These days, Alan Ritchson is synonymous with Jack Reacher. He’s been playing the character in Prime Video’s book-to-screen adaptation for four seasons, and he’ll continue to do so for at least two more, as Season 5 is in production and the series got an early renewal for Season 6. However, before he was cast, Joe Manganiello was up for the part, and he is alleging that he might not have gotten it because of Tom Cruise and their connections to Sofía Vergara. Manganiello claimed he was a frontrunner to play Jack Reacher in Reacher in his memoir Bloodlines (via Page Six). Apparently, he met with Don Granger, a Skydance Media exec, in 2020 about the part, and they spoke about things like Tom Cruise not fitting the physical description of Jack Reacher. Along with that, the exec reportedly told the Magic Mike actor that he was “the closest thing to Jack Reacher that I’ve ever met in my entire life.” However, ultimately, he didn’t get the part. Why? Well, Manganiello thinks Cruise might have had something to do with it, as he wrote: An executive producer [on the show], could have potentially come in over the top and vetoed my being cast on account of Sofía.It’s worth noting that Tom Cruise is not listed as an executive producer on the show Reacher, per IMDb. He did produce his own Jack Reacher movies; however, he has no credited involvement with the Amazon series that features Alan Ritchson as the titular character. However, Cruise reportedly dated Vergara for a short time in 2005. Then, the Modern Family actress was with Manganiello from 2014 to 2023. The pair got married in 2015, and then their divorce was announced in 2023. So, at the time of Reacher’s development, he was still with Vergara. Again, it’s not known what exactly played into this choice; Manganiello stated what he and his team thought happened. He also noted in his memoir that Jennifer Salke, who was the head of Amazon MGM Studios from 2018 to 2025, was not happy about potentially casting him as Reacher because she was apparently not a big part of the decision-making process. The actor wrote: [Salke] felt that she was being railroaded into a final decision made by a group of primarily male producers that she didn’t feel part of.The actor wrote that showrunner Nick Santora, Skydance owner David Ellison and Lee Child, the author of the Jack Reacher books, were supposedly impressed by him. However, Salke was allegedly very upset that she wasn’t part of his casting process. Ultimately, Alan Ritchson earned the role of Reacher. During a conversation with Empire, he said that the audition process was “very competitive and took over a year.” In fact, the first time he tried out for the part, “they passed on [him] and everybody else that auditioned.” Eight months later, the Fast X actor got called in again to audition in front of a new casting director with a new script, and then he was officially offered the part.Manganiello’s account of his Reacher experience does not mention Ritchson or the audition process. So, it’s not fully clear how all this fits together. However, the True Blood actor and his team assumed Tom Cruise and the fact that both men are connected to Sofía Vergara might have had something to do with it. The fact of the matter is Alan Ritchson is Jack Reacher now. So, if you’d like to see him in Reacher, you can stream it with an Amazon Prime subscription. If you want to see what Joe Manganiello is up to, you can stream Season 2 of One Piece with a Netflix subscription and read his new book, Bloodlines, now.