Anthony Michael Hall Is ‘The Nerd’ No More

Lee Child’s Reacher book series was first adapted as a film franchise in the 2010s as a star vehicle for Tom Cruise. But in that the titular Jack Reacher is canonically 6-foot-5 with “hands like dinner plates” and “biceps like basketballs,” true fans objected philosophically to his having been portrayed by the famously elfin Cruise. Prime Video’s series adaptation, Reacher — starring absolute unit Alan Ritchson — premiered in 2022 and has been much more favorably received.

Each season, Reacher — a former Army MP major turned problem-solving drifter in the style of The Incredible Hulk — finds himself in a new location, with a new kind of corruption to deal with. In Season Three, that location is Maine, where Reacher has a chance meeting with a college student named Richard Beck (Johnny Berchtold) while trying to sell some vinyl at a used record store. As Reacher helps get Richard out of a dangerous situation the way only Reacher can, Richard brings him home to meet his father Zachary (Anthony Michael Hall). The elder Beck is grateful, of course, for Reacher’s help, but also very cagey — and why does Beck, a simple rug importer, need a full-time bodyguard who’s so preposterously enormous he makes Reacher look like, well, Tom Cruise?

I talked to Hall last week about his role in Reacher, his brief time on Saturday Night Live during one of its notoriously rocky seasons and the formative comedy touchstones that still resonate for him today.

You enjoy a good, juicy villain role. Apart from that, what made playing Zachary compelling for you?

Well, just for context, when I got the book, after I got the role, and I read through Persuader, which it’s based on, there’s a real dynamic character here. There’s a lot to play with. Obviously on the surface, he’s a “rug importer,” right? But in reality, he’s working within this criminal network, and at the same time he’s trying to rise in the ranks there. So there’s certainly a dark side to this character, which was fun to explore, to kind of humanize him in the ways that I could.

But what’s interesting, too, is the B story line with his son. I had my first child, my wife and I, back in 2023. We started shooting that summer, and then unfortunately the strike happened, as we all know, so there was a four-month delay. Long story short, we resumed production in November, and we shot until this past summer. In the spring, I finished.

So that was really interesting, because now as a parent I had more to work with. The B story line in this season is that Zachary is exploring reconnecting with his son and learning to forgive himself, and exploring his own personal redemption in the eyes of his son. He’s sort of estranged from his son, and in his exploits as this kind of guy struggling within the underworld, he’s lost touch with his son.

And at the same time, day by day, he’s operating in a very ruthless way. It just gave me a lot to work with, and it gave me an opportunity as an actor to provide choices for Nick (Santora, executive producer and showrunner), for Alan and for the material. And that’s one of the things I like: that element of surprise. You want to find some light in his dark side.

It’s also interesting for a viewer who got to know you initially when you were playing the awkward teen, like Richard — now you’re on the other side. What was it like to be the tough guy dad instead of the nervous kid?

Well, I’ve played a lot of bad guys over the years, but having become a father myself, it just gives you fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. It also redefines and gives you a new sense of purpose. So even though my baby was less than a year old, it gave me plenty of food for thought, and just the life experience that I could apply to being a father. It gave me an awareness that I hadn’t had formerly. 

I had an acting coach who was actually the father of a kid I grew up with. His name was Bob McAndrews. I worked with Bob years ago on Edward Scissorhands. It was something like 1990, many years ago. But Bob gave me a great note: “Any thought you have about any actor you’re working with, give it to your character.” It calls upon me as an actor to stay aware, alert, to sense and track what your own personal response is to someone, right? And then give it to the character. You have to have a certain amount of life experience and get to a point where you go, “Oh, you know what? I need to better myself in this area or that area, and how do I get to that point?” 

So it was really wonderful to play a father, to have that personal experience to draw from. In the case of Johnny playing Richard, it was really easy just to love him, and to feel him as my son at 20. You know?

Reacher is obviously a show about a very large man, and Beck will always be known for hiring maybe the one guy alive who’s larger than Reacher. That’s something else you could bring to the character.

This gentleman’s name is Olivier (Richters), a very nice guy. He has some kind of grocery delivery business in Holland, where he’s from. He set this goal to become an actor in the last five years. And he’s done some great stuff. He’s been part of some big movies. But he was a lot of fun to work with and a very lovable, nice guy. He’s like my henchman. 

You were recently in the Peacock documentary series Beyond Saturday Night, talking about your time in “the weird season” — their word, not mine. You were a known actor at that time, but you weren’t in sketch comedy. How did that opportunity come to you?

I have to say, unlike in the 50 historical seasons, I didn’t have to audition. I was really blessed, because I had come off the screen with John Hughes’ films. So it’s a salute and a testament to John once again, that for that reason, I think I was just hired. I remember getting the call, and I flipped out. I mean, I’m 56 now, so I was a little kid in the ‘70s. It was like a treat to watch SNL. I would ask my mom every week to stay up and watch it. So I’ve been a fan since the beginning. It was incredible. 

