David Selby’s bulging TV resume includes his breakthrough “Dark Shadows” role as brooding Quentin Collins on ABC’s late-’60s gothic daytime soap.
Now Selby, 78, whose recent series appearances include “Legion” and “Castle Rock” and an upcoming episode of “NCIS: New Orleans,” has finally landed on one of Dick Wolf’s franchise dramas –guest-starring on Wednesday’s episode of “Chicago Fire” (9 p.m. on NBC).
“I read the script and was very touched by it,” he says. “I gave it to my wife to read — she read it and she cried. She said, ‘Oh my God, you’ve got to do this!'”
In the episode, “A Chicago Welcome,” Selby plays Tim, who moves with his wife, Gail, to Chicago after they’ve retired and outlived most of their friends. They’ve barely arrived in the city when catastrophe strikes. “Their house catches fire in the middle of the night after they recently moved to Chicago from Montana,” he says. “It doesn’t end up well for them in that vein.”
Meanwhile, “Chicago Fire” regulars Casey (Jesse Spencer) and Brett (Kara Killmer) feel badly for Tim, and decide to hunt for his missing cat, Dusty, who vanished after the fire.
“The people of Chicago are there for each other and pull together and show their support for this man who has lost everything,” Selby says. “They don’t know him — he’s just a human being — but they pull together. That’s what this episode is about.”
Selby says it was “rather exciting” to shoot the burning house scene and recalled some of his other “disaster” roles.
“I did a crazy film that just didn’t pan out called ‘Raise the Titanic’ where I literally had to go down under in the ocean in this two-man submarine thing, and I did it,” he says. “I once rode down from a 10-story building on a wrecking ball [in the 1974 movie “The Super Cops”] because the building was collapsing around me.
“I did my own stunts back in those days.”