Alan Ritchson talks 'Reacher' Season 3, his ice cream obsession and working out in the cold

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Most Torontonians may still be digging out from one of the worst snowstorms the city has faced in years, but Alan Ritchson, star of Reacher, which films in the city, thinks that locals should embrace the cold.

And if you’re one of those fair-weather people when it comes to exercise, Ritchson is here with some late-February encouragement.

“The body loves a little cold,” says the 6-foot-3 actor, who boasts biceps the size of basketballs. “If there’s a blizzard, get out and run. Frozen lake? Jump in. Ice baths are good for you. What are you waiting for?”

Ritchson, 42, who also spent three seasons playing the crime-fighting Hawk on Titans (also partially shot in Toronto), won’t be back in town until later this spring when shooting on Season 4 of Reacher gets underway, long after the snow has melted. But when we spoke to him ahead of Reacher’s debut exploits back in 2022, he assured me he wasn’t afraid of frigid temperatures.

“I’ve been working in Toronto for years … The cold blustery days there, I would run in the snow. There’s no way you can stay still or slack off when it’s 20 below. It motivates you to keep moving and moving fast. So I love running in the snow up there and training in the cold weather,” he said at the time.

Most of Reacher’s third season — which is based on Persuader, the seventh instalment in Lee Child’s best-selling Jack Reacher book series — was shot last spring and summer in and around the GTA with the new story following the titular justice-dispensing drifter as he infiltrates a smuggling ring that is threatening the life of an undercover informant.

“Persuader is constantly on the top 10 favourites among Reacher fans, so it just felt like a good place to jump into for the third season,” Ritchson says.

Ritchson, who Child said “nailed” his vision of what Reacher should look like onscreen after Tom Cruise played the bruising hero in two feature films, says this latest batch of episodes taps into one of the hulking vigilante’s most beloved character traits.

“The first season (which adapted 1997’s Killing Floor) was about Reacher’s real family — his brother and what his family went through,” Ritchson says. “Season 2 (which revamped 2007’s Bad Luck and Trouble) was about his adopted family. We wanted to show what it was like for Reacher to reunite with people from his past. But this one, we wanted to take it back to the roots of what we love about Reacher, which is the fact that he’s a lone wolf. We wanted people to see what it’s like when he’s on a mission on his own.”

He’s joined this time around by Maria Sten’s Frances Neagley, a private investigator who is one of Reacher’s closest friends, and newcomers Anthony Michael Hall, Sonya Cassidy, Brian Tee, Johnny Berchtold, Roberto Montesinos, Daniel David Stewart and Olivier Richters.

The TV thriller has proven to be a monster hit with fans. Season 2 became Prime Video’s most-watched series following its premiere in December 2023. And when it returned this week, Season 3 debuted with a perfect 100% favourable rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Ritchson was initially wary of playing the hero. Reacher’s solitary nature was antithetical to who he is in his real life as a husband and father of three.

“I started on Blue Mountain State that was my first series and that was a loud, physical character. He moved the world and air around him a lot, and I’m more comfortable in that space,” Ritchson says. “It took a lot for me to be OK with being so still and stoic … I was questioning if audiences would be bored watching me.”

But he’s unlocked a portrayal that “works” for the series’ legion of fans in a way that he’s comfortable with.

“Now, his stoicism is one of my favourite things to do. Sometimes I’ll just stand there and make people squirm a little bit because they expect me to speak and I’ll just let it hang there because that’s what Reacher does. So it’s gone from being uncomfortable to one of my favourite things to do on the show,” he smiles.

As he travels the country with only a toothbrush, in each adventure Reacher encounters evildoers and puts things right. He’s the ultimate aspirational hero. But even though “he won’t stop until justice is done,” Ritchson says there’s one new attribute he had trouble getting onboard with this time around — Reacher’s insistence that when it comes to ice cream, it’s vanilla or chocolate and “everything else is nonsense.”

“There’s a lot I agree with Reacher, but that’s not one of them. I want it all,” he laughs. “Cookies in the ice cream, Moose Tracks, Rocky Road, marshmallows, sprinkles, colour, confetti, syrup.”

So he had a difficult time reconciling this newfound revelation of a character he hopes to keep playing for many more years to come.

“What I want, is one of those sundaes like they have at Outback Steakhouse and there’s 45 different types of ice cream in it,” Ritchson says. “So, it was really hard for me to say that line because I didn’t believe it.”

The first three episodes of Season 3 of Reacher is now streaming on Prime Video. New episodes drop every Thursday.

mdaniell@postmedia.com