Alan Ritchson, known for his role as Jack Reacher, has shared the intense physical toll the season 3 finale of Reacher took on him.
The actor, who performs his own stunts, admitted that the final fight scene left him exhausted for a day and a half.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ritchson explained that the idea behind the fight was to show his character, a retired military police officer, getting “ragdolled for five minutes straight.”
Alan Ritchson went on to say that he insisted on performing the stunt himself to make it feel more real for the audience, even though the team warned him about the risks.
“You’re going to get killed, and we’re not going to do that because it’s going to hurt you too much,” Ritchson recalled them saying. But despite their concerns, he pushed ahead with his decision.
After being “slammed through the table so hard,” Alan Ritchson realised the extent of the impact. “I went through it into the seventh circle of hell,” he joked.
The intense scene left him knocked out for a day and a half. When he woke up, he had to assure his children, who were on set, that he was fine, even though the experience was one of the worst moments of his life.
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Alan Ritchson shared that filming the entire fight scene took three weeks to complete, with the fight itself lasting only a few seconds. “That was one, three-second beat in 28 minutes of content,” he explained.
Aside from the tough fight sequence, Ritchson also recalled the challenges of filming a particularly difficult water scene. He had to swim through tough waters as part of a midnight escape during an undercover mission.
“That water work was pretty tricky,” Alan Ritchson said, adding that crawling naked across cold, wet rocks wasn’t much fun for anyone involved. But, as he put it, they did it because they love the show.
Season 3 of Reacher is based on Lee Child’s Persuader, the seventh book in the Jack Reacher series. The first two seasons adapted Killing Floor and Bad Luck and Trouble, respectively.
Although the show has already been renewed for a fourth season, it has not yet been revealed which of the 29 books in the series will be adapted next. Fans of Reacher are eagerly awaiting what’s to come.