Alan Ritchson on Doing His Own Stunts and Theme of ‘Reacher’ Season 2 (Don’t Mess With My Family)
[This story contains mild spoilers to the three-episode premiere of season two of Reacher.]
During the three-episode opener of Reacher’s season two premiere, audiences found the nomadic muscle-bound former leader of an elite military unit in Lee Child’s best-selling novels trying to live the same discreet unnoticeable life as best as a 6-foot-5 Herculean-framed man could do.
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All Jack Reacher, played by Alan Ritchson, wants to do is stay to himself, explore America, and quietly observe the compulsions and actions of everyday people. It’s not really his desire to socialize or get involved in the lives of others, but as the first episode of season two confirms, his code of what is right and wrong won’t let the former military officer sit back when he sees a crime in progress. In this case, he senses a woman nervously taking money out of an ATM machine to deliver to a carjacker, who is holding her child hostage down the street.
Reacher’s instincts quickly suss out the distraught mother’s situation; he apprehends the carjacker and beats him into submission with the driver’s side door. When that task is completed, however, Reacher would rather not stay with the grateful family until the police arrives. He walks away back to his solitary life as if nothing ever happened.
This season will bring more chilling and devastating tragedies to the hit Prime Video series. Based on Child’s book Bad Luck and Trouble, Reacher learns this season that members of his former U.S. Army 110th MP Special Investigations unit are being murdered. And the way their bodies are found, they appear to have been thrown out of an aircraft while still alive. That doesn’t sit well at all with Reacher, or the other members of the 110th: Frances Neagley (Maria Sten), Karla Dixon (Serinda Swan) and switchblade-wielding David O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos), who join their former commander in New York to find the culprits. Reacher wants to give the murderers of his friends and family a similarly painful fate.
The Hollywood Reporter recently caught up with Ritchson via Zoom, where the star shared his high enthusiasm for being a part of the highly successful Prime series, which has already been renewed for a third season and is currently in production.
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Let’s get into it! What are you excited for the audience to see in season two? What will they see that is different in scope or pace from the first season?
That’s a good question. Having seen season one, there are a lot of choices that we were able to massage going into season two; things we learned from watching season one. A good example we made was that I brought in a new stunt double to join our team, Ryan Tarran, who is one of the best. And I stole him from some of the best actors out there; I hope they’re mad about it. I hope they feel a sense of loss and regret and shame for letting him go. But he stepped up the action that I’ve got — the specificity, the cleanliness of the fights — to a degree that doesn’t even compare to season one. I think refining things in that way, in all departments in little ways, has really helped to make a really solid show. But thematically, the stakes are higher.
Bad Luck and Trouble the book, for those who haven’t read, is where Reacher is reuniting with his old 110th, and this is a special investigators unit that he assembled by hand in the military. They’re the best of the best and as they go missing, they reassemble to try to figure out who is trying to take down the old guard. That feeling of being around family, and working with family, it raises the stakes in a way that we wouldn’t really see in Margrave in season one. So, I think people have a lot to look forward to.
How was it working in an ensemble with the other three actors for this season (Maria Sten as Frances Neagley, Serinda Swan as Karla Dixon and Shaun Sipos as David O’Donnell)?
Good! Look, everybody was super well cast. Everybody came in with a warmth of comfort and familiarity that lent itself to the character they played, and I think you feel that. You interact with someone like Shaun Sipos, for example, he’s somebody that I just got along with so well. The guy is so funny, I could just listen to him tell these goofy stories all day long! And we pretty quickly had a shorthand, a banter where we could tease each other and get under each other’s skin. And that’s the Reacher-O’Donnell relationship to a T. So, really, it’s like art imitating life in a lot of ways.
Does Reacher like people, in general, or does he just care about the members of his unit, his immediate family, if you will? Or when he helps others, is it just about a code he lives by?
I think Reacher is not bothered by people unless they give him a reason to be bothered. Reacher is hyper-curious about people, I mean, there’s even a book where it talks about his driving skills being subpar because he’s too busy analyzing the people in the cars near him. There was a scene in season one where I had to drive into a parking lot, and I spent like 22 seconds just getting all the way into the parking lot because I was looking at everybody. But where I was going, you know, trying to honor that thing about him. He is intensely curious about humans and what makes them tick, and what makes them choose right from wrong and that kind of thing. I’m not Lee Child, so I don’t want to speak out of turn. But I don’t think he particularly has a fondness for, or really likes, anybody that he doesn’t know, but there’s a deep curiosity about humanity.
So, continuing with that question, what do you think is the draw of the character with a large audience who seems to have fallen in love with Reacher? (Reacher is Prime Video’s most watched original series ever.)
