At long last, Reacher finally arrives on Prime Video tomorrow with all eight installments of its acclaimed freshman season. The show is based on Lee Child’s first Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor.
Ahead of its release, we caught up with the fan-favorite Harvey Guillén to chat about his role as Jasper, the Margrave police department's medical examiner, who plays a key role in helping Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson), Oscar Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin), and Roscoe Conklin (Willa Fitzgerald) get to the bottom of the this string of murders.
Plus, we also got a big update regarding What We Do in the Shadows season four and which animated sequel Guillén is lending his voice to later this year.
Check out the video interview below, and keep scrolling for the full transcript!
ROHAN: How would compare Jasper to Guillermo from What We Do in the Shadows? Are they at all similar or just very different people?
HARVEY: They’re very different, in the way that Jasper is a small town boy who wants to stay local, he doesn’t like excitement, he doesn’t long for any kind of whistles and horns. He wants to live a quiet life and that’s the complete opposite of Guillermo, he’s only a familiar and living a quiet life by force. He wants to live this spectacular life as a vampire, he longs for that, he longs for an aspirational life, as opposed to Jasper, who has found that. He’s actually very content in living in Margrave and living with his mom and having gone to college, first generation to make it and get a degree and being a medical examiner. So, they’re very different in that way, their lives have been completely switched by things out of their control, so I think that’s the one thing they do have in common, is that their lives are not going according to plan. *laughs*
ROHAN: Since you're the medical examiner, a lot of your scenes involve some very gruesome murder scenes - how detailed were those sets with the bodies and blood?
HARVEY: Very gruesome! You’re never ready for blood and gruesome and I feel like, with Reacher, they went above and beyond. I’m used to blood, for vampires on Shadows, I know it’s comedy so I still need to watch and deal with, of course, but man, with Reacher, the details to these corpse was just insane, down to the smallest detail like fingernails and hair on the arms, and you look so closely, even down to the freckles on these bodies was amazing. It’s just the idea that I just keep working around dead people. *laughs*
ROHAN: What was it like reuniting with Malcolm Goodwin after working with him a few years ago on iZombie?
HARVEY: We were super excited, we messaged each other and I hadn’t seen him since we worked on iZombie and that was in Vancouver and Reacher shot in Toronto, so we were on the opposite coast. I hadn’t seen him since then, and sometimes as an actor, you take on different roles and you become friends, but you can’t see each other, so it was really nice to see him on set every day. It was nice to see a familiar face, for lack of a better word, ‘familiar’! *laughs*
ROHAN: With Alan being the leading man, can you tell me more about working with him and how he was as a leader on set?
HARVEY: Well, that was the reason I came on to the show, because they needed someone to be the handsome guy and they had already cast him, so I was like, “What an uggo.” So, I was like, “fine, I’ll do it, I’ll do the show.” So, I taught him a couple things, I just taught him how to model mostly and how to look stoic, which it took him some time, so I can see why he had a bad time in the past with other productions, but he seemed very happy on ours. So, I don’t want to give myself credit for that, but I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
ROHAN: You have unique dynamics with Alan and Malcolm, but a lot of your key scenes come with Willa - what was your relationship with her and was that a pretty easy chemistry to develop?
HARVEY: Willa was great, we actually had a friend in common because she moved into my friend Perry’s apartment - Perry, who’s the lead on a show called In The Dark - they’re mutual friends and we’re friends, so it was funny because she moved into her apartment in Toronto, and she was like, “Oh, you’re going to work with my friend Willa on Reacher! She’s taking over my apartment!” That was the icebreaker, so when I met her on set, I was like, “you’re the new apartment person!” She was lovely and great and I’d known her work, so it was great to work with her.
ROHAN: Unlike Shadows, you get to sit out the major action scenes in this - was there any point where you pitched yourself an action scene or felt that itch that you wanted to get involved?
HARVEY: I kinda did a little bit, but then realized that it wouldn’t make sense for Jasper to be in that and I get to do my own action on Shadows more than enough, so jumping out of three-story windows on Shadows has told me that I don’t need to do it all the time. *laughs* Once in a while is fun, but it was fun because you get to see the action and it’s so good, the stunt work and the work that they do is so amazing that it does make you a little envious and total FOMO. I want to punch someone!
ROHAN: Were you familiar with the Tom Cruise Jack Reacher movies or with the books before you tackled this role?
HARVEY: I had seen the Tom Cruise movies, I hadn’t read the books, but I was familiar with them and I try not to get persuaded by the book itself, even when I did Magicians. I read the books afterwards because I don’t want to be put into a mindset of this is what the character is, so if you read the description of the character and whatever you feel that embodies, that’s what you’ll present and that’s what the character is or is not. You can look for clues and whatnot, but I did the same thing for Shadows. Shadows was a film before, never saw the film before I auditioned for Shadows and never read the books for Magicians or for Reacher, till after, because I don’t want to be kind of infiltrated with thoughts like, “Oh you gotta do it this way.,” So, that’s my personal thing, but it worked out because here we are!
ROHAN: While Jasper and Guillermo are both nice guys thrust in wild situations, we've seen you really show what you're capable of, as an action star and comedic actor, on Shadows. What kind of roles are you looking for next to provide a different challenge?
HARVEY: That’s a good question. I think I want to do more, something different that you would not expect from me, so maybe like a superhero or something like that, DC or Marvel, or something or maybe something completely different that you would not expect from the characters that I’ve played, like a serial killer. Maybe I’d come back to Reacher and do a serial killer, who knows? Something different, I like to play different roles and put on different hats, so I’m always up for a challenge.
ROHAN: I have to ask about What We Do In the Shadows season four - when can we expect to see it?
HARVEY:We actually completed Season 4 already, so it’s already in the can and it’s being edited now. So, you’ll be seeing season four later this year. I went from season three, we shot last year in January through May, then I shot Reacher at the end of May to July, and then I went back to Shadows in August. So, I had a month of break in-between, but it was a year full of season three of Shadows, season one of Reacher, and season four of Shadows, so it was a full 2021. It should be coming out later this year, so you don’t have to wait too long.
ROHAN: Outside of Reacher and Shadows, where can we see you next?
HARVEY: Yeah, I’m trying different things, putting on different hats. Let’s just say, I’m working on something that’s more animated, that includes a cat, maybe, in boots, perhaps and perhaps, it also includes Latinx legends from the original. So, I’ll let you be a detective and put that together.
Reacher starts streaming, exclusively on Prime Video, on February 4!