I waited too long to read/skim this Alan Ritchson interview in the Hollywood Reporter. Ritchson is a star because of his lead role in the mega-successful Reacher series on Prime, and he’s currently promoting The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Ritchson’s THR interview is epic, and he’s incredibly upfront about where he is and what he believes. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder as an adult, he’s in therapy, he uses drugs recreationally and he identifies as a Christian, all while loathing the political right-wing “Christians” who worship Donald Trump. This piece details a lot of what Ritchson went through in his early modeling days, where he was sexually abused and harassed. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:

He’s gotten into tattoos: “Tattoos, I realized, are very much an opportunity for me to tell my story and the things that matter most to me: family, the story of my wife and our connection, what loyalty means to me, faith. But this right here…is as close as I’ll get to a personal identity. It has a dual meaning for me in the extremes — the happy, the sad, the ups and the downs — as somebody who lives with bipolar and ADHD on a daily basis. Being bipolar has wreaked havoc on my life many, many times. I would wish it away if I could, but it’s so much a part of who I am now that I should celebrate it a little or, at least, accept it. Mental health is an everyday conversation for me. I was just texting my psychiatrist on the way over here for my daily check-in, and she asked, ‘How are you?’ I was, like, ‘I’m great!’ That, to her, is not always a good sign. ‘Are you really? Too great?’”

He was told he was too beefy to model: “The first thing I heard when I walked into the Next offices was, ‘We’ll put you to work but you have to lose weight, get smaller and you have to shave your armpit hair.’ I was like, ‘Shave my armpit hair? I’m a man who waited 19 years for this.’ Plus, I was always fighting my body’s natural desire to be 205 pounds. I would fight it and run and run and run to stay small. I wouldn’t use weights. I would do pull-ups, push-ups, dips and sit-ups in a park. They made me feel like some kind of gross ogre at 205. I did a little bit of runway, but I was too big for most of the Milan runways. Those guys were like 135 pounds and built like birds.”

He did not enjoy modeling. “There are very few redeeming qualities to working in that industry. Let’s be honest, it’s like legalized sex trafficking. The industry is not regulated, and it’s a widely known secret that if you’re hired on a job, you’re basically being passed off to a photographer to be trafficked. The number of times and situations where I was put in horrific environments where sexual abuse was the goal and the paycheck that you were desperate for in order to survive was the carrot, I can’t count on two hands. It was quite often.”

He did MDMA and it rewired his brain. “I had never done drugs but I was truly, like, ‘Well, I might kill myself tomorrow, what do I have to lose?’ So, I did it. I swear to God, the biggest light bulb went off, and it rewired my brain in the best way. MDMA is a proven therapy to treat PTSD in veterans, and it’s something that can work in cognitive therapy settings. The moment it hit, I looked at my wife. We had not really seen each other in a long time because I was just missing things around me. I said, ‘We are one. We are one,’ over and over again. I held her and we talked about suicide, and she’s like, ‘Please don’t do this to us.’ I kept saying, ‘I won’t. I won’t.’ But the problem is I loved it and wanted to do it every day. She never did it again. But, for me, for a year or two, it became like therapy. It allowed me to write and be productive. Thankfully, I was able to move past it.”

He wore a t-shirt which read “Arrest the cops that killed Breonna Taylor.” “That was a tragic case. Cops get away with murder all the time, and the fact that we can’t really hold them accountable for their improprieties is disturbing to me. We should completely reform the way that we do it. I mean, you shouldn’t have to spend more time getting an education as a hairstylist than as a cop who’s armed with a deadly weapon. We should make it very hard for people to make mistakes or abuse power in our institutions.”

On Christianity & Trumpism: “Christians today have become the most vitriolic tribe. It is so antithetical to what Jesus was calling us to be and to do,” he explains. It also upsets him that some Christians have so closely aligned with former President Donald Trump. “Trump is a rapist and a con man, and yet the entire Christian church seems to be treat him like he’s their poster child and it’s unreal. I don’t understand it.” His mother remains staunchly Catholic, but he quickly swats away any associations. “It’s worth saying that the atrocities that are happening in the church that are being actively covered up, even to this day with people not being held accountable, is repulsive. I can’t for one second support the Catholic Church while there are still cardinals, bishops and priests being passed around with known pedophilic tendencies.”

[From THR]

I’ve heard, before now, that Ritchson is a good guy – like, the MAGA types watch Reacher and they thought he was one of them, and he disabuses them of that belief constantly. It’s amazing. I’m sure he has a publicist and I’m sure his publicist is constantly like “do you have to say ALL of that?” But I’m glad he is. “Trump is a rapist and a con man, and yet the entire Christian church seems to be treat him like he’s their poster child and it’s unreal. I don’t understand it.” What’s to understand? It’s an admission that modern, organized Christianity isn’t actually about the tenets preached by Jesus, it’s about control, authority and institutional misogyny.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.