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Reacher Season 3 Star Hall: Zachary Beck "Not an Outright Villain"

Reacher Season 3 star Anthony Michael Hall (The Dead Zone) discusses his character Zachary Beck and how Jack Reacher first enters his world.

January 2024 was a damn fine month for fans of Prime Video's Alan Ritchson-starring Reacher. That's when they learned that the third season would be tackling Lee Child's seventh novel, 2003's Persuader, with Reacher going undercover to rescue an informant held by a haunting foe from his past. A month later, we learned that Anthony Michael Hall had been cast in the role of Zachary Beck. A formidable & successful businessman, Beck is a widow and single father of a 20-year-old son, Richard – who owns a rug import company that Reacher believes is a cover for some shady dealings. During a recent interview with ScreenRant in support of his film Trigger Warning, Hall offered some insights into Beck, how "he's not an outright villain," and how Reacher's and Beck's universes first collide.

"This particular season is based on one of the books called 'Persuader,' which is a type of gun. I'm playing a great character, and a lot of it has been drawn heavily from the book. I read the book a few times now. The character is Zachary Beck, and on the surface, he's like a kingpin of wholesale drug dealing. But the truth is that it's a front; it's a cover for something a little seedier. I don't want to say much more than that, but it was also an interesting dynamic because he's not an outright villain [like] my character of Ezekiel Swan in 'Trigger Warning," Hall shared regarding his third season role. Though you need to check out the full interview for more details, here's a sneak peek at what Hall had to share regarding Reacher's introduction into Beck's world: "The intro into this third season is that Reacher basically saved my son's ass. He's getting roughed up by what we think are a bunch of townies, but ultimately, it's a dirtier group of people…"

In addition to Hall, we also learned back in February that Sonya Cassidy had joined the cast Cassidy's Susan Duffy is an extremely intelligent and tough DEA agent from Boston with a sharp and sarcastic sense of humor. Two months later, we learned that Brian Tee had joined the cast in the series regular role of Quinn. A physically imposing and intimidating character, Quinn was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army whom Reacher (Ritchson) investigated a decade prior when he sold military secrets to hostile nations. In addition, Johnny Berchtold was cast in the series regular role of Richard Beck, a sensitive and artistic college student who lost his mother when he was young and is the only son of businessman Zachary Beck (Hall). Five years ago, he was the victim of a traumatic kidnapping that left him mutilated.

Roberto Montesinos' series regular Guillermo Villanueva is a DEA agent on the verge of retirement who has served as the mentor and father figure of Agent Susan Duffy (Cassidy). Paunchy with bad knees and a good-natured sense of humor, Villanueva loves and cares about Duffy – even though they bust each other's chops all the time. Daniel David Stewart's recurring Steven Elliot is a clean-cut rookie DEA agent – a lovable guy who's fresh-faced, new to the job, and still learning. In addition, we learned that "The Dutch Giant" Olivier Richters (Black Widow, Borderlands) has joined the cast as Paulie – one of Beck's bodyguards and 7 feet, 2 inches of trouble for Jack.

"Neagley [returning] was a strategic decision. The one thing you cannot do on screen that you can in a book is have the inside of somebody's head. Reacher thinks a lot, and there are pages and pages of Reacher puzzling things out. You can't write an eight-minute scene with Alan Ritchson sitting there, thinking. So we needed a secondary character to bolster the exposition," Child explained during an interview with Empire Magazine. As for the series jumping around when it comes to the novels that it's choosing for its season's inspiration, Child explains that it makes perfect sense – and fits with the story they're trying to tell on the small screen. "There was no reason to do them in order. We had massive discussions about it. The thinking went like this: 'Killing Floor' introduces Reacher as a person. So, which book shows his professional life and what he did while he was in the Army? The result was 'Bad Luck And Trouble,'" the author added.

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