By the time I did that interview in the documentary, I was going back and forth, like, “Do I do it?” Sadly, there are people who deal with personal image issues like body dysmorphia. I have career dysmorphia. I make too much of how bad it was. 

One thing I’ll share with you, and I’ll be honest: I never watched the shows back in the day when I did the show, because I was just in the middle of it, and I was literally a kid, right? So I think of that biological fact, that the adult human brain isn’t actually fully formed until 25. Here I am, like a little child monkey, flying around SNL. 

But doing the interview was quite healing. Before I did it, I watched the episodes, and it was almost like a George Bailey life review with Clarence. I was looking at my life and went, “Look at this amazing show you were a part of, man. Look at this.” I’m looking back at all these episodes: it’s Madonna, and there I am, a little, gangly kid standing next to her, or working with Oprah, or Jay Leno, who had all black hair and a little white in the front, or Tom Hanks — all these people I got to work with.

And I was just kind of flushed with the sense of like, “Wow, look at how blessed your life is. Look how lucky and blessed you were to do this all your life.” My takeaway after having done it was like, I’ve actually had a 49-year career. I started when I was eight years old in 1976, so my career has lasted almost as long as SNL from its inception. I started out going, “I don’t know if I should do this interview. I don’t know if my season was good enough.” That whole thing that we all wrestle with, self-doubt, and, “How was I?” All that went out the window. And I was just overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude.

It was the first time I could finally just go, “You know what? The season was good. It had its good points and its bad points like any season of SNL, but you were a part of it.” I’ve remained a fan. I’ve watched every season all these years. It was really a lot of fun.

Not to mention, maybe a 17-year-old is the perfect person to work those crazy hours they keep.

Exactly. And I had a reason and a paid job to leave school. I was one of those kids. I was very restless in school, even though I went to a professional children’s school, as obnoxious as that sounds. It was in Midtown, and it was based on a whole system of correspondence, so you kind of had a lot of freedom anyway. But yeah, I’m right there with you. I couldn’t believe I was on SNL. And it’s a pretty grueling show. It’s a six-day-a-week job. And then, when the show wraps, people party until the morning of the seventh day, on Sunday. You wind up leaving the SNL parties at 2 or 3 or 4 a.m. It’s just a great experience. 

So in summation, I’d say I’m just so grateful to Lorne Michaels that I was a part of it. And I look back upon this now, and again in the doing of the Peacock documentary series, it was very cathartic because I genuinely released some stuff. I was like, “You know what? Lighten up, dude. Who cares? The fact is you were there. And it’s something that should be celebrated.” All the great people, men and women, and I think women particularly that have blown up on that show, it’s just been great. And what a great gift it is to be a part of it. 

You and Robert Downey Jr. have been developing a sitcom called Singularity. Tell us what you can about it and where it is in the development process.

This is something that we started back in 2017, and just due to his schedule, we haven’t set it up yet. I don’t know if this will ever get made, but it’s been fun doing some writing with him.

What happened was it started, very accidentally and coincidentally, to sort of mirror Succession. The idea was that my character was a black sheep in a very well-to-do family, and he has a couple of siblings, and we had scripted the father to be sort of a tycoon. So we had to reset, and then we started rewriting it. And then during COVID, Robert wound up writing three episodes, and we shortened it to a half-hour format. Unfortunately, those didn’t stick with the companies that we pitched it to.

But then, while I was doing Reacher last summer and he was preparing to go to New York with Susan (Downey), his wife, they reached out to a good friend of theirs. Of course, they’re good friends with many people in the industry, including Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband, Brad Falchuk, who’s a brilliant guy. They were kind enough to get Brad excited about it. They sent him a treatment. 

So that’s where we’re at now. Brad’s done so many great shows with Ryan Murphy, and without Ryan Murphy — he’s a really sharp guy. So he and his head writer have written another outline that we’re hoping to pitch and set up. Because I really just, from the heart, hope that Robert and I can work together again.

They’ve done such great work on TV. I loved their Perry Mason, and The Sympathizer last year was so good, too.

Wasn’t The Sympathizer great? I really enjoyed that, too. They’re just sharp people. And they really care about me and love me as friends. And I couldn’t be happier for Robert. Talk about the Hollywood comeback of the last century, hands down.

I’ve been there for literally from that SNL season, from 1984 forward — we’ve been friends since then. I’m just so proud of him. And I happen to be a godfather to (Downey’s son) Indio, who’s becoming his own artist, he has a band, he’s a rock star. But just being friends with Susan and Robert means so much because they truly walk the walk. They’ve maintained that friendship and that care, and we spent time together separate from the development of this project. So I’m really happy to know them and that I still call them friends. 

You said in a fairly recent interview that you and Joel McHale were at an event and you chatted about the Community movie. Is there any news to break about that?

