How Olivier Richters Became Reacher’s Biggest (and Strongest) Foe Yet

WHEN THE PRODUCERS of Reacher decided to adapt Lee Child’s 2003 Jack Reacher novel Persuader for season 3, they were faced with a challenge. They needed to cast a seven-foot-tall bodybuilder to play Paulie, a bad guy who’s even bigger than Reacher (Alan Ritchson), the hulking hero of Prime Video’s bone-crunching action series. The role requires a rare set of attributes, a combination of camera readiness and sheer, mind-boggling size. They found the only man on Earth who could accurately play him as written: actor and bodybuilder Olivier Richters, also known as “The Dutch Giant.”

Richters is 7’2” and 352 lbs. He holds the Guinness World Record as the world’s tallest professional bodybuilder. He has 772k followers on Instagram—a number that was already high but has been skyrocketing since people saw him on Reacher—where he posts training videos, sweet family photos, and shots of himself towering over famous past co-stars like Kevin Hart and Harrison Ford. Ritchson personally found Richters on social media, which led to his being cast on the show, once Richters demonstrated that in addition to being huge, he’s also a capable actor. He was a fan of the show before he was cast.

“I was watching the series, and then six months later I was facing Reacher,” Richters says. “Sometimes it feels like I live in the Matrix. It’s unreal.”

He cuts an intimidating figure, which means he plays a lot of villains, and he’s had small roles as glowering heavies in big-budget movies like Black Widow, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Borderlands. But in reality, he’s a humble, soft-spoken gentle giant who’s never been in a fight in real life. Sometimes people want to prove their toughness against big guys, but that doesn’t happen to Richters.

“They see my smile and they don’t see a reason to do that,” he says. The closest he ever came was when a would-be thief broke into his business, and he scared the intruder off by punching through a door and telling him he had one chance to get lost. He’s a showman, people, not a fighter.

His Reacher part is his first TV role, and the biggest of his career so far. Paulie is a henchman for a crime boss with whom Reacher has a history, and he stands in the way of Reacher’s revenge. He and Reacher throw down more than once, including one time early in the season when Reacher bests Paulie in a “Bavarian arm wrestling” match, where Reacher pulls down on Paulie’s forearm as hard as he can, and later on in a lengthy one-on-one battle that Richters spent four months training for. As Reacher barrels through its third season, Richters talked to Men’s Health about how he got even bigger for the role, punching himself in the face for the sake of the show, and how Family Guy inspired Paulie and Reacher’s climactic fight.

MEN’S HEALTH: Could anyone else on earth play Paulie besides you?

OLIVIER RICHTERS: There was an article from ScreenRant; They had 10 people they thought could play Paulie. It was a great article, and I was number eight on their list. I knew all the other people, but I also knew I was the biggest of them. I think all 10 had a chance, and it came down also to the acting—I’m super happy I won that part. But yeah, it’s a niche market of being above two meters tall and able to act.

MH: What did you do to prepare for the role?

OR: I was 155 kilos, and I wanted an extra five kilos, being 352 lbs. at the end. I had to eat another 1,000 calories per day because of all the stunt training. I was doing stunt training for four hours a day, and at night I did bodybuilding. So, imagine when you weigh 352 pounds, what kind of calorie burn you have and what kind of muscle loss you can create if you don’t eat enough. I ate seven times a day, with five hours per day of physically demanding stuff. It was the most physically demanding thing I did, but I’m proud.

MH: How many calories per day did you eat?

OR: There were seven meals, each around 1,000 calories. I ate between 400-500 grams of protein a day, which ended up being 7,000 calories. I don’t know if this is the right way to put it, but I felt sometimes like a goose, because if you have to eat another 1,000 calories after training, the easiest way is drinking oat shakes, and that was just clocking it [imitates being force-fed]. But it’s what the body needed. If you don’t do it then you break down. So just to give you a rough idea, I eat 16 eggs a day, 800 grams of meat, one kilo of Greek yogurt, the protein powders, and so much oats. So much oats. It’s a thing I don’t advise anyone else to do, but not everybody has to beat Reacher.

MH: Did you work out with Alan Ritchson at all?

OR: Mostly on the stunt set, because we had so much choreography to learn. We did one time in the gym. It was amazing to do that. Really strong guy, really intensive training. The thing was that I knew that I shouldn’t ask him too much, because he’s number one on the call sheet, and he has three children. So, I was very fortunate to work with him on the stunts.

