Dapper Duo Charms

For those who remember Three Men and a Baby, it’s hard to imagine a more affable, charming, and dapper duo than Tom Selleck and Ted Danson, who reunited almost 40 years later onstage at the Granada on May 19 to discuss Selleck’s memoir You Never Know, a 2024 New York Times Bestseller that was released in paperback this month. 

“Anyone under 70 should probably leave,” joked Danson, as he opened the Live Talks Los Angeles (in Santa Barbara for some reason) event, a wide-ranging conversation that covered Selleck’s path from college basketball player to Hollywood heartthrob and award-winning actor.

“What made you decide to write a book?” he asked Selleck, who is probably best known for starring as Magnum P.I., as well as the more recent Blue Bloods TV series. 

“I didn’t want to write a book. I never wanted to,” said Selleck. “I didn’t have one of those lives. I didn’t kill somebody and go to rehab, and I didn’t know what I’d write about, because I didn’t want to write about who I was dating. I didn’t want to do anything about politics. … But I kept getting asked and thought, well, I’ll talk about the work.”

It turns out the work is pretty interesting. Especially hearing about it through the warm and humorous lens of Selleck.

After working with — and firing —  a ghost writer who wasn’t interested in collaboration, Selleck ended up working with Ellis Henican on the project. “I’d written scripts, I’d written and fixed an awful lot of scripts, and I decided to try it. I’d go up to my little office in the afternoon, maybe have a scotch. I’d write for about two hours, and then I go down to dinner with Jillie and Hannah [his wife and daughter] and read it aloud after the scotch,” Selleck said.

“After the scotch, did it still sound good?” asked Danson.

“Oh, yeah, I wasn’t under the influence, it just became a ritual. And I heard good writers do that. I wanted to be a good writer,” said Selleck. “So, when I passed muster with Jillie and Hannah, I talked to Ellis, who is a good writer in his own right, and he’d give me just some pointers and stuff. And then I wrote the whole thing longhand. I’m computer illiterate, so the whole book was on yellow pages.”

Growing up in Sherman Oaks (“not the high end of the boulevard”), “I wasn’t setting the world on fire at USC Business School. I hope you can’t check my transcripts,” said Selleck of his college years. “Basketball meant a lot to me, but, but I was riding the pine.” He went on The Dating Game and did a Pepsi commercial where he stuffed the basketball with both hands, and was “discovered” and offered a place in the New Talent program at 20th Century Fox, at the tail end of the old studio contract system, where his cohort included future stars James Brolin and Sam Elliott.

Selleck said he always held on to his father’s advice about Hollywood: “Don’t let them change you.”

During his time as a Fox contract player, he never got any work, but, “as soon as I got fired, I got two jobs at Fox. One was Lancer, which I don’t know how many people remember, but Lancer was the show that they did in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film starring Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Margot Robbie),” said Selleck. His second job, his big screen debut, was as one of Mae West’s “studs” in Myra Breckinridge. West gave him an audience in her apartment as part of the audition, and after a brief reading directed him to, “‘Put your hands on my waist,’ so I put my hands on her waist. This is true. And she says, ‘Now spread your legs.’ So I spread my legs,” he smiled. “What she was doing was, she was not a tall woman, and so she wanted to see if I could get shorter, which I did,” laughed the 6’4″ actor. “And so I played young stud number four or something.”

When Princess Diana was at the height of her popularity, she was invited to a White House dinner and made her own guest list. “She invited John Travolta, Clint Eastwood, and me,” said Selleck. “Travolta starts dancing when Princess Di and then everybody starts forming around them and clapping, and they’re going crazy and rocking out and suddenly this woman comes up to us, said, ‘Excuse me, this is the second dance with Mr. Travolta. We don’t want rumors to start. One of you has to cut in.’

“I’m not cutting in on John, and Clint didn’t even bother. So, anyway, the next dance … Did you go to cotillion?”

“Nope,” laughed Danson.

“I didn’t either. I dodged it. My big brother, Bob, did, but all I know how to do is a box step and the dip. It wasn’t a very long dance, I just kept apologizing,” said Selleck.

He added, “Now, Jillie danced with the prince, and they were having a great old time. Jillie, who can really dance. And at the end of the first dance, he asked her to dance again. So they did two dances together.”

They spoke a bit about the upsides of being a celebrity, including meeting interesting famous people. Selleck got to know the Reagans pretty well and worked with Nancy on her anti-drug campaign. Frank Sinatra did a guest spot on Magnum P.I. (“he wanted to do everything in one take, he had the patience of a saloon singer”) and Selleck sat near Sophia Loren at his funeral. “They piped in Frank Sinatra singing ‘Put Your Dreams Away,’” he said.

One of the things that Selleck said he’s most proud of is that Magnum P.I. was recognized by the Smithsonian as the first TV show to show Vietnam veterans in a positive light.

Selleck now lives on a ranch in Ventura County, and said that doing the western miniseries The Sacketts led him to discover how much he loved that life. That show also introduced him to his acting mentor Ben Johnson. He also cites James Garner, who he worked with on The Rockford Files, as an acting mentor.

Blue Bloods had an incredible long run of 293 episodes over 15 years, and Selleck also did A Thousand Clowns on Broadway. He had never done any kind of stage play before, but had been doing scene work and studying acting for decades. “It was right after my father passed away, and it meant a lot to me,” said Selleck.

“This has been the best excuse to hang out with you,” said Danson to his old friend. “Tom, you’re an amazing storyteller. You’re really, really good. I’m just mesmerized to hear you tell stories. No wonder you’re a good writer, because you’re a good teller of stories.”

See youtube.com/LiveTalksLA/videos for previous Live Talks events.