MAGNUM P.I. Post-Mortem: Stephen Hill on That Shocking TC Twist

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Sunday, April 16 episode of MAGNUM P.I., “Out of Sight, Out of Mind.”]

The penultimate episode of MAGNUM P.I.’s season 5A batch of episodes ended with a double whammy: Detective Childs (Michael Rady) was killed—after leaving a frantic call on Magnum’s (Jay Hernandez) voicemail that he and the team had been IDed—and TC (Stephen Hill) was shot.

Unfortunately for TC, his situation wasn’t resolved, as he was wounded, unable to reach his gun, with the shooter approaching him as “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” ended.

“It was a shock to me when I read it,” Hill tells Give Me My Remote. “I was like, ‘What? I know I’m supposed to be in all the episodes going forward…’ I’m like, ‘Damn!’”

“I think what people should be concerned with is that it’s a very significant injury for TC,” he continues. “We’re going to have to see what happens going forward. And I think people are gonna be very concerned. Especially because these guys, military guys, they take a lickin’ and keep on ticking…But I think he’s a survivor, and we’re going to see how much of a survivor he actually is.”

The loss of Childs, who had been the team’s go-to with the police department when Katsumoto (Tim Kang) was off the force, will also be a blow they’ll have to navigate.

“Seeing Childs go, I think it’s actually one of the things that happens this season to let people know that, hey, anything could happen,” Hill says. “Our show got canceled, and I think the writers are like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna throw the kitchen sink at you now.’ Childs[‘ death] ups the ante and lets people know that the stakes are really high.”

As the first half of the season comes to a close, there are “some take-your-breath-away moments,” Hill previews. “Especially because we’ve built up so much love and care for these characters and their bright futures. It’s a moment where the rug gets pulled from underneath them. So I think it’s gonna be a serious cliffhanger for the season finale, that people don’t want to miss.”

Before all of the drama, Hill got to partake in another passion thanks to the show—horse riding!

“I had worked on a project where I was learning horses for LEWIS AND CLARK; it never came out,” Hill recalls. “But I did a bunch of horse training in Calgary for this particular project. And it had been a while and I got rusty and I’m just like, ‘Man, I’ve really missed [this].’ Ever since then, I’ve wanted to have some land and have some horses.”

Hill told his dream of getting horses to Roger E. Mosley, who played TC in the original MAGNUM P.I., and “he said, ‘Oh man, you’ve got to do the parade in Compton with all of the Black cowboys in LA. And I was like, ‘Really?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, you gotta get good enough for that.’ He said, ‘I’m gonna connect you with some of the Black cowboys that I know that are actors as well.'”

“And he, unfortunately, passed away, but when I went to his memorial, so many Black actors knew who I was because he made sure that they watched the show and they knew who I was,” he continues. “And I met up with Reginald Dorsey, and he is a serious cowboy trainer—trains people in how to become cowboys. He’s an awesome actor himself. I met Glynn Turman, who’s also a cowboy and…went to class this summer. He introduced me to another amazing cowgirl, a woman named Devorah, [who] came out here to Hawaii; I took care of her and her friends.”

“I have this community of Black actors and horse trainers that are really happy that I got that opportunity on the show,” he acknowledges of “Dark Skies.” “And we did more riding than they actually showed. They show a lot of my stuntman doing it. But we did a lot for those two, three days that we were shooting it. And it is actually one of my more prouder moments on the show. I’m looking forward to learning more and more and more, so there doesn’t have to be any stuntman doing any of that next time.”

MAGNUM P.I., Sundays, 9/8c, NBC

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