Tom Selleck on Jesse Stone's Loss, Gain of a Best Friend
Spoiler alert! If you’re a Jesse Stone fan and haven’t yet watched the ninth installment in the franchise, Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise, which debuted Sunday on Hallmark, stop reading now.
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As viewers discovered five minutes into the TV movie that once again stars Tom Selleck as Robert B. Parker’s titular chief of the Paradise Police, the “conscience” Jesse spoke of losing in the opening sequence while discussing his drinking habits was his dog, Reggie. ”It took so long to acknowledge a connection, admit there was a bond… Life plays tricks on you,” Jesse said, before the camera pulled back to reveal the gravestone.
Joe the Dog, the golden retriever mix who long portrayed Reggie, passed away in 2013 at the age of 11, his owner Heather Soper confirms to Yahoo TV. He was just a family pet when he first auditioned for the role. “I did it on a dare, and he got the part,” she says. “They liked him so much and kept making movies.” He got his own IMBD page, and Soper scored a new career as an animal wrangler.
Joe the Dog as Reggie in 2011′s ‘Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost’
Selleck and fellow executive producer Michael Brandman had already begun writing the script for Lost in Paradise when Joe passed. “The first thing we do is just figure out where all these characters who have recurred are at,” Selleck says. “Joe, the actor who played Reggie, died. We were really wrestling with that. A character that is so important, that we show and talk about all the time, the audience will know if we try to come up with a dog and just recast a replacement. That evolved into this story where it is integrated. It turns out [Soper], the owner and handler of Joe, bought another dog, thinking we were going to replace him. That gave us the idea that Jesse is so consumed with the loss of his roommate and conscience that basically, when he sees a picture in a cold case of a dog sitting next to his owner’s body, which is how he found Reggie, that’s his reason for picking the case.”
Ned the Dog in ‘Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise’
Ned the Dog, an Irish Setter and golden retriever mix, plays Steve, the pet of a murdered, married prostitute. Jesse takes him in as he tries to solve the case and determine whether it’s the work of the Boston Ripper (Luke Perry), a man who’s confessed to multiple homicides with a similar M.O. but denies having a part in this one.
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Ned was only 14 months old when cameras rolled (he’ll celebrate his second birthday in November). “You could see it on the first day that he was a little overwhelmed,“ Soper says. But it worked for the character. “He is very, very timid coming into a house, and those are, of course, [Steve’s] issues,” Selleck says. “We have always looked at the dog as another character in the show. We feel if you cut to the dog at the right time, you will read in a human thought. That’s why I think people are so found of Jesse’s roommate and conscience. That’s really the purpose they serve. They’re not identical [dogs], but the behavior of Ned is astounding to us. It’s like he read the script.”
With at least one more Jesse Stone movie planned, it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise has a second premiere on Oct. 25 at 9 p.m. on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries.