‘Reacher’ Creator Lee Child Explains Neagley’s Expanded Role in the Series
Reacher needs someone to bounce off, after all.
THE BIG PICTURE
The addition of the character Sergeant Frances Neagley is a strategic decision to provide exposition and engage the audience in a visual medium, as Reacher’s internal monologues in the novels are difficult to portray on screen.
The Reacher novels can be read in any order, which influenced the decision to adapt different books out of order for the TV series. The goal is to build depth and complexity for the character of Reacher.
The third season of Reacher is currently being produced in Toronto, and the show can be streamed on Prime Video.
Although Reacher is a one-man band, the show has been bolstered by the presence of additional characters to bounce off Alan Ritchson‘s turkey-fisted vigilante, and none has made more of an impact than Maria Sten‘s Sergeant Frances Neagley — who will return for the upcoming third season. Neagley is portrayed, in the series, as Reacher’s closest confidante, the one he goes to if he needs answers. But that’s not the case in Lee Child‘s novels, so why is Neagley so much more involved in the TV series?
There is a tacit acknowledgment that Reacher is a lone wolf, and a very internalised figure. That’s something you can get away with in a series of novels. But internal monologues are hard to do if you want to keep the audience engaged in a visual medium, so the best thing to do is to have a Basil Exposition character, which is where Neagley comes in.
Although the character isn’t a regular in the novels, and doesn’t even appear in Killing Floor, upon which the first season was based. Child, speaking with Empire, expanded on the reasons behind it.
“Neagley 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.”
In What Order Are The ‘Reacher’ Books Adapted?
As for the ordering of the series — it kicked off with Killing Floor as the basis for the first season, which was the first book, but then Season 2 was suddenly book 7 — there’s a reason for that too. The Reacher novels can be read in any order, to a point, without a great deal of further knowledge. The logic behind that decision-making came down to something simple: building Reacher out as a character and adding depth to the big ol’ beefcake.
“There was no reason to do them in order,” Child says. “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.”
Reacher streams on Prime Video. Production of the third season is currently underway in Toronto.
