Summary

Collider talks with Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette for Reacher Season 4.

Rodriguez-Marquette discusses his 15-minute audition, overnight casting, and being on set within 48 hours.

He reflects on his 30+ years in Hollywood and his opportunities and experiences since joining Reacher.

For over 30 years in film and television, from shows like HBO’s Barry to ensemble casts in comedies like The Girl Next Door, actor Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette has been waiting for a role that allowed him to flex a new set of acting muscles. Finally, that opportunity arrived in the late hours in west Ireland, when he received a barrage of urgent messages during a particularly frightening scene in Gremlins. Nick Santora, the showrunner of Prime Video’s hit series Reacher, needed him to audition for a role — and he needed to get it done in 15 minutes. “My whole life was upended,” he tells Collider’s Steve Weintraub, recalling the whirlwind adventure this phone call set in motion for the next six months. “I love performing, and I’ve never been given a chance like this. I’ll be honest, man, I’ve been waiting 20 years for something like that, and it was awesome.” Alan Ritchson’s action-packed series reclaims the Prime Video throne worldwide for its fourth season. Based on Lee Child’s thirteenth novel, Gone Tomorrow, a chance encounter on a subway goes terribly wrong and hurls Jack Reacher (Ritchson) into a tangled conspiracy, pitting him against ruthless, high-powered enemies. In this interview, Marquette looks back on his career, sharing stories from the set of Bill Hader’s Emmy Award-winning dark comedy series Barry and The Girl Next Door, and reveals the real reason Kyle Newman’s R-rated Revenge of the Nerds remake fell through. He takes us all the way from his 15-minute audition on Friday, to getting cast on Saturday, flying to Toronto on Sunday, and filming on Monday. Marquette also discusses working opposite “Alan Wide-as-a-Mack-Truck Ritchson,” stepping in as New Jersey police officer Jacob Merrick, and the surprising stunt work he tackled on set.
Chris Rodriguez-Marquette Reveals Why the ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ Remake Was Canceled

“I think they were grossly mishandling things.”

Image via 20th Century Studios

COLLIDER: You have been acting since the ‘90s. What is the biggest difference that you’ve noticed from when you started to the way it is now, in terms of the industry? CHRIS RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: Wow, that’s a really good question, Steven. Also, I’m just gonna say I’m so excited to be talking with you. We’ve known each other so long, so it’s awesome to be doing this. I’m gonna throw that in you now. Man, everything’s changed. Everything. I mean, in 30-plus years, there’s the obvious. The entertainment industry as a whole has changed dramatically — where people get their content, the fight for eyeballs. Everything used to be very concentrated and in directions, network television and film. That’s really it. I want to reduce that to you, though. For example, other actor friends have told me, “I used to go in on everything and now I’m just recording or I’m doing something on Zoom.” RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: Well, in that capacity, the biggest change I’ve found is I used to go into rooms, you would develop these relationships as an actor with casting directors because you’re reading really with them first, and then if they think you’re right for the part or they like you or they start to get to know you, then they bring you in for the producers and the writer-director, possibly, and then chemistry reads. And so you’re in this process that’s very alive with other people. It’s very collaborative. That is pretty nonexistent, unfortunately, these days. Where you’re seeing me sit, I move my bookcase and I have a blank wall, and then I record auditions. The art of auditioning for me has turned into, like, “How do I do some really insane, delusional mental gymnastics to get myself to a place where my living room and bedroom and office feels like what I knew for 25-plus years,” which is a room where someone else’s energy and eyeballs helps you feel alive and connected in performing. So, how do I pretend like that’s what I’m doing? So yeah, that’s the biggest change, man. Probably, too, a lot of actors may say you send these audition tapes into the void. It’s into a vortex. The other thing is, hardly ever do you get any response, which is crazy-making, to say the least, for anybody. But that is for sure the biggest change. I was very used to a cadence, times in your life where you felt like you were finding a stride performing. You were able to find a comfort in yourself. The barometer’s gone because it’s you and you. It’d be like a stand-up comedian performing in their living room the whole time when they were used to using an audience. It feeds the performance. So, without that, yeah, that’s the biggest change. I’m going to jump back many years. You did a few weeks of filming on Revenge of the Nerds and then the movie was canceled. I’m curious what happened, and what was it like filming that for you? Because it’s rare for a movie to film for a few weeks, and then they’re like, “No.” RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: It is. From my understanding, it was a side shoot of Fox Studios — Fox Atomic was what it was called — and this was going to be one of their first big films they were going to produce. And to be honest, the film was just wonky to begin with. We got into shooting it for some weeks. You’ve seen The Studio, right? The show, The Studio? There was a lot of that. It was a lot of cooks in the kitchen that were messing with what I think was the best part of it creatively and diluting it and making it bad, and it started to feel like that. I actually didn’t want to do it, initially. I said no to it multiple times. I wasn’t going to do that thing because I looked at the script and I was like, “I don’t know, man. I think there’s a much better script here, and we’re not close to it.” But I’d just worked with Adam Goldberg, the writer, and Kyle Newman, the director, for Fanboys, and they hired two of my closest friends, Andrew McFarlane and Dan Byrd, these two actors, and so it became this really appealing project. But I think on the page, it wasn’t great. But there were little things. Like I said to them, “Cool, I’ll do it, but can you let me come in then and we can rewrite and make this funny and do these things?” They said sure. Adam Goldberg and I sat for weeks. We did this awesome work, I felt. I got to the table read some weeks later, and not a single word of it was in there, and I was like, “What?” So it was a process that was like, I think they were grossly mishandling things. There were days where I would show up on set and suddenly they’re like, “Hey, that scene you’re doing today? Not doing it. We’re doing this scene now.” And I was like, “What?” So it was a lot of that that all culminated. Then, for a second, I think this thing just started to get derailed, and they eventually said, “We’re going to pause for a second, see what we can do.” And I think everyone in charge could not get on the same page and couldn’t prevent it from being derailed. So, we took a pause, and that pause inevitably turned into a fully canceled thing. And that’s that. It’s a real bummer. I have a lot of comments on this, but I’ll keep my mouth shut.
The Team Behind Bill Hader’s ‘Barry’ Had No Idea It Would Become a TV Classic