The context was actually funny. We were at the Saturn Awards. It’s a really nice group of people that put on that show. It’s like an annual sci-fi ceremony. For whatever reason, the awards took like six hours to shoot. It was at a hotel in Burbank. So I remember, in hour five, I was set to go present my award on the stage at the Burbank Hilton or wherever the hell we were, and Joel and I were chatting backstage. Joel is such a funny guy. I love working with him. So that’s when he brought the movie to my attention. But in that moment, he was literally going, “Will this ceremony ever end?” And then later that night, he brought up the movie, and I said to him, “Is that going to happen?” He goes, “Yeah, man, we want you to be a part of it.”

So I hope so. You know? It’d be great. I have to just shout out the writers: Community, along with Psych, I was just so impressed with the comedy and the writing. I mean, to this day, those were two of the smartest and the funniest shows that I ever did. It was a great group of actors (on Community). Donald (Glover) and Gillian [Jacobs), I mean all of them. They were just so wonderful to work with. And I got to work with the Russos on that one. It was really fun. I enjoyed that. I really had a great time. 

I had a moment where I’m supposed to be picking a fight with Joel, because I’m this idiot who’s been in community college, clearly, for 15 years. And I have my group of pups that were in this courtyard. We’re shooting at some high school in Hollywood. And the writer who wrote this episode, Liz Cackowski, walks up to me and gives me this line on a Post-It: “If we don’t fight today, we’ll definitely go to Applebee’s.” It was just so stupid. The writing on that show was so funny.

Community and Psych, the writing and the pace of both was so fast and so smart that you almost had to jog. I remember doing stuff that I didn’t even get until after I’d seen the show.

Do you have a favorite piece of work from the world of comedy that you find yourself going back to over and over again? 

I would hearken back to my first inspirations. Honestly, as a kid, my heroes were George Carlin and Richard Pryor. And then later, in high school, believe it or not, I started studying Lenny Bruce. It was their comedy albums. “Seven Dirty Words” of Carlin’s — all his albums. I was that kid growing up on the Upper West Side. I was in my room and I’d be reading Creem magazine, I’d be reading Rolling Stone, and I’d be enjoying those albums.

I think for me, where the comedy starts, even though I’ve never pursued a life of stand-up, is just listening to Carlin, and Richard Pryor, and all those old Richard Pryor albums in particular, where they were done from dinner clubs in the ‘70s. You can hear people, you can hear their dishware, and they’re eating while they’re watching. But just those albums, man. 

Those kinds of goofy moments, like when we get high in The Breakfast Club, and I did, “Chicks can’t hold their smoke.” I ad-libbed that line. But the genesis of it was making John Hughes laugh. So I’d often be at his house with his wife and his two young sons on the weekends, and we’d watch everything from Laurel and Hardy to old Abbott and Costello comedies, to Richard Pryor: Live on Sunset Strip. So by the time we got to the set of Weird Science, John saw this goofy streak in me and set up that whole bar scene in the blues bar with the old Black gentleman. That all is traceable in my own life to the impact of George Carlin and Richard Pryor. 

You’ve already mentioned your son. It’s obviously a few years off before you’d need to think about this, but if he came to you and said he wanted to be a child actor like you were, what would you say?

The first thing that came to mind is he has this toddler talent of scratching and slapping, which we’re trying to unlearn for him. So he’s definitely kicking my ass.

That won’t fly on a set.

Yeah, thank you. That will not fly on a set. That said, you know what? Whatever he wants to do. I just see such life in him. He’s got a great laugh. He loves to laugh. He’s a very joyful baby, I’m happy to say. My wife, who is the champ and the hero of the family, she nursed him, and this kid has an appetite. He looks, honestly, like he’s three years old already. I don’t know what the hell we’re doing. Every time we go to the pediatrician we’re almost embarrassed because the instruction was, “After 20 months, maybe lay off the formula. Don’t give him formula at night.” We can’t go through a night where he doesn’t get a couple bottles in the middle of the night. So he’s got a great appetite, a great sense of humor. He’s really a handful, but it’s incredible. 

I have a quick, funny anecdote. We’re blessed to live at the beach. We live in Playa Del Rey, which is just south of Marina Del Rey in L.A. And my wife was recovering. About two weeks after he was born, we’re taking our first stroll together down the boardwalk on the beach in front of our house. And my wife, I’m making sure she’s okay, and she’s slowly taking steps, and we’re just overjoyed, taking our first walk with our baby, right? And down the boardwalk comes this young girl. She’s walking alongside a gentleman, looked like her grandfather. He could have been in his 70s or something. And it was really cute. So as this pairing of people are walking past us, the girl looks at me and goes, “Is that your baby or your grandbaby?” And I go, “That’s my baby, baby.” I got the old dad ribbing right away, as soon as we got outside.

Photo credits: NBCUniversal; Mark Binks; Jasper Savage / Prime