Alan Ritchson and Co-Stars Take Action in Reacher Season Three  

The most exciting package coming from Amazon this week won’t be found on your doorstep. The premiere of Reacher season three hits Prime Video on February 20, and former U.S, Army policeman Major Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) faces deadly new foes and fights alongside a tenacious new friend in his most action-packed mission to date.

“I think Reacher is escapism and wish fulfillment at its finest,” Ritchson says of the series, which follows the protagonist of Lee Child’s popular novels after he has left the military and lives as a drifter, moving from town to town, championing the little guy in need of help and wailing on the big guy in need of a comeuppance. “There’s a little bit of Reacher in all of us, and I think we like to know that there’s a place for somebody like Reacher in the world, even if that’s only on TV.”  Season three is based on the novel Persuader, and as a fan of the Reacher books, Ritchson enjoys the opportunity to live them out on screen. “I’ve read them all, I’ve read several twice or three times,” Ritchson says. “I’m a huge Reacher fan. But, you know, I — as an audience member, and loving the books myself — I wanna honor who he is. And, he’s a fun character to play.” The story throws Reacher into a high-stakes undercover mission alongside DEA agent Susan Duffy (Sonya Cassidy) to take down a vast criminal enterprise. However, the real challenge comes from the formidable Xavier Quinn (Brian Tee), a man from Reacher’s past, and his monstrous enforcer Paulie Masserella (Olivier Richters, Black Widow, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), both of whom push Reacher to his limits like never before.

“I think what we love about Reacher is that, yes, he’s massively imposing and has this brute and brawn, but he’s also extremely intellectual and smart,” Tee says. The actor, best known for his roles in The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift, The Wolverine and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of The Shadows, was excited to bring the heat as Reacher’s most ruthless adversary. “I think that’s what Quinn brings, that formidable intelligence, that one step ahead, that chess move that Reacher didn’t quite think of,” Tee says. “ And I think that’s very scary to him, especially, and he wants nothing more than to take Quinn down.” With Quinn operating as a master strategist, his physical counterpart comes in the form of Paulie, a towering and nearly unstoppable force. Richters, standing at 7’2”, had to undergo intense preparation for the role. “Just being 160 kilos, I have to eat seven times a day, 7,000 calories,” Richters says. “And then I had to train four hours a day of stunt training next to the bodybuilding for four months straight to become the best military fighter I could ever be… that’s a lot of money and time, but we’re gonna show it off in the biggest Titan battle we have ever seen.”

The high-intensity action of the season extends to Sonya Cassidy’s DEA agent, Susan Duffy, who proves to be a strong-willed and skilled operative. “I always wanna mix things up with every job I do,” Cassidy says. The accomplished British stage actress is perhaps best known to American audiences for her roles in The Tudors and The Man Who Fell To Earth, found her Reacher experience to be a thrilling change of pace.  “Season three hits the ground running in the most wonderful way,” Cassidy says. “And as a legit fan of the show, I was very excited to get stuck in as well.” Cassidy had to adopt a thick Boston accent for the role of Duffy, a fun challenge that also required some serious work. “I think I’m more of a character actor,but I never want to be a caricature,” Cassidy says. “I’m aware with the Boston accent — I think it’s such a lovely accent — but it could so easily get very big, especially as a Brit doing it. And actually, in learning the accent, I kind of had to learn it big style to get the muscles in my mouth used to it, and just to find her. So the accent was really helpful to find her. But then I wanted to — I worked with a dialect coach to just kind of bring it down, to give you the Duffy that you will see in season three. What drew me to her is that I love her strength and her integrity and how brazen she is and how she will give every single bit of herself to make this situation right, and she won’t apologize for it. She’s uncompromising in this moment.”

The stunt work in Reacher has always been intense, but this season raises the bar with even more brutal and visceral combat. Cassidy, who has prior martial arts experience, relished the challenge. “I had many a fun, fabulous session with stunts,” Cassidy says. “There’s an incredible stunt team on the show that works really, really hard.” Cassidy relished being involved in intricate action sequences, and felt up the task of getting physical. The actress has a background in Taekwondo, which she went in the the production viewing with as an advantage, though she found that there was an element of pulling back and adapting involved to fight like the characters. “I had to kind of unlearn in order to relearn being this Boston brawler, as opposed to a much more kind of refined way of moving,” Cassidy says,

The third season of Reacher is not just a continuation — it’s an escalation in every way, with more action, higher stakes and more complex character dynamics. If you’re among the many enthusiastic followers of the larger-than-life heroes and his exploits, then it’s a good time to start reaching for your remote control.

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