Lee Child, writer: ‘Jack Reacher would be opposed to a lot of Trump’s policies because they are cruel’

Jack Reacher, or simply Reacher, is a former U.S. Army military police major who roams the country. By choice, he has no possessions except for a folding toothbrush, an ATM card, and a passport. He has a strong sense of duty to “do the right thing,” which leads him to step in to help people in need, taking odd jobs, and investigating suspicious, often dangerous situations, some of which are personal in nature.

The mind behind Reacher’s adventures is James Dover Grant, better known as British author Lee Child, 70. For almost 30 years, this character — acclaimed by critics as “the thinking man’s action hero” — has not only sold more than 100 million books worldwide, he has but also made the leap to film with Tom Cruise as the lead and, more recently, venture into television with a series entitled Reacher, which has just released its third season on Prime Video.

After two seasons, which adapted the books Killing Floor (1997) and Bad Luck and Trouble (2007), Reacher, now played by Alan Ritchson, returns for a third installment. This time, he dives into the dark underworld of a vast criminal enterprise while attempting to rescue a DEA informant. In the process, he uncovers a world of secrets and violence that forces him to confront problems from his past.

Child began his writing career in an unexpected way: he was fired from his job as presentation director at Granada Television, where he had worked for 18 years. Returning home from a holiday in 1995, he found a voicemail informing him of a company restructuring and that his severance check was waiting for him in the mailbox.

“I thought, ‘What am I going to do next?’ I was a kind of worried, like normal people are,” Child says via video call. “But then I came up with the idea of inventing a character who had also lost his job. Reacher was in the U.S. Army, and after the end of the Cold War, the army got smaller, and he was kicked out. I wanted to use him as a kind of consolation for me. He was not worried. He didn’t care. He was happy. He was free, he didn’t have to do what he was told anymore. And I wanted to make myself feel better. It also made other people feel better, people who were in the same situation as me.”

The writer, who has 29 Reacher books under his belt and is the executive producer of Reacher, finds the evolution of his character over the three seasons fascinating. By adapting the books almost chronologically, actor Alan Ritchson was able to learn and discover the character in his new life on the small screen, much like the production team.

“In season two, Reacher was a lot more settled. More secure. He knew what he was doing. And that continues in season three. He’s a man of tremendous self-confidence. He’s putting himself in a very dangerous situation, but he thinks he’s good enough to deal with it,” says Child.

In this third season — which consists of eight episodes like its predecessors and is based on the book Persuader (2003) — the protagonist faces a new challenge: a character even more imposing than Reacher himself. This antagonist matches Reacher’s stature, standing at 1.95 meters tall and weighing between 100 and 110 kilos of pure muscle.

“Normally Reacher is the dominant character. He’s big, strong, capable, tough. Nothing threatens him. So I invented this guy who is a giant, full of steroids, angry and huge,” explains Child. “And I thought that’s the challenge. In season three, the way thrillers work, we know he’s going to have to take on this big guy at some point. We know there’s a big fight coming. Can he deal with someone much bigger than him? That’s one of the tensions in the show, and we have to wait and see.”

Reacher, Child explained in a 2018 interview, was not only a product of being fired from his job but also a reflection of a sense of justice that he had developed since his school days in Birmingham during the 1960s. His height and strength made him the defender of the underdogs on the playground. “I always hated bullies. I get angry at arrogant people who think they can get away with anything. I really do,” he shared at the time.

Decades later, that same sense of justice remains with Child, who imagines how a man with strong moral convictions — someone who believes in justice and institutions — would react to the unconstitutional actions of Donald Trump’s administration.

Reacher, having served in the military, knows that institutions endure regardless of the people in charge, Child explains. Child believes his character would feel the same way about Trump, that while the United States does not have “great people” in leadership at the moment, “the institution is probably stronger than the people in it.” “Reacher is always on the side of the little guy, the people who need help and protection. He would be opposed to a lot of the policies of this administration because they tend to be cruel to the little guy. And by nature, he sticks up for them,” he says.

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