“I hope it just doesn’t disappear…”

Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette

You did a few episodes on Barry. When you were making it, you couldn’t know what’s going to happen with it. You couldn’t know everyone was going to be watching it. What was it like filming the show? In the first season, did you have any idea, “This could be really good?” And then what was it like when all of a sudden everyone’s watching? RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: It was wild. Great question. You’re spot-on with it. I remember on the page, I got the pilot script and then the audition scenes, and I was going to just go read with Bill Hader. It’s such a massive departure for him, obviously, so the whole project is watermarked with, “Bill Hader is doing this? Wait, what is going on? And Alec Berg? This dramatic, wild, violent thing?” So immediately, there’s a stigma to, like, “How does this get pulled off?” They’re obviously so bright and talented that, to be honest, I met it all with a lot of excitement, but again, we don’t know. So when we were filming, for sure, I think everyone still had this little bit of, I wouldn’t call it anxiety, but an excitement to, “Is this going to work?” We don’t fully know. It’s not an entirely proven concept and/or genre, and everybody involved, there was nobody in there that had done that before, no director, no writer, no producer, no actor. Everyone was sort of fresh into what we were trying to do. And what I found out, also, too, is — Bill and Alec tell great stories about how they came up with the premise — it was really organic. They winged it. They didn’t know exactly how things were going to unfold as they were writing it and coming up with these things. So, there was a lot of real good spontaneity and a good, just on the day, “Be present and see how we can find this cool texture and tone and stuff.” So, it’s awesome. And yeah, I had no idea. Honestly, when I left that, I was like, “It seemed cool. It seemed like a great thing. I hope it just doesn’t disappear or become something popular five years from now after it’s canceled,” you know? So, that’s how I left it feeling. Then for it all of a sudden to become what it did was wild, man. It was amazing. Out of everything you can get fortunate enough to be a part of as an actor and get chosen for, and the right things align, I felt so lucky that I got to be part of a show like that. Bill Hader told me he was hanging out with Guillermo del Toro and some other cool writer-director, and one of them teaches at USC, and he said that they use Barry and the scene that him and I have at the end of the first season to teach television, and they call it part of the golden age of television in America. They use it as a reflection of this beautiful time for television, and he was like, “Isn’t that cool to be a part of it?” I was like, “Yeah, Bill.” [Laughs] I was like, “Yeah, dude.” He’s like, “They’re teaching kids this.” So, yeah, we had no idea. And there were a lot of moments like that. It’s astounding to be a part of. Bill is also a huge cinephile. He is a hardcore cinephile and knows his shit, and it shows when he’s directing on that series.

