“Where are we going to find that guy?”: Lee Child shares he had one concern for Reacher Season 3

Ever since it was announced that Reacher Season 3 would be based on Lee Child’s novel Persuader, fans were excited to see how the makers would come up with the perfect casting for Paulie. In the book, Paulie is described as a giant man who guards Zachary Beck, the criminal whose enterprise Jack wants to infiltrate.

Lee Child, who serves as an executive producer on the series, has revealed he was also concerned about how the production team would find an actor who would be as big as Paulie. The author said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly:

“Where are we going to find that guy? That was the thing that I thought, ‘How are they going to do this?’ It was literally an international search.”

The search finally ended when Olivier Richters was cast in the role. The Dutch bodybuilder and actor is now receiving praise for his portal of Paulie in Reacher Season 3.

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Lee Child was worried about Paulie’s casting in Reacher Season 3

In his interview, Lee Child opened up about how he came up with the character of Paulie. The author said he wanted Jack Reacher to face off against someone who is bigger than him:

“As you know, Reacher is a big, tough guy. He can take anybody on, but I wanted to have him face an opponent that would be a real problem. So I dreamed up this huge, steroid-filled, bodybuilding, seven-foot guy, big enough to really be worrisome for Reacher.”

Child added that while it was easy for him to create the character since he only had to write his description in the book, the creators of Reacher were in real trouble as they had to find someone who could match that description:

“That's easy to do as a book writer because you just type different words — costs me nothing, but for TV, they actually had to find an actor that could be that guy, a foot taller than Alan Ritchson, a hundred pounds heavier.”

Expressing his satisfaction over Olivier Richters’ casting in Reacher Season 3, Child said:

“We finally found him in the Netherlands and he looks the part, he plays the part, he is a scary dude.”

Richters is 7 ft 2 in tall and has already displayed his acting talent in films like Black Widow, The King's Man, and Borderlands, which made him an ideal choice for the role. The actor’s casting was announced in May 2024, and he was introduced in the show in the first episode of season 3, which came out on February 20, 2025.

Reacher Season 3 drops new episodes on Prime Video on Thursdays.