As the third season of Amazon’s show airs on Prime Video, the Herald’s Emma Gleason sits down with Reacher star Alan Ritchson to discuss Kiwis’ obsession with Lee Child’s staunch, crime-solving hero.
There’s a sizeable diamond tennis bracelet on Alan Ritchson’s famously muscular forearm and his smile dazzles too. I notice both when we shake hands; he stands up to do so, which some people think tells you a lot about someone. So this is Jack Reacher.
The reluctantly crusading crime-solver and justice-wielder created by Lee Child has struck a chord with people, Kiwis in particular.
Having experienced our country, and his local fans, first-hand last year, has Ritchson gained any insight into New Zealander’s affinity with the character?
“Because they’re all like Reacher,” he offers. “They’re just rugged, hardy people. And really good-natured.”
Is Ritchson like Reacher? His manner is far more effusive and outgoing, and clocking in at 6”2, he’s a few inches shorter than the books’ 6”5 protagonist. (The lanky Child, standing next to Ritchson, is closer in height).
The sheer physicality of Ritchson is impressive. He famously put on 30 pounds of muscle for the role. His physique has helped shape his fame – the Overton window of the masculine form has shifted in our post-Marvel age – and Ritchson’s exercise regimen (workouts five days a week, he told the Herald) and diet populate news stories and Reddit threads for fans eager to emulate – or at least approximate – his form.
The series has seen Ritchson carve out a place as an action star since the show launched in 2022, translating his small-screen success into more film projects. There was Fast X in 2023, Guy Ritchie’s 2024 release The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and he spent much of last year shooting the sci-fi movie War Machine Downunder.
His family was in tow. Wife Cat and their three children follow him on the road – she homeschools them – to avoid the separation that’s usually the status quo in film industry careers.
So enamoured were they with New Zealand that his son asked if they could live there. “He said, ‘Dad, we’re buying a house here’”, and it wasn’t phrased as a question. “He said it to me probably 100 times.”
Ritchson had flown from New Zealand to Sao Paulo (where we meet).
He was there for CCXP Brazil, the biggest pop culture convention in the world, where the Reacher stars shared a teaser and release date with the packed crowd.
Some culture critics, like the Telegraph’s Benji Wilson, see its success as part of a global culture trend, what’s been dubbed “dad TV” – action-packed shows like The Boys, Vikings and Narcos – calling Reacher “definitive” of the genre.
But the show’s appeal, if the audience in Sao Paulo is anything to go by, goes far beyond middle-aged men that typify reporting of the genre.
Among Reacher’s global fandom is a strong Kiwi following, mirroring the popularity of Child’s best-selling books here.
The author told RNZ in 2014 our island nation was “the world capital of Reacher madness”. A decade later, it seems he still is, with In Too Deep the Christmas bestseller for 2024, while The Secret and No Plan B were two of the most popular library books in the country last year.
Ritchson got to spend time in New Zealand last year, giving him insight into the “rugged” Kiwi identity.
He was in the stomping ground of the southern man, shooting War Machine (he plays an army ranger) in Queenstown and Wānaka, and describes the South Island as “one of the most stunning places” he’s been in his “entire life”.
“Hanging off the side of a Black Hawk, flying over the mountains of New Zealand,” he says. “It took me, like, two days to come down from that experience. It was such a rush.”
Getting to do the stunt himself was an “all-out battle”; they didn’t want him to, but he said: “I’m doing it.”
He performs some, though not all, of the action in Reacher (stunt double Ryan Tarran does the rest), including smashing through a sheet of glass in the final episode of season two.
“The action’s great” in season three, Ritchson says.
“Some of the stunt sequences are really juicy,” adds co-star Maria Sten, who plays Neagley. “We both like to do our own stunts. It ups your game a little bit – ups the intensity, ups the adrenaline.”
The story sees him face off with 7”2 Dutch bodybuilder Olivier Richters, who Ritchson describes as Reacher’s “most formidable foe” to date.
He’s one of many antagonists – including a sprawling criminal organisation – in the narrative. “It’s based off Persuader, one of the best books in the series,” Ritchson says. Child’s 2003 novel sees our hero go undercover for the US government’s Drug Enforcement Administration.
Season-three Reacher is still travelling light, of course. He is, famously, a man of few words and fewer possessions: a toothbrush, mainly, and the pressing weight of his moral code.
Is that part of the appeal? Reacher resonates with people, we could surmise, because he presents a fantasy for a modern age.
“That’s the magic of Reacher,” explains Child. “He just wants his quiet life.”
Not weighed down by possessions or commitments, he enjoys a freedom and focus that many find enviable, his action spurred on by an untroubled sense of right and wrong.
Child sees it from a different angle, one of intention. “He’s not a do-gooder for the sake of it.”
Reacher’s not a vigilante or moral crusader out for justice. “If something happens to him, then he’s going to react. He doesn’t roam the world looking for crimes to solve. He wants to be left alone,” he explains. “He wants his quiet life.”
Solitude in the midst of a chaotic world and deluge of bad news? There’s fantasy in that too.
The third season of Reacher is streaming on Prime Video from February 20.
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