Joe Manganiello’s Team Suspected Tom Cruise Cost Him Alan Ritchson’s Reacher Role
Joe Manganiello’s Team Suspected Tom Cruise Cost Him Alan Ritchson’s Reacher Role
Devanshi BasuWed, October 14, 2026 at 12:30 PM UTC
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Image Credit: Prime Video
Joe Manganiello came agonizingly close to playing Jack Reacher, only to watch the role go to Alan Ritchson. In his new memoir, Bloodlines, released on October 13, the actor revealed that his team suspected Tom Cruise may have influenced the decision because of his past connection to Sofía Vergara.
Joe Manganiello’s team suspected he lost Reacher due to Sofía Vergara and Tom Cruise
Joe Manganiello wrote that Skydance Media executive Don Granger pursued him aggressively for the Amazon Prime series. Granger controlled the rights to Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels. He told Manganiello he was “the closest thing to Jack Reacher” he had ever met. The actor fit the physical description fans demanded. However, Tom Cruise faced backlash for playing the 6-foot-5 character at 5-foot-7.
Manganiello had already lost a villain role in a Cruise-led Jack Reacher film years earlier. Director Ed Zwick admitted the actor was perfect but warned, “Tom’s never going to let that happen,” citing their similar heights. Five years later, Granger, writer-producer Nick Santora, and Skydance backed Manganiello as their “unanimous choice” for the series. But Amazon Studios CEO Jen Salke resisted, upset she was excluded from casting. She demanded Manganiello re-audition, this time against Tom Welling, despite his six-month campaign and recent recovery from surgery to remove his large intestine.
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He lost the part. Alan Ritchson, who stands 6-foot-3, landed the role instead. “Jen wouldn’t let them go with me,” Manganiello wrote. “She never gave a reason and never communicated with anyone as to why, which gave way to a thought from my team that maybe Tom Cruise, who was listed as an executive producer because he had starred in the previous film adaptations, could have potentially come in over the top and vetoed my being cast on account of Sofía.”
Cruise briefly dated Sofia Vergara in 2005. Manganiello wrote that Vergara said she broke up with him after refusing to take the E-Meter test at the L. Ron Hubbard Celebrity Centre. He and Vergara married in 2015 and divorced in 2023.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
