Jack Ryan, the hit series adapted from the work of author Tom Clancy, is returning to Prime Video with an explosive eight-episode Season 3 after a long three-year wait for fans. On top of the pandemic, Jack Ryan films on-location, and Season 3 is upping the ante on a nuclear level. When John Krasinski’s Jack Ryan uncovers a rogue faction’s secret plans for Russia to reinstate the USSR, the CIA opts to stand down. Believing that this could lead to devastating consequences, Ryan dodges commands and becomes the target of not only the extremists but the CIA, as well.

Returning to the fold with Krasinski, who also serves as executive producer, are co-stars Wendell Pierce, who plays Ryan’s former boss James Greer, and Michael Kelly as CIA field officer Mike November. Joining Season 3 will be Betty Gabriel (Get Out), taking over as Chief of Station, Elizabeth Wright, Nina Hoss (Homeland) as President of Czech Alena Kovac, Michael Peña, James Cosmo, and more.
COLLIDER VIDEO OF THE DAY
Collider’s Steve Weintraub was able to speak with Jack Ryan’s stars ahead of the Season 3 premiere on December 21. During their interview, Krasinski reveals which of Clancy’s novels Season 3 is inspired by, and comments on the close parallel to real-world issues. They also talk about the difficult action sequences, Kelly both praises and laments Krasinski’s vision for the series, and they share the crazy antics that go on behind the scenes. For all this and more, check out the video above, or read the full transcript below.

COLLIDER: For people that have never seen anything you’ve done before, what is the first thing you’d like them watching, and why?

JOHN KRASINSKI: Wow. I mean, I think we all should be watching The Wire for every reason. It has nothing to do with me, but just watch The Wire, and you’ll be happy, right?

WENDELL PIERCE: Yeah. I’ll put The Wire up there. But yeah, thank you.

KRASINSKI: And they can watch The Wire for me too, and I’ll just pretend I was there.

Image Via Amazon Studios

I asked Julia Roberts the same question, and she said Pulp Fiction.

KRASINSKI: That’s amazing.

Michael, is that your answer? We’re just going to stick with The Wire?

MICHAEL KELLY: Sure, yeah. That’s good.

When you guys were making Season 3, you couldn’t have known the way it crosses over, almost, with the real world. Can you sort of talk about that aspect, that it’s a little too close for home?

KRASINSKI: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s unequivocally heartbreaking. I think it’s something that we certainly didn’t intend. We wrote the idea for the show about three years ago. I like to put a small homage to all of Tom Clancy’s books or movies in the series. And this season, we had decided to make it Hunt for Red October. So that’s how we settled on Russia. Instead of a nuclear submarine, we thought, “What would it be like to have the main threat be intel from a man? So you’re looking for one man, not a submarine?”

And so we had all these fun things to play with, and we thought we were making a larger-than-life season of television, that was so far beyond the imagination, that you’d have a really good time through this thrill ride. And then to see in real life, not only is it not beyond the imagination, but it’s horrific tenfold. I think what’s going on in real life is worse than anything we could have put in the show, and we take that all very seriously.

Image via Prime Video

For all three of you, I love learning about the behind-the-scenes of the making of a show. Which shot of the seasons you’ve been involved with, for Jack Ryan, ended up being the hardest, and why?

KRASINSKI: I’ll go first. Being thrown out of a Black Hawk by a Navy SEAL was definitely the hardest, and most impressed I’ve ever been with myself ever, though I should probably be scared of my stupidity. Basically, what happened that morning was, two stunt guys had gone through, each, five or six takes of that, and then as we were flying out to the next scene in that Black Hawk, one of the Navy SEALs said, “It would’ve been way cooler if you did it.” And I said, “Well, how would that look?” And he said, “It would look like me unbuckling your seatbelt right now, and throwing you out of this helicopter,” and he did. And to me that was the hardest, scariest – and you can see on my face, I was definitely very scared – that was the hardest thing I’ve done on the show.

PIERCE: I have a hand-to-hand combat with a knife, in Moscow, this season. That was the hardest for me. It was the most fun. We did all kinds of different takes. We changed choreography, all kinds of stuff. And then, to actually throw him down flights of stairs, and actually see it happen, was thrilling. So that was the hardest, but also one of the most satisfying.

