Reacher Star Says He Wrecked His Body For the Series

The second season of Reacher concluded on Amazon’s Prime Video this week and starred Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher, the character that was created by British author Lee Child for a series of crime thriller novels. In honor of the season finale, Ritchson was interviewed by GQ and talked about everything from his opinion on the moniker “Dad TV” to prepping his body to play the notoriously large titular character. 

“I want to clarify one thing because in every interview someone says ’30 pounds of muscle.’ I put on 30 pounds! I don’t know how much of that was lean muscle,” Ritchson explained. “I went from 205lb to 235lb in eight months, I was eating a tonne. I don’t think all of that was muscle. A good chunk was – a little more than half, maybe. But I didn’t take steroids, I didn’t take testosterone. There was only one way to get where I needed to be and that was hard work. I fucking wrecked my body, dude. It was too much. I didn’t have time to heal. I would strain something and I was like, ‘I don’t care! I’m working through it!’ I suffered the consequences.”

He added, “When I finished [season one], I needed surgery. I couldn’t breathe well. I got a blood panel done and found out I had no testosterone left [because of overtraining]. My doctor was like, ‘You need to be on testosterone.’ [Testosterone therapy] was a real gift because now I’m able to easily maintain that size. My workouts are short and sweet – maybe 30 minutes a day. There’s no doubt that people place a big emphasis on his size, but to me, the character is much more than that. The heart of the character really lies in his sardonic sense of humour, which is incredibly fun to play. He’s a smart guy, and isn’t afraid to be a smart-ass. That underlying humour is what brings depth to him as a character, and also keeps audiences entertained.”

Is Reacher Getting a Season 3?

Before the second season of Reacher premiered on Prime Video, the streamer announced the series had been renewed for a third season. Ritchson returned to production this fall and shared news of the renewal with a video from the set. During an interview with ComicBook.com, Ritchson teased what fans can expect from the titular character when the show returns.

“I can’t say too much about Season 3, but I will say there’s a lot of classic Reacher stories which are just adventures that he gets sucked into in a big way,” Ritchson told us. “And we get to enjoy Reacher in a new world. It may not have anything to do with family, with his past, he’s just living that adventure out and that’s kind of the direction that we’ve gone and it seems to really be working.”

Stay tuned for more updates on Reacher, which is now streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video.