Why new Magnum P.I. Jay Hernandez doesn't have a mustache: "No one is going to replace Tom Selleck"

TV Guide

The mustache-free Thomas Magnum has been buzzed about since the first image of Hernandez on the Magnum P.I. reboot was released. At CBS' upfronts on Wednesday, Hernandez explained why he's not sporting a mustache. "No one is going to replace Tom Selleck," Hernandez told TV Guide. "You can't do that. You gotta sorta reinvent it, take what works from the original show and sort of make it new so that's what we did." He added: "Just wait! Watch the show, there might be something that people who need the mustache might feel satisfied with." In reviewing the new Magnum P.I. trailer, critic Daniel Fienberg said Thomas Magnum without the mustache doesn't feel like Magnum P.I. "I've got no objections at all to Jay Hernandez as Magnum, but without a mustache or conspicuous chest hair, nothing about him instantly screams 'Magnum!'" he says. Meanwhile, Vincent Boucher asks: "Will a Magnum sans his mustache really have what it takes?" He adds that a mustache in 2018 may be seen as "too ironic, too Brooklyn hipster." TV mustaches, he points out, have also been associated with Milo Ventimiglia's tragic This Is Us character and James Franco's dark The Deuce characters. "For now, we can only hope some kind of hairline storyline makes the cut," says Boucher.