“Loved working with Tom Cruise but…”: British author Lee Child recalls collaborating with Hollywood icon in ‘Reacher’ franchise

London [UK], February 20 (ANI): Jack Reacher, a character married to sense of duty, was first introduced to the world in 1997 in the novel ‘Killing Floor’, written by veteran British author Lee Child. In the past 30 years, the audience saw the fictional action hero becoming a legend, with Child’s creation getting multiple film and TV adaptations.

While Hollywood star Tom Cruise essayed the titular retired military officer, with a robust physique and a strong sense of justice in Lee’s bestselling novels’ first film adaptations, ‘Jack Reacher’ (2012) and its sequel, ‘Jack Reacher: Never Go Back’ (2016), Alan Ritchson gave his unqiue spin to the character of Reacher in the streaming space.

As Prime Video recently launched the third season of the crime drama ‘Reacher’, Lee Child sat down with ANI for a virtual interaction and opened up about creating the hugely popular protagonist.

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” I hoped I wanted it to be as successful but you can’t expect it because it’s so unpredictable. Nobody knows. And I’m thrilled that it turned out that he is all around the world now and people know him and like him. But it feels very strange. In 1997, I was sitting at my dining room table, writing with a pencil. And now it’s huge. It’s a big thrill for me,” Lee said, expressing gratitude to the audience for showering love on his creation.

He also shared his experience working with Tom Cruise and Alan, who both brought the character of Reacher to screen from the action-packed world forged by Lee’s imagination.

Child acknowledged that he “liked” working with Tom Cruise but he also accepted that the Hollywood icon was a miscast.

“Well, I loved working with Tom. He’s a lovely man and it was a thrill and a pleasure to work with him. But what we needed was the huge size because Reacher, part of his whole personality is that he’s very big. Therefore, he doesn’t really have to worry about certain things. And we needed that, I think, to be convincing,” Lee opined.

Speaking of Alan, he said, “Alan is a great actor and he works very hard. He has captured Reacher perfectly from my point of view. I see him and I think that is what I wanted. That is what I imagined. And so I think that’s a tribute to his skill, not only as an actor, but also as a thinker. He’s read the books, he’s studied the books, he’s worked out what is it that Reacher is, and he has the ability to put that on the screen. And so I think he’s perfect. He’s a little bit handsome.”

Directed by Sam Hill and Gary Fleder, Reacher S3 also stars Maria Sten, Sonya Cassidy, Johnny Berchtold, Roberto Montesinos, Olivier Richters, Brian Tee, and Anthony Michael Hall in pivotal roles. The third season is an adaptation of Lee Child’s Persuader, the seventh in his Jack Reacher series.