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You have done a lot of projects in your career. What’s something that you wish more people had seen? Is there one project you’re especially proud of that you would love for people to watch? RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: That’s a great question, too. There’s quite a few, man. I’ve done a ton of things that nobody’s seen, so there’s a lot of stuff that I’d be excited about. I did this really interesting movie with the late, great Anton Yelchin and Vincent D’Onofrio with a really remarkable director named [Vidhu] Vinod Chopra. We did this movie called Broken Horses. I don’t know if the movie fully works, to be honest. I have no idea how to be objective about it, but it was one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had as an actor. I’ve known Anton my whole adolescence and young adulthood. We worked together multiple times, and we had one of the most beautiful experiences I think any two actors could have with each other, and it was so special. We worked with Vincent D’Onofrio, and he was awesome. I could go on and on about the experience of that and the work of it. I was so proud for people to see that work, and like a lot of films, it was just like womp-womp, and it just disappeared, you know? So, that was something I really loved. It was also the weirdest role I have ever played. I played a mentally handicapped hitman, in essence, and Anton and I are brothers, and I work for this gangster, Vincent D’Onofrio. It’s like a Western noir made by an Indian auteur, who came to America to make his first big American film, who’s best friends with Werner Herzog and James Cameron and stuff. He’s this really cool visionary. We did that movie and my family hasn’t even seen it. [Laughs]
Chris Marquette Looks Back on ‘The Girl Next Door’

“It felt like this very familial, super cool adventure we were all on in our lives.”

Chris Marquette and Paul Dano The Girl Next Door

A lot of people know you were in The Girl Next Door. Without getting specific, what’s the funniest thing that happened off camera while making that movie? RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: Besides us as, like, eight 19-year-olds around real porn stars being like, “You talk to her. No, you go talk to her. Shut up. Dude, stop. She’s looking at us. Be quiet.” Like, all of that? Yeah, it was all of that. I mean, Ed Norton came to set. I think one of the writers, Stuart [Blumberg], was a good friend of his, and so Ed Norton suddenly was there, and this is, like, peak Ed Norton, and we were young actors. It was like Primal Fear Ed Norton, so it was wild. That was cool. Probably, the thing that I’ll always remember is almost a year after we filmed, Luke Greenfield, the director, called me up and he said, “Hey, for the DVD, I’ve got this crazy idea. We want to take you to the Vegas porn convention and do a prank show. Would you be down?” And I was like, “Fuck yeah, I’ll be down.” So we went out, him and I and one of the writers, Nick Thomas, who helped punch up the script and stuff, and spent a lot of time with us creatively, and a couple of the guys from the movie — this dude, we called him Mule — we all went out to Vegas and did a prank show in vendor stalls at Vegas. I think it’s on the DVD. We did this crazy thing later that was there. But the truth is, the experience off-set was like, I had known Paul… Dano and I have been friends, still to this day, we’re still tight. We’ve known each other since we were, like, eight years old. We did a show on Broadway together when we were young, for a couple of years, actually. So, the actual friendship between Emile [Hirsch] and Paul and I, and Elisha [Cuthbert], was really genuine. It felt like this very familial, super cool adventure we were all on in our lives. So, the off-set thing was us genuinely hanging out and becoming good friends, which was cool.
Chris Marquette Landed His ‘Reacher’ Role With 15 Minutes to Audition

“I have historically not been given any opportunity like this.”

Reacher Season 4 Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette and Alan ritchson

