Alan Ritchson Reveals The Secret To Mixing Action And Comedy In Playdate

Alan Ritchson has combined two of his best genres with Prime Video’s Playdate, and he has a secret recipe for how to mix action with comedy. The movie marks Ritchson’s latest partnership with Prime Video after his successful ongoing run with his Reacher series adaptation, whose latest season aired in early 2025, and will continue with an in-development fourth season and spinoff Neagley.

Ritchson leads the Playdate cast as Jeff, a zealous stay-at-home dad who comes to befriend Brian, a recently unemployed accountant, after a chance meeting at a local park. When Jeff’s son and Brian’s stepson set up a playdate, they head to a pizza arcade for a joint outing, only for things to go awry when a group of mercenaries attempts to kill the group, with Brian revealing he has a secret life.

Also 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 movie looks to continue Ritchson’s 2025 win streak, after Reacher season 3’s acclaim and Motor City‘s well-received debut at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival.

In honor of its Prime Video premiere, ScreenRant interviewed Alan Ritchson. The star opened up about what he views as the “necessary ingredients” behind creating a good comedy, as well as his experience getting to work with Kevin James and how the pair would often go off-script to amplify the scenes they had together.

Ritchson Has 1 Big Secret To Making Good Comedy

While he may still be best known for hs action chops in everything from Smallville to Fast X and Reacher, Ritchson does have established experience in the world of comedy. One of the star’s first breakthrough roles was in that of the college football cult hit Blue Mountain State, to which he returned for the 2016 sequel movie and is said to be attached to the revival currently in development alongside original star Darin Brooks and co-creator Chris Romano.

With Playdate, Ritchson finds himself mixing his action skills with comedy, as he and Banks Pierce’s CJ show off some of their fighting skills with each other, as well as against some of their foes. In reflecting on the key to the film’s physical comedy moments, Ritchson believes that the secret to this mix is “never being in on the joke“, instead always approaching said scenes as genuinely as possible in order to sell them to the audience.

If the stakes for the character are life and death and everything is as important as it can possibly be for whatever that situation is, then I think you have the necessary ingredients for good comedy.

Ritchson Had “A Blast” Getting To Improv With Kevin James

Apart from Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and the Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, Ritchson has become best known for being a solo hero. As such, Playdate gives him something of a unique opportunity to explore the buddy comedy formula, pairing him up with comedy veteran Kevin James.

Having met the Emmy nominee on Zoom when in the early stages of the movie’s development, Ritchson recalled later sitting down with James properly to begin sharing ideas for Playdate after he “indicated he would want to do it“. This meeting of the minds gave Ritchson the realization that James is “a super bright guy and takes his work very seriously“, even with something on the comedic spectrum.

“We really connected over the material and just over how the work is so important to both of us,” Ritchson shared. “And it was great. I was so impressed by him. Getting to work with him on set and to be on the receiving end of his brilliant improv, he’s one of the best in the world at it, and it was a blast.“

Reflecting on his overall experience with James, another thing that Ritchson found himself in awe of was “how flexible” the comedy on the page is to his co-star. Pointing out a joke among some actors that “the script is just a suggestion“, Ritchson explained that James had an outlook that “everything was on the table“, albeit in a “really healthy way” rather than any kind of creative overstepping.

“There’s a lot of times when you come into a project and people, especially actors, are like, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ or, ‘I would never say that’,” Ritchson explained. “And you’re like, this is so unhelpful because either we needed to have this conversation a long time ago or come with a suggestion. A lot of times, people just don’t want to do something because it makes them uncomfortable or whatever. And it’s not that.“

With James, however, he would often go into scenes with Greenfield and Ritchson with the conversation of “having all these ideas” for what else they could do with their Playdate script, offering “a couple alts to the scene“. Describing their creative dynamic as “playing in this really malleable place“, Ritchson found it “super exciting” to get to work with a comedy expert like James, who can bring “fresh ideas to every moment until it’s in the can“.

We can do whatever we want, and I love that. So it was exciting working with him. We were always looking for something better and funnier and I love that.

Be sure to check out some of our other Playdate coverage with:

Release Date

November 12, 2025

Director

Luke Greenfield

Producers

Jeff Sussman, Kevin James, Neil Goldman, Alan Ritchson, Dan Spilo, Mark Fasano, Sean Patrick O’Reilly, Jeffrey Greenstein, Nathan Klingher, Jason Benoit