EXCLUSIVE: There was Jack Reacher ...before my eyes
As author Lee Child finally gets the adaptation he deserves, with man-mountain Alan Ritchson playing his ex-military cop in a new TV drama, the Coventry-born novelist speaks to MATT NIXSON LEE CHILD ON HIS LATEST LEADING MAN
LEE CHILD is talking about the challenges of casting an actor to play Jack Reacher in the new TV series based on his multimillion-selling books. There were moments, he admits, when he feared they might never find the man to bring his 6ft 5in 250lb ex-military cop with a 50in “chest like a gun safe and hands like backhoe buckets” to life.
“It’s such a particular mix of characteristics,” he smiles.
“Seriously, it’s a ludicrous mixture: the massive physicality, the intimidating appearance, but also the charm, goodwill and dry humour. The producers sent me a bunch of screen tests and I was just praying one of them would be near enough. And then I click on one link, there are no names, just numbers, and there he is, on screen, right in front of my eyes – Reacher.
“He could be your best ally or your worst nightmare. All that’s got to be communicated in the first second or two and he nailed it.”
The man in question is Alan Ritchson, 39, a North Dakota-born actor, model and singer, who came to prominence on reality show American Idol and whose previous roles have included playing Ray Winstone’s body double in Beowulf.
While not as large as his fictional counterpart, at 6ft 2in and impressively toned he nevertheless towers over his predecessor Tom Cruise
The Hollywood megastar twice played Reacher on the big screen, to the ire of some fans who felt the 5ft 7in actor wasn’t big enough to carry the role.
Ritchson, who combines dry charm with lethal physicality for Amazon’s action-packed new eightpart series, Reacher, looks, I suggest, as if he was grown for the part in a lab.
Lee laughs: “He really does... Yes, we all know what Reacher should be, but the screenplay narrows it and you think, ‘There’s no chance we’re gonna find the right guy’.
“I was judging it from the first second. Your initial impression is very important. He was a 100 per cent fit, perfect literally from the first second. And as we got to know each other, the reasons why became clear: Alan actually had military parents, so he instinctively understood Reacher’s background.
“He used to be a really good chess player when he was a kid and that explains how good he is at thinking five moves ahead.”
The series, based on Lee’s first 1997 book, Killing Floor, sees Reacher arriving in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia, in search of a fabled blues musician, Blind Blake.within minutes, he has
been arrested in a glorious set piece in the local diner.
As the body count rises, Reacher remains one of the most memorable protagonists ever, a modern day knight errant who baulks at injustice.
Lee created Reacher – a 36-year-old former major in the military police – after being made redundant from Granada Television aged 40, after an 18-year career. Buying a notepad and pencils, he sat down to break the US book market, the world’s biggest.
Thirteen years later, in 2008, Lee’s 12th Reacher novel, Nothing To Lose, went straight to the top of the New York Times hardback bestsellers list.
THAT same year, he had a number one paperback in the US and topped both charts in Britain, a unique quadruple. “Did I dream of it, did I envision it, did I imagine it? Absolutely, of course,” he says.
“It’s like when some kid scores in the FA Cup Final and the interviewer asks, ‘Did you ever dream you’d score the winning goal?’ And he says, ‘Oh no’.
“That’s baloney, he’s dreamed of it every day. So of course I dreamed, but did I expect it? No.
“It’s a complete lottery. There were seven thrillers released the same day as me and I thought, ‘I’m going to be fighting these guys for the rest of my life’, but they’ve all disappeared.”
Now with sales in the hundreds of millions and rising – one of his books is sold every nine seconds around the world – and homes in Britain andamerica, the Coventryborn author cut back on writing.
After 24 novels he says he did not want to “run out of gas”.
His two most recent novels, The Sentinel and Better Off Dead, were collaborations with his younger brother Andrew. They are currently working on their third book back home in Wyoming amid recordbreaking snowfall.
Stepping back has allowed Lee to pursue his longtime ambition of bringing Reacher to the small screen.the author first confided to me back in 2018 over dinner that there would not be a third Cruise film. It would have been easy to continue the partnership, but he felt the star just wasn’t right.
Where once Hollywood was the only real option, the introduction of streaming and long-form drama has seen authors falling over themselves to sign small-screen deals.
“It’s the space and the time that’s so seductive. Eight hours to tell a story is such a luxury. “
Was he inspired by any other series – author Michael Connelly’s La-set Bosch, or perhaps Justified, based on the late crime king Elmore Leonard’s US Marshal Raylan Givens?
“The books were based on me ignoring everybody else and doing it my way. It’s the same for Reacher – we didn’t want to imitate anybody. I love Bridgerton, for instance, but it’s a question of not following anything specific but trying to identify the hook.
“I’m very glad we did Killing Floor first, because it’s the foundation story, it’s Reacher learning to be Reacher, minute-to-minute.”
Lee’s dry humour has been brought to the fore by the screenwriters, at times a necessary and tension-breaking counterpoint to the bone-crunching violence.
“I’ve always felt the humour in the Reacher books is under-appreciated. It’s there, it’s super dry and very sardonic.”
Was it emotional, I wonder, going back to Killing Floor, the life-changing book for the debut novelist with no other cards to play? Lee said he reread the book last summer for the first time in a quarter of a century.
“I was always focussed on the next thing. So for the first time in
25 years I read it. I thought, ‘Damn, it’s pretty good’.”
Global affairs were remarkably optimistic when that first book came out. “Then certain things happened: 9/11 made people feel a little scared, they wanted either to be the tough guy who could look after
everybody or they wished there was such a person,” Lee explains.
“Then when the financial crash happened in 2008, people realised money and possessions and mortgages were a burden. These chimed and made Reacher more popular.”
BUT PERHAPS the most compelling selling point is Reacher’s determination to see things right. “Injustice sucks and I think everybody feels that,” says Lee. “I still believe most people, most of the time, are decent and want to do the right thing. And they can’t. We’ve all been there one way or another; biting your tongue, a buzz of frustration, and that’s miserable.
“I was lucky here and there as a shop steward at Granada. I won some battles but I didn’t win enough.
“So for my own therapy I wrote Reacher. Here’s a guy who will win. If necessary he’ll win dirty, he’ll do it however it needs to be done, and that really bolstered me. At the same time there were millions
of people in the same boat and I think it helped them too.”
If Lee has one regret, it is his character’s perpetual wandering – “I’m a hobo, not a vagrant,” he says in the show – meaning there are few recurring characters.
Reacher says Ritchson is brilliantly supported by Margrave cop Roscoe (Willa Fitzgerald) and the town’s chief detective Finlay, (Malcolm Goodwin).
In a masterstroke, the writer introduced Frances Neagley, ex-miss Denmark Maria Sten, Reacher’s former Army colleague of five novels but not Killing Floor.
“When the season ends, people are going to be sad they’re not hanging out with Officer Roscoe and Finlay,” says Lee.
“Alan quite rightly deserves the attention and the accolades because he’s completely brilliant, but so are the others.
“My favourite is Bruce Mcgill playing Mayor Teale. I’ve always been the hugest fan of his from way back – I remember loving him as the sheriff in My Cousin Vinny just before I started Killing Floor – there’s a synchronicity about it.
“The other is that about the time I was finishing the final version, there was a tiny online bookseller starting in Seattle called Amazon and Killing Floor would have been among the first books they sold.
“I remember my first book tour, I dropped in and visited Amazon.
“It was still small. I met everybody in one afternoon – including Jeff Bezos.”
All in all, it feels like Lee Child – and Jack Reacher – have come home at last.
‘For my own
therapy I wrote Reacher.
Here’s a guy who will win’