Blue Bloods’ Stephanie Kurtzuba Surprised that Fans Recognize Her On The Street

Blue Bloods is one of CBS' popular police procedural series? It's currently on its 13th season and still going strong! During its lengthy run, the show featured many minor recurring characters, which is common for popular cop shows that portray the daily work of large police precincts with numerous employees.

Captain McNichols is a character in "Blue Bloods" who was introduced in Season 10 and is played by the talented Stephanie Kurtzuba. In Season 10, Episode 3 titled "Behind the Smile," she was Eddie Janko's (Vanessa Ray) Sergeant and gave her a bit of a hard time at first. Wow, McNichols worked really hard and eventually became a Captain and the Commanding Officer of the 29th Precinct! This led to Kurtzuba making more appearances starting at the end of Season 12.

Although McNichols has an important role in the series, she only appears as a recurring character and is not featured in every episode of "Blue Bloods." It's actually quite surprising to Kurtzuba that fans of "Blue Bloods" recognize her as Captain McNichols when she's had many other prominent roles in the past.

Kurtzuba must have felt really special when a fan recognized her as Captain McNichols

In a recent interview with MovieJunk, Stephanie Kurtzuba, who plays Captain Paula McNichols, spoke about an incident that made her realize how passionate “Blue Bloods” viewers are about the show: “I was walking down the street … and someone was like ‘Hey, Captain McNichols,’ and I was like, that’s wild … I’m not a regular [on the show]. I show up quite a bit, but it’s not like I’m on every single week. So people recognizing secondary characters just walking down the street, it’s kind of cool.”

She has a point, too. In total, Kurtzuba’s character appeared in only eight episodes across four seasons of “Blue Bloods” so far, most of them in Season 13. Seeing as it’s a show that has spawned over a dozen seasons and hundreds of episodes, it’s quite remarkable for a fan to recognize the actress as Captain McNichols, especially considering that Kurtzuba has also appeared in high-budget, blockbuster productions like Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Irishman,” where she had arguably more memorable roles.

On the other hand, people tend to get obsessed with their favorite series to the point of knowing obscure pieces of trivia about them, and when it comes to police procedurals, “Blue Bloods” wouldn’t be the only cop show with fans who are in too deep.