Jumping into why I get to talk to you, which is Reacher, a lot of people don’t know that you were cast on a Saturday and had to be on set on a Monday. RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: Actually, if you want the little CliffsNotes version, it’s a Friday night in the west of Ireland. It’s like 9:00 p.m. for me. I’m watching Gremlins with my six-year-old daughter. We have Friday night movie night every week, and I forgot how violent that movie was. The mom’s getting clawed by the gremlin; it’s bloody, and she’s getting scared, and I was like, “Ahh!” So it’s a bad moment for me to look down at my phone and see all these crazy phone calls from my agents and manager, and they’re like, “It is an urgent thing! Urgent! Emergency!” I was like, “Emergency? If one of you guys are going to jail, we’re not that close,” was my thought. So I answered the phone, and they said, “Hey, there’s a showrunner for the show Reacher. He needs to talk to you in five minutes, and then maybe you have to audition. We think you probably have to audition. Can you do this in 15 minutes or in five minutes?” And I was like, “What?” My daughter’s here, and I was like, “Do you want ice cream?” And she was like, “Yeah!” And she’s like, “Don’t leave me now. The gremlins!” I was like, “I know, I’m sorry. It’s bad parenting.” Her mom, we’re not together, came and got her, and so I wasn’t neglecting my daughter. [Laughs] Anyway, so yeah, I did this meeting with Nick Santora. I had no idea what this role was. I had not auditioned for it, I hadn’t read it or anything. I didn’t know it existed, and an actor, Jay Baruchel, who’s on Season 5, which is awesome, he’s also an old friend of mine, he had to drop out with a family emergency, and they needed somebody, and they were about to lose tens of millions of dollars in shutting down production — no pressure — and Nick said, “Hey, man, Amazon’s going to probably offer this out to some people. I’m convinced you’re the guy, and I think that this is all kind of some fate, actually, because I think you’d be great at this. Can you give me a tape in 15 minutes?” And I was like, “Nick, I’m in my pajamas, dude. I’m in my boxer shorts.” He was like, “Please.” And I was like, “Of course. Of course, man. I’ll sell a kidney.” So, I made this audition, which was a six-page hugely dramatic scene, which is in the first episode, that scene between Reacher and Jacob in the diner that’s insanely emotional, sophisticated, subtle, crazy. Anyway, I made the audition. Saturday, I got the job; Sunday, I was on a plane to find myself on set Monday morning in downtown Toronto with four city blocks in the middle of the city blocked off, and Alan Wide-as-a-Mack-Truck Ritchson standing there like a movie star. We were setting up for this huge scene between him and I as, like, action heroes planning to go chase bad guys. They put a camera three stories up in the air like a Marvel film, this amazing camera that they use in Marvel films, and then it comes down into our coverage, and they’re like, “And action.” I legit felt like I had just been transported to this weird moment that I was going to wake up from — and then didn’t for six months. So, yeah, that’s the story. It’s very challenging, I would imagine, when you’re talking to the showrunner, and you know you’re incredibly close to landing a big role, and you need to learn the six pages immediately and then perform it. How quickly could you learn that dialogue? Were you like, “I need an hour. I need a little bit of time so I don’t screw up the actual audition?” RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: Well, two things happened. One, he told me legit 15 minutes, because I said, “Can I take an hour or two?” He said I didn’t have it. He said, “I need it in, like, 15,” because that day was ending and Amazon was going to make decisions. Decisions were going to be made. He was like, “I’m trying to force this one, Chris.” To be honest, Steven, I mean, I’ve been acting my whole life; I have historically not been given any opportunity like this. Like, never. I’ll be honest. I didn’t even know fully what the role was. He gave me the soft pitch, the one-minute version. I had no idea it was going to turn into this epic, heroic tale. I really didn’t. So, I just used everything I had, which is the 30 years of experience and 30 years of performing. I can memorize things really fast. I can do it in, like, a couple minutes, usually. My parents used to think I had photographic memory. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can do it quick. So, to be honest, I did zen in the art of being a lifelong actor, which is I said to myself, “Hey, I’ve only got what I’ve got right now, and I can’t lean into being a victim in this regard. I can’t be like, ‘Oh man, this sucks. I don’t have any time. I’m in my boxer shorts.’” I couldn’t complain. I was like, “Hey, man, you’re being given an opportunity. That’s cool. If all this turns into is a weird phone call and a weird thing I performed and nothing happens and it feels like a kick to the face, like a thousand other kicks to the face I’ve experienced as an actor, so what, man?” So I kind of ran the tape and I just lived through it all, and to be honest, I just performed. I love performing, and I’ve never been given a chance like this. I’ve been waiting. I’ll be honest, man, I’ve been waiting 20 years for something like that, and it was awesome. So, I just did that. I just leaned into how weirdly exciting and unexpected that was. Then I told myself, “Just think about it all later. Just perform.” That’s all I did. You send it in, and it’s late at night for you, and you know that they’re making a decision the next day. Did you sleep at all that night? RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: No! Fuck no. I was like this in bed, like one eye closed. No, not in the slightest bit. By the time they called, I was half dead. It was, like, three in the morning my time, or four in the morning. It was crazy. And it was not just getting the job; it was, “Hey, you’re gone for six months, like, tomorrow.” So, my whole life was upended, as well. I’m grateful for it, but yeah, it was a wild 24 hours. It’s a life-changing phone call. So you’re flying to Toronto, and that is when you’re starting to read the book, or are you just reading scripts? What are you doing? Because you’re going to be on set in 48 hours. RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: I’m literally just going over the shooting schedule for that next day that I had and looking at those scenes that I had to film, because there were a lot. I had to jump right into it and film, and so I barely skimmed the script. And as I was skimming the script, it became really overwhelming because I was like, “Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, Jacob.” So I was like, “What the fuck is going on?” And then it’s just like, “Jacob and Reacher in the cop car screaming.” I was like, “What am I doing? Me with Reacher? Me? I look like I work in tech. Are you kidding me?” So, I was experiencing all that. I just wanted to mute it. I was like, “Hey, man, just go concentrate on what I actually have to show up and do. Don’t think about any of this stuff. Don’t think about this job. Certainly don’t think about the fact that lots of people watch this show and you’ve had no time to prepare.”
Chris Marquette Does All His Own ‘Reacher’ Stunts (“Sans One”)

