Why Tom Selleck 'Didn't Like' His EarlyMagnum, P.I.Stardom: 'It Was a Lot to Adjust to'

Mar. 15, 2025

Tom Selleck in ‘Magnum, P.I.’ in 1981 and on the set of ‘Blue Bloods’ in June 2024.Photo:CBS/Getty; Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

CBS/Getty; Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

Tom Selleckopened up recently about his discomfort with his runaway stardom in the 1980s.

“I didn’t like it,” Selleck said of all that sudden attention. “Mainly because of family and a sense of privacy.”

“I started getting asked questions in interviews that I didn’t want to say — give an answer to,” he added. “I was trying to — I said, ‘You better find a way and find a line about what you’re going to talk about.’ I didn’t always succeed, but it just grew, and I still can’t quite describe it.”

“But I wasn’t going through it every day,” Selleck continued.

He explained that in the show’s early days, he was somewhat insulated from the hype, living a life not dissimilar to that of his character.

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Tom Selleck in the 1980s.Marka/Universal Images Group/Getty

Marka/Universal Images Group/Getty

“I had a lovely house in Hawaii,” he said. “It was a tiny little house — a one-bedroom house. I rented it. I later bought it. It’s the first house I could ever afford. And I belonged to a place called the Outrigger Canoe Club, and that was local people. And, yeah, they kinda knew I was an actor, but that time — while the actors were on strike, and we couldn’t start the show, start shooting — was great.”

“I actually was living Magnum’s life at the beach and stuff,” he noted.

That all changed after the series became a hit, earning Selleck his first People’s Choice Award in 1981 as well as Golden Globe and Emmy nominations every year from 1982 to 1986. “It was really, I don’t know, a lot to adjust to, I think,” he told Danson.

Still, he noted that shooting in Hawaii helped. “Say the same show was in L.A., and it got the same kind of heat,” he said. “I don’t know how people do that. I had this huge buffer, and it was a blessing.”

source: people.com