No Big Deal, Just A Heartwarming Story About Blue Bloods' Tom Selleck Leaving A Huge Tip

Tom Selleck looking serious and sitting at a desk.

Television legend Tom Selleck might not be known for playing the warmest characters, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of great kindness in his personal life. The Blue Bloods star recently hit up a New York City restaurant and decided to surprise the staff with a generous tip. He didn’t publicize the $2000 thank you on his own, but word somehow reached his TV son Donnie Wahlberg who immediately shouted about it on social media.

Donnie Wahlberg himself participated in the #2020TipChallenge; so, it’s not a surprise he was really excited about Tom Selleck getting in on the action too. In addition to the handsome tip, the former star of Magnum PI also left a card wishing for a better 2020, which is something I’m sure everyone can easily get on board with. You can check out the card, the tip and Wahlberg’s social media post about it below…

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2020 has been a terrible year for a lot of industries but the food service industry has been particularly hard hit. In many areas of the country, indoor dining was forbidden for several weeks or even months. In some parts of the country, it was recently closed down again. As such, any additional help people can give servers right now is particularly impactful, and I’m sure Selleck’s $2000 tip will help pay a few bills.

The donation was made to the servers at Elio’s. The Upper East Side New York City restaurant serves classic Italian dishes and has been a favorite among celebrities for a very long time. Unfortunately we can’t see the line item portion of Selleck’s bill to creep on what exactly he ordered, although you are free to judge the first math mistake that was crossed out. Given the absolutely ridiculous number of spaghetti dishes on the restaurant’s menu, however, there’s a non-zero chance he went in that direction.

As for Selleck himself, he’s had an absolutely tremendous career, particularly in television. He’s currently a lead actor on Blue Bloods, which recently started airing its eleventh season on CBS. Prior to that, he was the title character and lead actor on Magnum PI, which ran for 160+ incredibly popular episodes in the 1980s. Outside of that, he also had memorable runs as key supporting characters on The Rockford Files, Friends and Las Vegas. He also starred in the popular movie franchise Three Men And A Baby, as well as some other one-offs including Mr. Baseball and Quigley Down Under.

I don’t expect Tom Selleck will comment on this matter or discuss why he choose Elio’s. He’s not typically the type to ask for a lot of credit, but hopefully his nice gesture now that it is public will serve as inspiration for people to do a little extra for workers if they can so afford it.

Mack Rawden
Editor In Chief

Mack Rawden is the Editor-In-Chief of CinemaBlend. He first started working at the publication as a writer back in 2007 and has held various jobs at the site in the time since including Managing Editor, Pop Culture Editor and Staff Writer. He now splits his time between working on CinemaBlend’s user experience, helping to plan the site’s editorial direction and writing passionate articles about niche entertainment topics he’s into. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English (go Hoosiers!) and has been interviewed and quoted in a variety of publications including Digiday. Enthusiastic about Clue, case-of-the-week mysteries, a great wrestling promo and cookies at Disney World. Less enthusiastic about the pricing structure of cable, loud noises and Tuesdays.