How Alan Ritchson Changed The Jack Reacher From The Books For TV

Jack Reacher was envisioned by Lee Child as a gigantic beast of a man who, as the author told Entertainment Weekly, "you're all a little bit nervous just for that first minute" after he walks into a room. So when Hollywood got their hands on Child's Jack Reacher novels and cast 5-foot-7 Tom Cruise in the lead role, controversy ensued.

Much like the hulking action hero they so admired, fans had little time for tasteful restraint, as evidenced in a piece from the LA Times in which one fan is quoted as saying, "I can not [sic] believe they actually used an arrogant overexposed short IMBECILE to create such an awesome character. I will not see it and it literally RUINED the whole character for me. HOW COULD THEY DO THIS?" One Sally Ross expressed disappointment at not being able to see "a REAL Jack Reacher on the screen." And while trying to meet fan expectations isn't always the best approach, it seems that even Lee Child agreed with his fanbase on this one.

After two movies, Cruise wouldn't play Reacher again. And when Child took his beloved IP to the streaming services, he did so with the expectation that it would indeed result in a "REAL Jack Reacher" being depicted. So by the time Amazon Prime Video commissioned the "Reacher" series and "Titans" star Alan Ritchson was cast, he faced immense pressure to portray Reacher accurately. Luckily, showrunner Nick Santora was intent on making "Reacher" familiar to fans by closely adhering to Child's novels — giving Ritchson the opportunity to appease aggrieved Jack Reacher adherents with a book-accurate portrayal of the eponymous Army officer (read: much, much taller than Tom Cruise). But the whole process turned out to be much more about trying new things than referring to the books than the actor expected.

Season 1 of "Reacher" debuted in 2022 to massive success, topping the Nielson streaming charts and breaking records for Amazon's Prime Video service. And while the absurdly fun tone and overblown action certainly contributed to that success, much of it also had to do with Alan Ritchson's imposing presence. The 6-foot-3 actor had worked over eight months to bulk up, putting on 30 pounds and hitting 235 pounds by the time filming started. In that way, he'd already done a better job than Cruise in the eyes of devoted fans. But according to the actor, he wasn't thinking about the Hollywood legend too much when crafting his performance.

Ritchson was asked by Collider about how he separated his version of Jack Reacher from fan expectations and Cruise's performance, saying he felt pressure to, "get this right." But as he started work on the show, he revealed that the pressure eased and a new process emerged:

"There was a huge presence of producers and executives and writers, and we had amazing directors. Everybody has access to the books too. They all have an opinion on who Reacher is to them, and it was a truly collaborative effort, in a way that I haven't experienced before. I've played iconic characters before that have a lot of IP attached to it ... I'm just taking all of it in, and it's like, 'Let's play around. Let's tinker. Let's try him this way. Let's try him your way.' Everybody saw something a little different, and it was just about being open and availing myself to what I thought, and what the directors and producers thought."

Ritchson had previously played Aquaman/Arthur Curry in "Smallville" and Raphael in 2014's "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and its sequel. Which did indeed mean he had experience playing characters beloved by fans and adapted from pre-existing material. But it seems in the case of "Reacher," he was able to create a performance through a process of collaboration in a way that he hadn't with those other characters, with the actor telling Collider, "I think where we ended up was the most authentic place because we all pitched in."

Still, that didn't mean it was an easy process. In the novels, Lee Child wrote Jack Reacher as a laconic, mysterious bruiser, who would often say nothing in response to other characters' dialogue. An itinerant former Army officer, Reacher would, across 29 books, find himself in a new location with each new story, unearthing some unspeakable corruption or snuffing out some horrific criminal activity. And it seems Ritchson initially thought he might get away with remaining similarly terse in his portrayal, only to discover he did in fact have pages of dialogue wherein Reacher vocalizes his inner thought process. He said:

"It was a false positive for me. I came in, and it was just pages of him unraveling somebody, so I don't get to sit back and relax like I maybe had hoped. Regardless, it's a lot of fun for people, and I'd be happy to play this guy for every book."

"Reacher" was very quickly renewed for a second season, which is due to drop sometime in 2023. And if it maintains its unprecedented popularity, we could well see Ritchson returning for yet more adaptations of the Lee Child books. Which means Sally Ross and co. can rest easy for the foreseeable future.