‘I created Reacher – we couldn’t make the same Tom Cruise mistake twice’

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In any other world, casting Tom Cruise – arguably one of the last great movie stars – is a major coup. But not, as it turned out, in the Reacher franchise.

When the Mission Impossible star, 62, landed the part of Jack Reacher in the film adaptations, there was an unignorable swell of disgruntlement from fans who complained he did not match the action hero’s physicality.

For in Lee Child’s books, Reacher is painted as a bulking heft of a human – ‘extremely broad’, standing at 6’5″, with ‘hands the size of dinner plates’ and blond – not exactly descriptors you would apply to Cruise.

This was at the forefront of Child’s mind when casting Alan Ritchson, 42, as Reacher for the Amazon Prime Video series, he tells Metro ahead of the launch of season 3.

The author, 70, says he feels ‘very good’ that now fans associate the nomadic vigilante to Ritchson rather than Cruise – not wanting to make the same ‘mistake’ for a second time.

Child explains: ‘I mean, for instance, in one of the Tom Cruise movies, there’s a line where the detective goes to the motel and says, “I’m looking for a guy who could kill someone with one punch,” and they point to Tom Cruise, which is not really all that plausible. Whereas if you point to Alan, yes, it is plausible.

Fans complained over the casting of Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher (Picture: Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock) Child said he was conscious of the backlash to Cruise when casting Ritchson as Reacher in the TV series (Picture: Jasper Savage/Prime)

‘So finally, we’ve incorporated the physicality in a way that really matches the character.’

He adds: ‘The show is Reacher. He carries the whole thing. It has to be right. And especially after the pushback we got from Cruise, I thought, “This is totally crucial now. We can’t make two mistakes.”

‘It was absolutely important and Alan was just right.’

While in hindsight, Cruise may have been miscast as Reacher, Child says it was still a ‘pleasure and privilege’ to work with him.

‘I love Tom,’ he enthuses. ‘He’s a super guy, a smart person, and we were good friends. We worked together very well.’

Cruise, however, wasn’t Child’s only niggle when it came to Reacher. After watching season one of the Amazon Prime Video series, he felt the character was slightly missing the mark.

Fans had complained that Cruise did not match the description of Reacher in the books (Picture: Paramount/Kobal/REX) Child said that Ritchson is ‘just right’ for Reacher (Picture: AP)

‘I wanted to make Reacher a little more dishevelled,’ he says. ‘I felt in season one he was a little bit “casual Friday” the way he was dressed and I wanted him scruffier and dirtier; especially for season two, where the contrast between his life post-army and his friend’s life post-army has been so is so radically different. I wanted that contrast more obvious.

‘I think Alan is very comfortable being scruffy, so the scruffy Reacher was something that came naturally to him.’

Child was also cautious to tone down the brutal and extensive mutilation of a character whose name I will suppress to avoid spoilers as described in Persuader, the book adapted for the third season. It is so graphic that Reddit user pre_nerf_infestor said the prose was ‘actually nauseating’.

The writer explains: ‘You just instinctively step it back for the screen because it’s a very different thing writing it as the reader can internalise it to the degree that they find acceptable. There’s some kind of automatic reaction that they’ll either picture it or they won’t, as if it’s their subconscious discretion, whereas if you portray it on the screen, it’s there and you can’t unsee it.

Child believes Reacher is more ‘mum TV’ (Picture: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for PEN America)

‘And so, yeah, we tried to be a little bit tasteful about it.’

In part for its scenes of violence, the Amazon Prime TV adaptation has been described by many as the pinnacle of ‘dad TV.’

Reacher sits alongside other shows like Yellowstone that have been termed as such for featuring ‘male protagonists who go about their lives in problem-solving mode’, according to Vulture.

It’s a label that Child partially refutes. ‘I think it’s equally “mum TV” in as much as the thing that has surprised me most over the years is how closely women identify with Reacher as an example of how they would like to live,’ he explains.

‘I must admit that at the beginning, I thought this whole idea of being free of responsibility and free of commitment was going to be largely a masculine thing, but it turns out it’s equally a feminine thing – that women would love to just walk away from everything and be somewhere else tomorrow.

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‘So it’s equally “mum TV” – I mean, probably especially “mum TV” because of the pressures that mums are under, they would love to abandon it all and walk away.’

Reacher has already been commissioned for a fourth season although no further details on the plots have been announced. It’s not even been confirmed which book is getting the TV adaptation treatment. So far, there are 30 books in the series and there’s no end in sight. Child, however, no longer writes them and instead has passed the mantle onto his brother, Andrew Child.

Yet selecting which book to turn into a TV series is a ‘very weird and amorphous’ process, Child explains. ‘ It’s a bit like you go to a restaurant, you’re looking at the menu and there’s 10 items that you want, and so you just pick one.

‘The main producer called Don [Granger] and the showrunner called Nick [Santora] and I get together on the phone, and it’s a bit like discussing what to add for dinner tonight.

‘It can be whatever, and there are 30 books, so we’ve got a wide choice, and it’s just what we feel like in the moment.

Reacher is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.

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