He takes us behind the scenes for Prime Video’s action-packed hit series, and what it’s like working opposite Alan Ritchson.

Reacher Season 4 Christopher Rodriguez-MarquetteImage via Prime Video

You’ve been on a bunch of sets. What surprised you about the making of Reacher that you weren’t expecting? RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: You know what I wasn’t expecting? I wasn’t expecting two major things. The first thing is, these scenes, whether people know this or not, there’s a lot of really long scenes, like long dialogue. They’re like six to eight pages sometimes. So what I wasn’t expecting is they have ironed out how they like to shoot this show and edit this show and direct the show, so what they do is they set up these amazing dollies with these beautiful cameras on cranes, TechnoCranes, and they do a really sophisticated camera move that brings the scene from the master into coverage. It goes from this huge epic scene — lots of people, cars, all kinds of stuff — going on into coverage that is so close that your eyeline has to become a dot on the matte box, and then you have to do, like, a six-page scene, and they’ll run it out like a play. You just do it live, which was so wonderful as a performer. I loved it. Not every actor, to be honest, could do that. It’s a really challenging thing. So, I wasn’t expecting that, those kinds of logistics. I had no idea that’s how you’re going to do something. That’s not traditionally how you do it. So, it was so awesome and exciting. Then the second thing I didn’t know is something I didn’t know, which is I had never been asked to do epic Tom Cruise action stuff, meaning I had to do this one-shot, Steven, where we’re pulling up in a cop car to a crime scene, and the camera starts on a bridge and comes down under a bridge as we’re, like, two blocks away, and then it comes in, and then we had to hit the car in a certain moment. I’ve got to wait for the camera to get out of a certain place so I can open up the car, step into a specific part of the frame, and then walk at the same cadence of a camera that I can only vaguely feel over my shoulder that lands behind a window of another car as I shine a flashlight, and then begin this emotional scene that takes us two pages into a heavy dialogue scene. We started it where I’m in the back of a car two blocks away, and then four minutes later, we’re performing the scene. The dance of that, and the ballet, I had never done anything like that, and it was so fun. I thrived in that space. I loved every second of it. I didn’t know you were supposed to do things like that as an actor. [Laughs] So, that was another thing. It’s hard for me to watch a friend on screen because I see my friend, and when I was watching your work on Reacher, I was actually buying into what you were selling, so props. You have to deliver a lot of emotional stuff this season where you’re bordering on crying, but you’re not. Your character gets put through the wringer. As an actor, are you good for two, three, four takes when you have to deliver something emotional like that, or are you the type of performer that’s like, “Okay, we’ve got to do it 10 times. I got it. Not a problem?” RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: The second. The latter. And I really appreciate you saying that. That’s a really nice compliment. Thank you. And, no, I made this decision, to be honest, where I thought, “I want to not give anyone in the editing room any possibility other than editing in here as good of a performance as I could give.” Because I wasn’t sure. There’s a lot of drama to Reacher in the past, in their previous seasons, and there’s definitely a lot in this season. I don’t know if this show has had a storyline like this, where you’re watching somebody in massive amounts of crisis and trauma just unfold and kind of get unhinged. As written, there was not a ton of clarity as to what they wanted that to look like, so I was left with a lot of my own autonomy to make decisions as to how this is going to flow, and it was really a vulnerable process because I was like, “I don’t know if I’m entirely doing this.” I didn’t have time to think about this, so I’m doing it on the fly. Then, when I did have time to think about it, I made some very clear decisions, and I did that very specifically. I said, “I’m loving this experience so much,” and this is what I do anyway, Steven. So I was like, “I’m going to give every single take.” I’ve worked with a lot of actors, some of the best actors, and, yeah, they give a couple of things, and that’s it. They’re done. That’s all they got. Maybe they need a few to ramp up into it. Me, I was like, “No, I’m going to be ready from the moment I wake up until I’m spent, and go and then be ready again the next day.” So, it was actually really difficult for me sometimes to walk away from a take and be like, “No, no, no, that one was like 90%. Let’s go back and do 100% again.” So, that was my experience.

