You could say that Tom Selleck’s new CBS sitcom, “The Closer,” is a spinoff of NBC’s “Friends.”
Getting his own series was the last thing the “Magnum P.I.” star envisioned when he signed on as a recurring love interest in “Friends” 18 months ago.
“I wasn’t testing the waters or anything,” Selleck told a conclave of TV writers recently. “They offered me this part, a chance to work with Courteney Cox, and it kind of scared me. I hadn’t done a sitcom since `Taxi.’ But I think that’s why actors should do things, so I did it.”
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He was surprised at viewers’ reactions. “By the third episode — we did six that year — they were putting Courteney on the cover of TV Guide with me. So I figured something good was happening.
“But if you’d have asked me two weeks before (CBS Television President) Les Moonves announced (last spring) we were going to be on the fall schedule . . . if I was honestly considering doing a series, the answer would have been absolutely not. But, quite honestly, Les made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
While Moonves announced that the Selleck series would be on the fall schedule, it didn’t turn out that way. (The show is set to premiere shortly after the Winter Olympics.)
Getting the right series together took some doing, he noted. “We haven’t gone through hell or anything,” Selleck said. “The year and a half that it took from Les announcing the deal to us having a project we could all be proud of was simply a matter of process, of looking.
“I was lucky enough to have some approvals, and it took that long to find a piece of material that I liked,” he said.
“I really don’t mind playing someone with kids, but I don’t want to play a completely family, at-home oriented show, and I don’t want to play a show that’s just a two-handed romantic comedy,” he said.
Eventually, his co-executive producers, John Strauss and Ed Decter, came up with a script that Selleck liked, about a hot-shot Denver ad executive whose marriage, family and job all fall apart, and a cast that includes Penelope Ann Miller and Ed Asner.
“It didn’t come up contractually that it had to be `The Tom Selleck Show.’ I don’t want the pressure,” he said.
Selleck said the strength of the show will be its cast, which drew a quip from Asner: “That’s one of the big surprises for me, because I’d heard so many stories about his selfishness.”
Selleck is politically conservative, and he was asked whether his politics would figure in “The Closer.” “I don’t have any intention of foisting my political beliefs on an audience,” he said. “I think that’s a little boring.”
Asner, who is well known for his embrace of liberal causes, was asked if he and Selleck had any stimulating political discussions.
“That’s the other thing which amazes me,” Asner replied. “Every subject we’ve gotten on outside of the show, politically, socially, we seem to be in synch, and it’s very disturbing.”