Yeah, that’s a good question. Look, I think on a human level, we all know right from wrong. And we all wish that justice was more swift. We wish our judicial systems and law enforcement were less clumsy and maybe even [not] unethical at times. In Reacher, you have the embodiment of that wish being fulfilled in a single person who’s capable of doing something for us. And that’s exciting for us to think that, maybe somewhere out there someday, we’ll see justice done before we pass. And that is something I think a lot of people are like willing to escape to for a few minutes a week.
This season, Reacher and his surviving unit, in investigating the murders of their comrades, travel to different cities, mainly New York, but Boston, too. Did you actually travel to all of those locations?
We flew to New York, and this was my first time out of Toronto in a long time because we shoot in Toronto. And I was so excited to be back in the city, back in like the Big Apple. And we found out that somebody didn’t pull a work visa for somebody who was integral to shooting, and we couldn’t shoot. So, we were there in the Big Apple not shooting (laughs) and I was like, “This is so perfectly Reacher!” We ended up picking up those shots on the greenscreen on a stage somewhere in Toronto. So, technically, we went somewhere this time! Did we shoot somewhere else? No. Toronto has it all. You know, it’s got a New York/Manhattan landscape horizon line so … and amazing cookies! Shout out to Craig’s Cookies from Toronto. (He holds a box of gourmet cookies in the air.) I own no stock in this company, but would if I ever had the chance.
When people see you out and about, do they approach you as if you are Reacher who may be able to solve a problem they are having, or are they standoffish and seem intimidated?
Yeah, “I need you to fight my cousin, he was over at my apartment last night …” (Laughs.) I’m like “I’ll fight your cousin, just show me. … Are they here at the mall? I’ll do it here if you want.”
Playing Reacher has definitely transformed my ability to go out in public as easily; there has to be real thought put into it, where we’re going and why. But especially because I have a family and three young kids. You never know what kind of people you’re going to run into, and some people feel like they have a bigger relationship with you than they do, because they have a relationship with the character. And I’m looking out for my family, so we just have to be thoughtful about those things.
I know you have a background in music …
My first love!
But Reacher doesn’t seem to really care about the music, like his unit does, in season two?
You think so? I think he likes only a certain type of music. He likes the Blues. I mean, he came to investigate music in Margrave [the fictional Georgia town in season one], that’s the whole reason he showed up. I think he respects a certain type of music. If it doesn’t feel like music to him, I think it doesn’t count. But it has got to move you in a certain way. Some of those original Blues, like when I was listening to that original soundtrack, it really hits you in a different way than the music does these days. There’s something real raw about it. So, no, I think he appreciates it. It just has to be what he would consider music.
What type of music do you like?
Anything sung by Justin Timberlake. I like early Justin Bieber on acoustic. Oh, I like JP Saxe, I’m told; more modern, somebody from the Amazon catalog. I also like Taylor Swift, I am a Swiftie.
So, does that mean you’re a Kansas City Chiefs fan, too?
I like the Chiefs, and I also like the Cowboys!
I remember reading somewhere how you talked about, in season one, it was a bit difficult getting used to Reacher’s sort of violent, brute-force fighting style. That technique is still used in season two, along with probably additional training for the military police flashback scenes. Have you adapted?
I think I’ve adapted. Yeah, it was incredibly foreign to me at first; I mean, to punch people with your elbows was not something I was used to, and it took a little while to get that in the body. But, I mentioned Ryan Tarran, my stunt double, one of the best fighters in the world: three black belts, the dude, he’s very crisp. And when I have a second off, I’ll either run over to the stunt facility or on weekends, I’ll go to his house and we’ll work in the backyard and just tighten up the form. Always learning, always refining. Always just improving what the audience deserves to see, which is authentic fights performed by me as Reacher. I’m always looking for ways to get better and I have somebody who can help me do that now. So, it’s definitely made its way into the body. I think there are huge improvements and I think just over the years, it’ll make what we can do with Reacher even better.
Do you do quite a bit of your own stunts?
Ryan, I say good things about him, but dude never does anything for me. (Laughs.) He sits there and he eats Craig’s Cookies. Yeah, he doesn’t do anything, he just like stands by the monitor and critiques my performances, like, “It’s not good enough!” I’m, like, “Why don’t you get in there and do your f-ing job!” And he’s like, “Because I don’t want to!” Actually, he’s Australian: “I don’t want tooo, I rather eat a kangaroo somewhere” (in an attempted Australian accent). That’s kind of how he sounds, and not everybody eats kangaroo. I’m not trying to offend the kangaroo-eating crowd.
Sounds like you’re in this for long haul. You see yourself portraying Reacher for a while?
I love doing this! As long as people show up and watch, I’m in.
Season two of Reacher is currently streaming the first three episodes on Prime Video, with remaining hours in the eight-episode season dropping weekly on Fridays.
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