Image via Prime Video

Even though Reacher is a big-budget show and a big production — it’s the number one returning show on Prime Video — I don’t know how many takes you guys get. I don’t know if it’s one of these things where they’re doing two takes of most scenes and it’s like, “We’ve got to keep going.” What was it like? RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: It does move fast. Because of the technicality stuff, it does. Without giving stuff away, there’s a crazy scene where the character I play goes through awful news after awful news after awful news, and it’s so heavy. We just filmed that one scene all day long. Just one scene. It goes by in, like, four minutes or something, but we filmed it all day. I had a thousand takes to do from a thousand angles. So, there’s that. However, the epic finale of this show, my character has this really cool ending, not the end-end, but the crescendo battle — and I got one take. One take at the very end of everything of all the coverage, because it was 6:00 in the morning, there was traffic being held up right in front of us, they were blocking the headlights out. We were in pouring rain in the freezing cold in wintertime in Toronto. We had been filming this crazy sequence all day, and they couldn’t get to my coverage until the last couple of minutes, and I had one take, and they said, “Here we are.” I was exhausted, and it wasn’t ideal. I was really devastated for a second. I was like, “Wait, I get one?” So, it depended, man. I mean, you’re right. It’s a huge production. There are so many moving parts. There were days where we had a lot of extra time; there were days where we didn’t. For the most part, what I will say is everyone there was so kind to each other. And I think for me in particular, I earned a nice rhythm with Sam Hill and Gary Fleder, the directors, and Nick Santora and the other actors, that if I said, “Hey, can we keep going and try another one?” they were always really happy to give me that space if they could. Alan is obviously enormous. Does meeting him make you immediately reconsider your gym routine? RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: Everything. Yes. It’s the most emasculating handshake you could ever do in an introduction with somebody else. I just remember sweating profusely. I was just like, “He is so much bigger than I thought.” In fact, here’s what I thought. It didn’t make me rethink my gym routine, Steven — I gave it up. I was like, “Why am I trying?” I actually asked him. We were two weeks in, we were busy, we were there all day, and I was like, “Bro, how do you have time to work out?” He was like, “I don’t have time to do anything. I don’t have time to sleep.” I was like, “Yeah, legit. So, when do you work out, dude? Because you don’t wake up like this.” And he went, “Lots of push-ups and pull-ups, man.” And I went, “Alan, if all it takes is for you to do push-ups, what am I doing squatting and deadlifting and running on a treadmill for 10 kilometers?” It was like, “What am I even trying to do if you just get to wake up and do some crunches and you’re an Adonis? I don’t get it.” So, it actually made me really depressed, I’ll be honest. There was a part of me that was like, “Dude, I got nothing. Stop trying, dude. It’ll never, ever happen.” I learned a while ago that with my genetic makeup, there’s nothing the gym can do to fix this. It’s just the way I am. Certain people are genetically blessed. Not to put myself in this, but I was once at a hotel in London, and a very famous actor came in, and I was on a treadmill, and the famous actor came in and was working out next to me, and I looked over and saw the body, and I’m looking at me, and I’m like, “I’m done. I give up. What am I doing here?” RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: Exactly. And there were days, because I would train a lot, actually, while we were doing it and stuff, and I did go to the gym a lot, and there were some days where I would feel real good. I’d wake up, and I was like, “Look at that, man. I feel real good.” And I’d just show up, and it would be like womp, womp, womp. [Laughs] There’s no comparison at all.

Alan Ritchson as Jack Reacher in Reacher.Image via Prime Video

Season 4 features some wild action sequences, including Reacher riding an elevator while hanging underneath it. It was fucking crazy. It was the most insane. It’s so crazy. What was the most insane stunt you got to witness or participate in on set?

RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: That one was amazing, because also, too, it’s not just the riding; it’s the look-back, hang, and watch as you just sort of disappear. That was a moment — there were probably 10 of these during the season — where we would do something, and they’d go, “And cut.” And then it would just be silence, and everybody starts going about their business, and I would just go [starts clapping]. I was like, “I’m sorry. I know you guys are all used to this because it’s Season 4 for you, but what the fuck is that?” It was awesome. Yeah, there was a lot, man. There’s a huge car chase sequence that I’m a part of. I’m driving the car — fucking crazy — and we were all sitting around, months into filming, everybody’s really tired, but still enthusiastic, and we’re going to do this crazy day of a lot of stunts. I just remember all the actors, everybody’s on their phones, just sipping coffee and stuff, and I showed up, and I looked around, and everyone’s heads are down. I was like, “Guys, guys, guys, guys, guys!” I was like, “They built a bridge in a cornfield. A bridge!” No one will know this is sitting in a cornfield. It’s gonna look like it’s raised above a river, and it’s massive. It’s a real bridge. It is an exact replica of some bridge in Jersey, and I was like, “This is crazy! And we’re going to get to film on it all day with drones and stunt cars.” I had moments like that where I just couldn’t believe the setting I was in, and that I was even being asked to be a part of it. So, there was that. There was another great moment. I think it was only a month in, and it was 4:00 in the morning on Friday. We’d been filming all week, so it got later and later. The actors kind of fell asleep around, like, 1:00 at one point, and I was just sort of woken up. It’s like 4:00 a.m., “Hey! Next shot, next shot.” They already blocked it. I’m like, “Okay. What’s going on?” They’re like, “So Alan’s going to go get rigged up. He’s going to jump out the window, and then you just run over and watch him jump out the window.” I was like, “What floor are we on again?” And someone’s like, “Six.” I was like, “We’re on the sixth floor? You’re jumping out the window?” “And action!” I just watched as they quickly rig him up, and then this guy — I just watched him wake up from a nap. I was like, “Hey, good morning, dude,” as a joke, and he was like, “Hey, good morning.” So they were barely awake, and then he just does this crazy stunt, and he goes out a window and hangs from it, and then he has to wait for a camera. I didn’t even know where the camera was! I was like, “Am I in frame?” And the camera’s outside somewhere, and then it does this huge move and comes into coverage for him again, and then he has to count it off, and then he has to drop himself out this window, and then I come running into frame. Sydelle Noel and I come running in, and I didn’t even know where he was going to be. I was like, “Did he just die?” We don’t know what the stunt is. I had a lot of moments like that. They’re like, “And cut,” and I was like, “What is going on? What did we just do?”

Image via Prime Video

I’ve spoken to a few people who worked on Mission: Impossible with Tom Cruise, and watching him, they’re like, “Is he dead? What just happened?” because of the crazy shit he did. RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: It’s just so nuts. There’s a lot of fight scenes. I mean, that stunt team is amazing. This guy, Buster [Reeves], heads the whole thing. He played Batman and Superman and Troy. He’s done all this stuff. I think he’s the Batman in Batman Begins, the poster — the big one where he’s coming through the ceiling. That’s Buster. Anyway, he’s amazing, and so is everybody else. But I saw, “Oh, Alan’s doing all his own stunts, Tom Cruise style.” So my first couple stunts, I was like, “You guys gonna let me do those stunts?” They’re like, “No way, pal.” And then I begged, I was like, “Let me just do the one stunt. Please. Come on, you guys.” And they let me do my first stunt, and it went great. They were like, “Umm…” And my poor stunt guy was like, “Well, I guess I’m just going to be sitting around.” I was like, “Yep! Sorry, Jeff.” And then I did all of them sans one that was genuinely dangerous and almost took out Jeff’s eye, which was really crazy. But yeah, I got to do them all, as well, and that was a wildly unexpected part of this whole thing for me, too. It’s interesting because I could understand why you’re like, “I want to do this stunt. It’s going to look better,” but there is also the truth that if you get hurt, production is shutting down. It’s really bad. So I understand the balance between an actor wants to do it and production is like, “You are not doing this. You’re too valuable if you get hurt.” RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: Yeah, or my daughter grows up without a dad. And that’s what happened with that one stunt. They said, “Look, it could be potentially dangerous. We’re just going to film it with the stunt double first. If it’s not crazy, you can do it.” Cool. We filmed this thing, and, yeah, a banister breaks apart wood, and they slowed it down, and we saw this wood chip, this big piece, like a stake that you would need to kill a vampire, here, hitting his eye as he’s falling to the ground. There’s no plan for that. An inch to the left, it’s a guy’s eyeball, or that’s me, and I’m dead. And again, the stunt team goes through the most insane amount of thought and procedures and expertise to make all of these decisions and things, so it’s all informed. I don’t want it to all sound like some flimsy, like, “Yeah, let that guy get in the helicopter! Try to park it.” That’s not at all what happens. There’s a trust that’s earned and things within parameters. They’ve set that precedent. Alan has, in particular. He set that precedent with the show of, like, “No, man, I want to do it. I want it to look real.” So I heard that, and I was like, “Yeah, me too. I want it to look real.” So every punch — I’m not punching, I’m getting punched in the face for the most part, but I was like, “I’ll take it. I’ll take all the hits.” And they’re like, “You sure?” I was like, “Yeah, yeah, let’s do it.” So, yeah, I jumped into that, and it was awesome. So fun. Also, we should emphasize that every stunt team, especially on something like this, is rehearsing in slow motion and with animatics. They’re doing everything they can to make it as safe as possible, but you are still doing something that is dangerous. RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: Exactly. There’s no way around that. They plan for every intangible thing and every possibility. And yes, we rehearse. There isn’t a single thing we didn’t rehearse dozens of times prior. Every weekend, every day off I had that I wasn’t filming, I was rehearsing stunt stuff. Every actor was. Some of those actors were rehearsing for four months for certain fight sequences. So, yeah, you do all of that. But you’re right, at the end of the day, they call action, and you just don’t know. I mean, we got shot at a lot. You blow some shit up with some fake bullets, shit goes flying, man. Stuff hit people. It does some stuff.
One Blink-and-You’ll-Miss-It Moment Proves Alan Ritchson’s Passion for ‘Reacher’

