Why Alan Ritchson’s Reacher Casting Was The ‘Scariest’ Moment Of His Career

For any low-paid thug or arrogant hot head that doesn’t mind their manners, Alan Ritchson can look pretty scary and has done so for three seasons of “Reacher” so far (read our review of “Reacher” season 3 right here). What’s surprising is that the tower of heroism that regularly thumps bad guys was pretty scared himself to take on the role. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about his journey to tackling the hero, Ritchson revealed the pressure he felt when auditioning for the part and the legacy that came with it. By that point, author Lee Child’s hero was still thriving on bookshelves but not so much in the efforts of adapting him to the screen. Tom Cruise, for all his star power, couldn’t make Reacher the big-screen blockbuster franchise he was setting out to make (Childs has since agreed that Cruise wasn’t the right choice), so anyone picking up the slack with reviving the property had some work to do.

“The scariest point in my career was deciding whether or not I could take on a role like Reacher with one of the highest-selling book franchises in the world, a well-known character that had been played by the other greatest action star of all time,” Ritchson said, referring to Cruise. You might even say it was an almost impossible mission, but one that, if accomplished, would change how he handled his career going forward. “There was just a lot to live up to and huge shoes to fill. Stepping into that gave me the confidence to go, ‘If I could make that work, then I can handle any set or any character.'”

After facing the fear and doing a brilliant job of bringing a brand-new Reacher to life, any calls that came after felt a lot easier to handle for Ritchson, especially when it meant killing off (wink) half the cast of “Fast X.” Perhaps one of the biggest plot twists in the “Fast and Furious” timeline was that Ritchson’s new character Aimes was revealed during the end of the latest chapter to be working for Jason Momoa’s Dante Reyes and trying to take down Vin Diesel’s on-screen family. It was a task Ritchson took in his enormous, ground-shaking stride.

“I felt confident going [into ‘Fast X’], but there’s a ton of energy that Vin’s essence brings, that Jason’s essence brings to the set, so it’s just about trusting that you’re enough. I’m now really confident in my ability to add value,” the actor said. 

Thankfully, by that point he’d spent a decent amount of time as Reacher, so the action that came with the new role proved to be a little easier because of it. “The stunts are pretty similar to what I’ve been doing, although I will say, I think it set the record for the most blue screen I’ve ever shot on. Hundreds and hundreds of football fields worth of blue screen. That was a personal record,” he admitted. 

The way things are going, and with the potential to play a bigger part in the final chapter of “Fast and Furious,” it’ll undoubtedly lead to more records (and bad guys) getting broken in the process.