character. However Selleck envisioned the lead in a different way, pitching a model impressed by the late James Garner’s Jim Rockford of the Seventies detective drama “The Rockford Information.”
Rockford himself was created by Roy Huggins as a extra laid-back descendant of Bret Maverick, the charmingly casual lead of the Nineteen Fifties Western collection “Maverick,” one other function performed by Garner. Selleck appeared to attach with that extra relaxed tackle the detective archetype.
Following that very same strategy, Selleck asserted that Magnum must also be a relaxed and fun-loving man you can usually discover carrying a Hawaiian shirt and having fun with a beer — however who additionally occurs to be a severe personal eye.
Audiences related with Tom Selleck’s model of Magnum, P.I.
“I mentioned, ‘I do not need to be Rockford, however I need to do one thing like that, the place the man is fallible,'” Tom Selleck instructed AARP of his imaginative and prescient for the present’s lead. The actor additionally had a recurring function on “The Rockford Information,” so the inspiration was undoubtedly near dwelling.
On prime of being a median Joe and a extra easygoing model of a detective, Selleck additionally pushed for Magnum’s historical past as a former Navy SEAL who served within the Vietnam Battle to stay an essential a part of the character. Initially, CBS wasn’t within the actor’s fleshed-out idea — however the community finally agreed to strive Selleck’s full-package model of the investigator anyway. It ended up turning into the model followers know and like to today, seemingly as a result of audiences may see themselves in Magnum’s everyman qualities.
In reality, Selleck’s model of the character grew to become so culturally impactful over time that the Smithsonian acquired legendary prop gadgets from the collection for the Nationwide Museum of American Historical past assortment, together with Magnum’s beloved Hawaiian shirt.
Whether or not audiences notice it or not, “Magnum, P.I.” is finally remembered for Selleck’s sensible imaginative and prescient, and the robust efficiency that got here from CBS giving that imaginative and prescient an opportunity.