KELLY: And for me, it would have to be – it’s nothing to do with action – it was being on the Danube River, under a bridge, with this guy who rewrote the entire scene an hour before we were filming. And it’s a walk-and-talk, and in a wind tunnel, on the Danube River. And it was guys with a screen, one foot above my head, just walking one foot in front of me, and trying to just get through this scene, and him like, “No, you got it. You got, it’s fine. Come on, we got this, guys,” over, and over, and over again.

KRASINSKI: Take the third part first, and the second part third, and then…

KELLY: Just completely rearrange the entire scene. I was like, “Oh, yeah, I can do that,” and I just wanted to die. It was awesome.

PIERCE: And Mike prepares. You should see his scripts. The preparation and all of the notes, and the history behind it. And then he comes to set, just prepared.

KRASINSKI: And he has time to do so, because he has three breakfasts.

PIERCE: And then, I guess he got to set, and they said, “Oh, we’re not going to do it like that.” So I know that probably was difficult.

KELLY: It happened, it happened quite often with this guy. But that being said, John works his ass off and wants everything to be perfect. And so you know, as pissed as you are when you get it, you know it’s gonna be better, so you’re like, all right, I’ll do it. But it messes with my flow a little bit.

Image via Prime Video

I actually wanted to ask you that, John, obviously you’re a very talented writer, director, and it seems like you’re tweaking dialogue, but at any point, did you think about directing episodes, or is it almost that’s just too much?

KRASINSKI: No, I never thought about directing the episodes. And again, we have incredible writers. It’s really about, as heady as it sounds, the show, or whatever you’re working on, at some point always takes a life of its own and sort of will tell you what it wants to be, and what it can and can’t be. And so, things that you wrote five months ago, as little changes have been happening throughout the show, you realize that you have to implement things that you did in other scenes. And so the show just feels like it can make small changes.

That’s the only thing I would ever help with. We had an incredible producing team and great writers, so it was never just me doing it, it was more about because I take the show really seriously, I just wanted to make sure that it was the best that it could be. I never changed Wendell’s lines though, just his, I wonder what that says.

KELLY: We are shooting eight episodes at a time and cross-boarding the whole thing. So John’s right, one thing changes here, and you don’t realize it, but it’s going to affect something that you have to shoot two weeks later in a completely different episode.

KRASINSKI: You just feel bad about everything you said about me.

KELLY: I do. I do a little, that’s a little hard, a little hard.

Image via Prime Video

What do you think would surprise fans of Jack Ryan to learn about the actual making of the show behind the scenes?

KRASINSKI: I think that it’s so much fun. I mean, I’m not kidding when I say I think the only other time I laughed this hard on set was on The Office. I think that this show, as intense as it looks, we have such a good time together because we genuinely love each other and have developed real friendships, not just work acquaintances. So I think that, to me, that’s the most surprising thing that when you see the show, people say, “How did you get through it?” And the truth is, we had a blast doing it together.

PIERCE: I also love the travel, and they always make fun of me because I will always find something, a unique experience in different countries, whether it’s a seaside, midnight, seafood chef who prepares this wonderful meal for me in Essaouira, Morocco, or the Budapest Jazz Club where I would go and hang out with this late night jazz band and sit in a couple of times.

KRASINSKI: Meanwhile, I had Dominoes and Netflix.

PIERCE: I really take advantage of the different places we go to find these unique little places to go and unique things to do. We have some great times discovering those.

KELLY: Yeah, I’m just looking at Wendell and amazement because John nicknamed him Wizard because he would just, he’s not kidding, he would disappear. We would be out, he would disappear, and then the next day he would show up at work and we’re like, “What’d you get into last night?”

He’d be like, “Well, it’s crazy because I left you guys and then I went walking down this alley and there was this door and I said, ‘Oh, I should probably go in that door.’ And I went in the door, and then there was this wizard, and the wizard took me on a boat. So there I was in the middle of the ocean, and I’m eating this crazy food that I’ve never had in my…” [and] he’s like, “Well, what’d you guys do?” We’re like, “Watch TV.” And it was often, it wasn’t just once or twice. He’s the Wizard, man.

Jack Ryan Season 3 drops exclusively on Prime Video beginning December 21. Check out our interview with co-stars Betty Gabriel and Nina Hoss for more on the season’s locations and stunts below: