Alan Ritchson Almost Didn't Play Jack Reacher Over One Minor (But Important) Detail

After the successful debut season of "Reacher" on Amazon Prime Video in early 2022, Alan Ritchson proved to fans that Tom Cruise was the worst pick to play the famed literary character on film. True, Cruise has proven over and over again that he's loaded to the brim with star power, but that wasn't what fans of author Lee Child's creation were looking for. Hoping for Child's brawny, blond force of nature that stood 6 feet, 5 inches in the Jack Reacher novels, audiences got instead the brown-haired, 5-foot-7-inch Cruise in not one but two Reacher movies, in 2012 and 2016.

Oddly enough, Ritchson feared that his height, while much closer to the Reacher in Child's novels, might have precluded him from landing the role in the series. In an interview with fellow actor Michael Rosenbaum on the "Inside of You" podcast, Ritchson said he fought very hard to play Reacher for months on end. The stumbling block, at least initially, was that Ritchson was two inches shorter than the character in the books.

"I was passed on in the very beginning of the process, like everybody was," Ritchson told Rosenbaum, "and I think that was because I'm 6'3"; Reacher's 6'5". Everybody was trying to get a super-authentic version of Reacher on screen. So there's always an asterisk in my mind when it comes to this role. I had to really fight for that."

Whatever worries Alan Ritchson had about whether his version of Jack Reacher was authentic enough quickly dissipated after the "Reacher" series premiered on Amazon Prime Video on February 4, 2022. Shortly thereafter, as Ritchson recalled for Michael Rosenbaum, Hollywood validated the impact the actor had playing the character.

"[My] career's exploded because of what happened after 'Reacher' aired," Ritchson recalled. "Beforehand, we were waiting. The whole town was like, 'Let's see what happens when it airs.' There was months of silence. Nobody was picking up the phone. There [were] no conversations about scripts. It aired, and within 48 hours, I had 20 offers on my desk from the biggest producers and studios in town, and it hasn't slowed up." Ritchson reiterated that to this day, "We're getting phone calls from some of the most legendary people you can imagine."

Among the calls was iconic filmmaker Jerry Bruckheimer, who is producing the "Reacher" star's 2024 movie "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare," a war drama directed by Guy Ritchie. Ritchson stars opposite Henry Cavill, Eiza González, and Cary Elwes in the film. Before his work with Bruckheimer and Ritchie, Ritchson starred in Vin Diesel's 10th installment of the Fast & Furious franchise, "Fast X," in the summer of 2023.

"Reacher" Season 2 debuts on Amazon Prime Video on December 15, and the series has already been renewed for Season 3.