Normally, Alan Ritchson is the biggest guy on Reacher. However, that isn’t the case this season. In Reacher Season 3, the titular character will face off against a massive henchman named Paulie. Now, it turns out, Ritchson took a punch going up against his 7’2” co-star, and his story about it is giving big Road House energy.
Before we get into this Road House comparison, first you need to read Ritchson’s description of fighting his huge co-star Olivier Richters. In the book-to-screen adaption of Lee Child’s Persuader, Reacher has to face off against the gargantuan guy Paulie, and in the show, Richters plays that character. During an interview with Eammon Jacobs, Ritchson opened up about pulling these massive fights off with a massive co-star, explaining:
Yeah, we took a couple punches for sure. I took a punch accidentally one time, I was like ‘I don’t think I would want to get into a fight with this guy in real life.’ He’s pretty tough. Yeah, he’s a monster, man.
I’d imagine taking a punch from a guy like that hurt just as much – if not worse – than being thrown into walls – which has happened to the Fast X actor. Plus, you have to take into account that Reacher’s leading man is 6’3” while Richters is 7’2”. That’s a pretty massive difference, which makes the idea of him getting punched by his colleague even more intimidating.
That’s what brings me to Road House. For those who might not remember, when this remake (which you can stream with an Amazon Prime subscription) came out last year, stories were flying around about Jake Gyllenhaal getting “clocked” by Conor McGregor while they filmed. That alone is enough to draw comparisons.
However, both McGregor and Richters have made careers out of being strong men – McGregor is an MMA fighter while Richters is a bodybuilder – so, I think it’s safe to say they’re two of the last people you’d want to take a hit from in a scene. However, both Ritchson and Gyllenhaal took them.
It paid off in Road House, and the Reacher star is hoping that will be the case for his show too, as he explained:
If you are a reader of the books and Persuader, you get the sense that Reacher’s gonna die fighting this guy and there’s no way – he can’t figure out a way to win. And filming those kinds of fights, you know, the amount of time we spent invested in that – three weeks for one fight in particular – hopefully we give TV audiences the same kind of feeling.
Alan Ritchson also said his co-star trained for four months to prepare for these fights, and it would appear that hard work paid off big time. Noting how excited he is about the season of Reacher that’s about to premiere on the 2025 TV schedule, the show’s leading man teased:
But it was fun and [I] definitely haven’t experienced anything like that in the prior two seasons of Reacher.
Well, folks, it sounds like we’re in for an action-packed ride when Reacher Season 3 premieres on Prime Video this Thursday, February 20.
We’ve been guaranteed some epic fights, and we’ll get to see Alan Ritchson’s character take on his (literally) biggest adversary yet, and it sounds like we won’t want to miss one second of it.
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