Yahoo Lifestyle Reacher Stars Talk Filming Russian Roulette Scene — And Who Struggled to Hide Their ‘Sad’ Feelings About It
The following contains spoilers from the March 13 episode of Reacher Season 3, now streaming on Prime Video.
This week on Prime Video’s Reacher, “Julius McCabe” decided that he had had enough.
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The maid at Bizarre Bazaar magnate Zachary Beck’s estate? An undercover federal agent! Beck’s new head of security, Jack Reacher? Also working undercover! On top of it all, this Reacher guy brilliantly dispatched with the small army of McCabe’s men who’d been sent to hunt down and kill the former MP.
Desperate to make clear his intense dissatisfaction with how Beck’s operation is being run, McCabe — aka Xavier Quinn, a very big (and slightly amnesic) bad from Reacher’s past — had Paulie fetch Beck’s son Richard, who’d already lost an ear to his father’s shady alliances. McCabe handed Richard a revolver with a single bullet and made the kid play several rounds of Russian Roulette, all as his dad helplessly watched, with Paulie’s gun aimed his own head.
“Personally, I was very charged up to do that scene,” Anthony Michael Hall, who plays Zachary Beck, told TVLine. “We happened to be shooting at the back mansion, and we got to the scene late at night…. It was an all-nighter for us, and to maintain that level of energy was a lot of fun. That’s one thing you learn, is sort of how to contain your energy, how to reserve it.”
Hall’s personal way of staying alert during an all-night shoot? Between takes, “All I have to do is step outside and freeze my ass off in Toronto,” he shared. “That is a wake-up!”
“I mean, it was an intense scene. No question,” added Brian Tee, who plays McCabe/Quinn. “It was great to be able to bump heads and then also feed off of each other’s energy, and act and react, because I think that the best scenes come alive that way. We have to be authentic in every single moment to make it really pop, and I think we accomplished that, for sure.”
Hall said the scene was “powerful” in a way that was “reminiscent of Deer Hunter ,” the 1978 Vietnam War drama that saw characters played by Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and John Savage play Russian Roulette at various instances. “We had a great director, Sam Hill — he’s one of the producers, as well, and a fine director — and a great crew, man. Piecing together and shooting a sequence like that when you know it’s a big chunk of material and you’ve got to dig in, it was great. I enjoyed it.”
When Hall went on to observe that “acting is almost a misnomer for what we do, because you’ve got to be as real as you can, and you don’t want to be caught acting,” scene partner Olivier “The Dutch Giant” Richters, who plays Paulie, chimed in to say, “It felt real to me!”
Evoking the term “gentle giant,” Richters then turned to Hall and said, “I felt so sorry for your [on-screen] son, because I was there watching, and I had to keep my straight face [as Paulie]. But it was so sad to see!”
Want scoop on Reacher Season 3 or 4, or for any other TV show ? Shoot an email to InsideLine@tvline.com, and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
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