Alan Ritchson gave his body and soul in order to embody the towering Jack Reacher in the Amazon Prime Video show Reacher… to the point where Ritchson even needed surgery once filming had concluded because he tore things that shouldn’t have been damaged. For the most part, it worked. Critics heaped praise on Reacher, and the show got off to such a fast start that Amazon Prime immediately renewed Reacher for a second season. But it’s not just the physical comparisons to Jack Reacher that made Alan Ritchson the right man for this particular job. According to the actor, he has a lot more in common with Reacher than we realize.
Sitting down with TV Guide Magazine, Alan Ritchson opened up about the show’s stunts, the availability of peach pie on the set (and how he fought to not eat it), and the qualities he thinks he shares with the no-nonsense investigator that he plays on the show. On the last point, Ritchson said:
I can’t stand by and watch an injustice happen. I saw somebody break into a car once, and my wife was like, “Please don’t chase him.” I was like, “I gotta go.” I take off and I find him hiding under a car and I drag him out and hold him there.
That’s so badass. Can you imagine getting chased down and dragged out from beneath a car by Alan Ritchson? I would immediately begin confessing to crimes I didn’t even commit. The dude is a mountain, and thanks to Ritchson’s steady diet of Popeye’s Chicken sandwiches, he’s in the best shape of basically anyone’s life. At the same time, it’s so noble that he had to get involved when he saw something bad happening. I would assume that when you play a character in a show or a movie, you start to feel like you ARE that person, even a little bit. So it’s cool that Ritchson saw someone committing a crime, and went all Reacher on their ass.
Alan Ritchson talks a little bit about season two in the interview with TV Guide, but keeps the specific details close to the vest. In previous interviews, he has mentioned the Lee Child book he’d like to adapt for season two. Because I am a huge fan of the books that are inspiring the Amazon Prime Video show, I also chose four Jack Reacher books that’d be perfect for Reacher season two. But now we have to wait for season two to arrive, because at the moment, we don’t have any details on when the show will be on the streaming service. There are plenty of new TV shows that you can watch while you wait for Reacher to return, though they might not be as good as the Alan Ritchson adaptation of Lee Child’s books. And they definitely will have a lower body count than Reacher, because that dude leaves a piles of bodies in his wake.
