The “Blue Bloods” cast and production crew took steep pay cuts in a bid to keep the show on the air as CBS’s axe hovered in 2023, but that didn’t prevent its cancelation, lead actor Tom Selleck divulged Wednesday.

It was one of many concessions the actors made to keep the family-focused police procedural alive, he told Ted Danson on the “Cheers” alum’s podcast, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name.”

“Blue Bloods was a labor of love, I think for everybody,” said Selleck, who portrayed fictional NYPD commissioner and family patriarch Frank Reagan on the drama about a multigenerational law enforcement family.

“In the last year… at our last family dinner, everybody wanted to come back,” the original “Magnum, P.I.” star told Danson. “We’d already taken a 25 percent cut in salary. We’d already done all sorts of things to keep the show going.”

None of it worked, and Selleck is still scratching his head.

“Blue Bloods” was still wildly popular when CBS dropped the axe with its 2023 announcement that the series would conclude in 2024, after its 14th season.

“It was very frustrating because ‘Blue Bloods’ was … No. 6 in our 15th year,” Selleck told Danson, noting the rarity of keeping an original cast intact for that long. “Nobody wanted to leave. Everybody was gonna stay on. That’s hard to get.”

That spirit was apparently no match for CBS Entertainment’s need to “refresh the schedule,” as division president Amy Reisenbach explained at a 2024 press conference.

“We love this cast, we love their passion for the show,” she said of “Blue Bloods,” according to Deadline. “All shows have to come to an end.”

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