Alan Ritchson has mixed two of his finest genres with Prime Video’s Playdate, and he has a secret recipe for methods to combine motion with comedy. The film marks Ritchson’s newest partnership with Prime Video after his profitable ongoing run together with his Reacher collection adaptation, whose newest season aired in early 2025, and can proceed with an in-development fourth season and spinoff Neagley.
Ritchson leads the Playdate solid as Jeff, a zealous stay-at-home dad who involves befriend Brian, a not too long ago unemployed accountant, after an opportunity assembly at a neighborhood park. When Jeff’s son and Brian’s stepson arrange a playdate, they head to a pizza arcade for a joint outing, just for issues to go awry when a bunch of mercenaries makes an attempt to kill the group, with Brian revealing he has a secret life.
Additionally starring Kevin James, Sarah Chalke, Alan Tudyk and Isla Fisher, Playdate hails from Let’s Be Cops director Luke Greenfield on a script from Scrubs veteran Neil Goldman. The film seems to proceed Ritchson’s 2025 win streak, after Reacher season 3’s acclaim and Motor Metropolis‘s well-received debut on the 82nd Venice Worldwide Movie Pageant.
In honor of its Prime Video premiere, ScreenRant interviewed Alan Ritchson. The star opened up about what he views because the “vital elements” behind creating an excellent comedy, in addition to his expertise attending to work with Kevin James and the way the pair would usually go off-script to amplify the scenes that they had collectively.
Ritchson Has 1 Large Secret To Making Good Comedy
Whereas he should be finest identified for hs motion chops in every thing from Smallville to Quick X and Reacher, Ritchson does have established expertise on this planet of comedy. One of many star’s first breakthrough roles was in that of the faculty soccer cult hit Blue Mountain State, to which he returned for the 2016 sequel film and is claimed to be hooked up to the revival at present in growth alongside authentic star Darin Brooks and co-creator Chris Romano.
With Playdate, Ritchson finds himself mixing his motion expertise with comedy, as he and Banks Pierce’s CJ showcase a few of their preventing expertise with one another, in addition to in opposition to a few of their foes. In reflecting on the important thing to the movie’s bodily comedy moments, Ritchson believes that the key to this combine is “by no means being in on the joke“, as an alternative all the time approaching mentioned scenes as genuinely as potential with a view to promote them to the viewers.
If the stakes for the character are life and loss of life and every thing is as necessary as it could actually probably be for no matter that scenario is, then I believe you have got the required elements for good comedy.
Ritchson Had “A Blast” Getting To Improv With Kevin James
Aside from Man Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and the Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles motion pictures, Ritchson has turn into finest identified for being a solo hero. As such, Playdate offers him one thing of a singular alternative to discover the buddy comedy formulation, pairing him up with comedy veteran Kevin James.
Having met the Emmy nominee on Zoom when within the early phases of the film’s growth, Ritchson recalled later sitting down with James correctly to start sharing concepts for Playdate after he “indicated he would wish to do it“. This assembly of the minds gave Ritchson the conclusion that James is “an excellent vivid man and takes his work very significantly“, even with one thing on the comedic spectrum.
“We actually related over the fabric and simply over how the work is so necessary to each of us,” Ritchson shared. “And it was nice. I used to be so impressed by him. Attending to work with him on set and to be on the receiving finish of his sensible improv, he is the most effective on this planet at it, and it was a blast.“
Reflecting on his total expertise with James, one other factor that Ritchson discovered himself in awe of was “how versatile” the comedy on the web page is to his co-star. Mentioning a joke amongst some actors that “the script is only a suggestion“, Ritchson defined that James had an outlook that “every thing was on the desk“, albeit in a “actually wholesome method” slightly than any sort of inventive overstepping.
“There’s quite a lot of occasions once you come right into a undertaking and other people, particularly actors, are like, ‘I do not wish to do this,’ or, ‘I might by no means say that’,” Ritchson defined. “And you are like, that is so unhelpful as a result of both we would have liked to have this dialog a very long time in the past or include a suggestion. Loads of occasions, individuals simply do not wish to do one thing as a result of it makes them uncomfortable or no matter. And it is not that.“
With James, nevertheless, he would usually go into scenes with Greenfield and Ritchson with the dialog of “having all these concepts” for what else they might do with their Playdate script, providing “a pair alts to the scene“. Describing their inventive dynamic as “enjoying on this actually malleable place“, Ritchson discovered it “tremendous thrilling” to get to work with a comedy professional like James, who can convey “recent concepts to each second till it is within the can“.
We will do no matter we would like, and I like that. So it was thrilling working with him. We had been all the time on the lookout for one thing higher and funnier and I like that.
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Playdate is now streaming on Prime Video!
- Launch Date
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November 12, 2025
- Director
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Luke Greenfield
- Producers
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Jeff Sussman, Kevin James, Neil Goldman, Alan Ritchson, Dan Spilo, Mark Fasano, Sean Patrick O’Reilly, Jeffrey Greenstein, Nathan Klingher, Jason Benoit