MH: What was it like shooting the arm wrestling scene? Were you guys really doing it, with him pulling on your arm like that?

OR: Yeah. We discussed it, because it’s a dangerous thing. People on TikTok said in the comments, “I was expecting Olivier’s bicep to tear off.” It’s super dangerous. So, we had to find the balance of strength where it still looked real, and he did a great job on that. But there’s another aspect to it, and that’s that hitting myself in the face is considered a stunt, because I have to fall back on my elbows and not try to hit myself. But I know that when you’re not doing it for real, sometimes you have to do it eight times. So I’m like, “F it, I’m going to do it for real.” I was thinking, “I’m going to do the one-taker.” I didn’t tell anyone. And when he launched my arm, I hit myself for real so hard that I immediately fell back and was dazed. And they were like, “We got it!” And I said, “I know we got it.” [Laughs] It was a one-taker.

I’m just happy I didn’t break my nose. I hit the top of my nose and then slipped to my forehead. The stuntman, he was like, “That looked so amazing,” and he didn’t know I hit myself for real. So I told him later, and he was laughing: “They don’t want you to hit yourself.” But I made the choice on set.

MH: Well, it looks great. You arm wrestle David Harbour in Black Widow, too. What’s that about? Why are people trying to arm wrestle you all the time?

OR: That hurt, because we did that scene so many times, hitting my hand on the metal table. At some point, I said, “Guys, look at this,” and my hand was already blue. Then they put a mat down. It’s a fun scene, where they CGI my wrist that got broken, and they actually asked if I could get some tears in my eyes. It was the second role I had, and it was a Marvel movie, so I was super proud.

MH: I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Paulie and Reacher have a brutal mano a mano fight this season. If anything, knowing it’s coming is going to build anticipation. What can you tell us about that big fight? What was it like to film it? Because it just keeps going and going.

OR: You may have to look it up on YouTube if you’re not a Family Guy fan, but there’s Peter Griffin versus the chicken, and that was the inspiration for this fight. When I heard that, I said “Oh, I love this.” There are so many areas where we fight, just like Peter Griffin and the chicken. And that’s also why the fight choreography took four months to practice. The fight is two titans fighting each other, so a lot happens. There are small injuries you can’t help, and we recovered from it, but at the end, we were so happy that we did it, but also that we finished.

I just spoke to Alan, and he said “I was so happy that we were done.” I said, “Yep.” I had many months after that to recover, but it was totally worth it. The last thing I want to say, you have to imagine, when you step wrong off a curb, you can twist your ankle. So imagine how dangerous what we were doing for four months was. The human body is very fragile, and we had to learn all the details to be safe.

MH: What were some of the things you learned?

OR: One of the things was how to fall safely. There are things I didn’t know, and now I know how I should react if I fall in the street. There’s also a water scene, and water can be super dangerous, so we had a lot of divers around us. In another film, I almost drowned once, so I had to overcome my fear. Also, you know how you see in boxing fights with lightweights, they keep hitting each other in the face over and over, but when heavyweights hit each other, it’s sometimes lights out? That’s the danger me and Alan had. When you’re 160 kilos, you automatically look slower, so they told me that every punch I throw has to be a killer move or else it doesn’t look cool. Meaning, I had to be so careful where I was going to punch somebody, and where I should punch when I’m facing the camera.

Those are the things that I learned. I wish we had a behind the scenes movie to show people how we did it.

MH: This is your biggest role to date. What’s next? What are your ambitions in Hollywood?

OR: My first dream was I just want to be one time on the movie screen. And that happened after a search of three years of finding an agent—it wasn’t easy for me, being this tall and big. One aspect of being a human being is that we always want more. So after that, I wanted another role, and it happened, and then it happened again. And at some point after Indiana Jones, we said we think it’s time for the next step. Let’s only do castings for speaking roles. And then a few months later, Reacher came along, and now I’ve done a speaking role. I’m not ready for a main part yet; we’re doing a casting on a bigger speaking role than I had in Reacher. That’s going to be the next step.

MH: I’ve seen you cosplay as Kratos, and I know Prime Video is working on a God of War adaptation. You think you’re not ready for that one yet, but what if they came to you?

OR: I think I can be ready, but if I have a choice I would do a few other things first. But I told my agents, there are two gods in God of War that are taller than Kratos, and I want to audition for them.