Joe Manganiello\u00a0suspects\u00a0Tom Cruise\u00a0may have blocked him from starring as Jack Reacher because of their mutual ex,\u00a0Sof\u00eda Vergara.<\/p>\n
In his new memoir, the \u201cMagic Mike\u201d star claims that Amazon execs and production bigs were set on him to play the famed\u00a0Lee Child\u00a0character in the streamer\u2019s TV adaptation.<\/p>\n
But he says that when the part suddenly went to someone else, his team thought Cruise \u2014 who played Reacher in the 2012 and 2016 movie versions of the books \u2014 had him nixed.<\/p>\n
Joe Manganiello, who is six-feet-five inches tall, says he went through a long process auditioning for the role of Jack Reacher for the Amazon series, \u201cReacher.\u201d He is shown here on the Today show in 2025. Getty Images<\/p>\n
Tom Cruise, who is five-foot-seven, played the role in two movies. He is seen here at the premiere of his new movie \u201cDigger\u201d in Japan last week. Getty Images<\/p>\n
In \u201cBloodlines,\u201d Manganiello writes that in January 2020, he met with\u00a0Don Granger, an exec at Skydance Media, which produced the Reacher films and the shows. \u201cWe talked for an hour and a half,\u201d Manganiello writes, discussing \u201cthe backlash over Tom\u2019s size.\u201d In the books, Reacher is an imposing 6-foot-5, and Cruise is famously a diminutive 5-foot-7. Manganiello says Granger told him, \u201cYou are the closest thing to Jack Reacher that I\u2019ve ever met in my entire life .\u2009.\u2009. You look like Reacher is described in the books .\u2009.\u2009. You have his effortless intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cMagic Mike\u201d star then allegedly impressed showrunner\u00a0Nick Santora\u00a0so much that he began writing the rest of the season with Manganiello in mind. He claims Skydance owner\u00a0David Ellison\u00a0and author Child were also \u201cthrilled with my performance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The role ultimately went to Alan Ritchson, shown here in an episode in Season 4. \u00a9Amazon\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n
But when Manganiello was presented to Amazon head\u00a0Jen Salke, things soured. He writes that Salke was furious at being excluded from the casting process and \u201cfelt that she was being railroaded into a final decision made by a group of primarily male producers that she didn\u2019t feel part of.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first movie, which came out in 2012, made $218 million at the box office on a $60 million budget. The 2016 sequel made $162 million, according to reports. \u00a9Paramount\/Courtesy Everett Collection \/ Everett Collection<\/p>\n
Manganiello claims his team speculated that Cruise, who formerly dated Sofia Vergara, may have torpedoed his chance. Manganiello was married to Vergara at the time. The pair are seen here Screen Actors Guild Awards in L.A. in 2015. WireImage<\/p>\n
When Manganiello was told he hadn\u2019t landed the role, his team speculated wildly that Cruise, \u201can executive producer [on the show], could have potentially come in over the top and vetoed my being cast on account of Sof\u00eda.\u201d Cruise had allegedly dated Vergara, Manganiello\u2019s then-wife, in 2005. He is not listed on IMDb as part of the \u201cReacher\u201d production.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reps for Cruise did not get back to us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Manganiello\u00a0suspects\u00a0Tom Cruise\u00a0may have blocked him from starring as Jack Reacher because of their mutual ex,\u00a0Sof\u00eda Vergara. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":926416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,17868,1581,134,488722,44999,17689],"class_list":["post-926415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-celebrity-memoirs","tag-celebrity-news","tag-entertainment","tag-joe-manganiello","tag-sofia-vergara","tag-tom-cruise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}