“This guy is as thoughtful as he can be about his role.”

Reacher Season 4 Alan ritchson and Christopher Rodriguez MarquetteImage via Prime Video

Which scene with Alan taught you the most about how he approaches Reacher? RODRIGUEZ-MARQUETTE: To be honest, it’s a completely inconsequential scene. You could watch that show this season 500 times and this scene, I would name it, and you’d still be like, “What scene?” There’s just this scene where we all end up having to go to a hotel room to get on a computer to look for some information. There’s a little scene where we’re all headed up the elevator in this hotel to go access a hotel room, and we just had to shoot this little sequence where he’s in the elevator with us. We don’t know where we’re going exactly, what decisions he’s making, we’re just along for his ride. He has to push the elevator buttons each floor and get out on each floor and look, and then get back in and decide, “Nope, we’re going to go up to the next floor.” And we don’t know why he’s making the decision. So anyway, we’re just standing there, and I watched Alan. We did this little take where Alan had to pop in and pop back out, and what happened was we started doing it, and each time he would come back in, he would just hit the elevator button without looking at it and do his thing, and then he stopped after the third take, and we were about to move on, and he said, “Oh no, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. I keep hitting the button like I know exactly where it is, but I shouldn’t know where it is. I gotta be able to look at the button and then do this.” It’s the smallest little detail, but he was right. I was like, “Oh, right.” We’re standing in this elevator, so now we know where the button is. He’s been rehearsing pressing it. But the guy doesn’t actually know. There’s a subtlety to that that he should be able to look. I know it sounds really dumb, but to me, literally afterwards, we were walking down the hall, and I said, “Alan, I’m so impressed with how you approach this as an actor.” I was like, “Because here you are with so many things to do, and that’s a real actor’s thought,” which is, “Oh, I need to remember that I actually don’t know. I’m not familiar with this elevator. I can’t just press a button without looking. I don’t know this thing.” That’s a casual, small little detail, and that, to me, showed that this guy is as thoughtful as he can be about his role in the project and everything in it. It was really inspiring. It’s nice. I just tried to match that to the best of my abilities, and it made for a really cool working relationship between him and I, as well, because we both kind of thrived off of, like, “Yeah, be as thoughtful as you can, man.” You should know how you pick up a cup or how you load a gun or don’t know how — all these little things. So, that was the most impressive thing, quite honestly, outside of jumping out a window at 4:00 a.m. Reacher Season 4 is available to stream on Prime Video.

Release Date

February 3, 2022

Network

Prime Video

Showrunner

Nick Santora

Directors

Omar Madha, Carol Banker, Julian Holmes, Lin Oeding, M.J. Bassett, Norberto Barba, Stephen Surjik, Thomas Vincent

Writers

Cait Duffy