Who Plays Xavier Quinn In Reacher Season 3

This article contains mild spoilers for “Reacher” Season 3.

“Reacher” Season 3 has received a lot of advance attention for its antagonist game. However, much of it has been directed at the hulking Paulie (Olivier Richters), whose gigantic frame makes even Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) look puny in comparison. While this is understandable from a visual standpoint, it’s worth noting that Paulie is far from the only villain in the mix. Rug purveyor Zachary Beck (Anthony Michael Hall) seems to be up to very little good, and the looming presence of an ominous man called Francis Xavier Quinn is also hovering above the events.

While Quinn is largely absent from the show’s first three episodes, he’s heavily telegraphed to be the most devious villain Reacher has faced yet. The actor who’s tasked with portraying the character is none other than Brian Tee, who happens to have plenty of experience in all levels of the antagonist game … up to and including playing actual supervillains. Let’s take a look at some of this highly skilled actor’s greatest hits.

Before the “Fast & Furious” franchise became all about outlandish stunts, Marvel Cinematic Universe-style fight sequences, and family, it was a stylish but comparatively realistic movie series about thieves and underground car racers. “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” (2006) is the third film in the property, as well as an early sample of its globe-trotting future. The movie switches protagonists from Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) to Sean Boswell (Lucas Black) and steps away from the U.S. soil to explore Tokyo’s drift racing scene. Brian Tee plays the film’s main villain D.K., which naturally stands for Drift King. (“The Fast and the Furious” films are many things, but never subtle.)

In a previous interview with HalfKorean.com, Tee revealed that his Drift King wasn’t just faking it with movie magic — the actor got the opportunity to learn bits and pieces of this particular driving skill himself. However, he was happy to let more experienced hands handle the film’s major driving stunts for obvious reasons:

“Yeah, they actually took us out to Irwindale Speedway for awhile and showed us how to drift. I think physically I’m not a really good drifter but technically I knew what I was doing as far as doing it in front of a green screen. It was really good to perform in the character and knowing exactly what goes on while drifting and to be able to make it seamless with what the stunt drivers were really doing. And, I mean, I’d rather have the stunt drivers do it because they’ve been doing it for 15-20 years and they were the best stunt drivers in the world and can only make us look better when they do the actual drifting.”

“The Wolverine” (2013) isn’t even close to the best live-action movie featuring Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), but it’s still an entertaining romp that takes Marvel’s favorite adamantium-clawed mutant to Japan. Brian Tee plays the country’s Minister of Justice, Noburo Mori, who’s engaged to the protagonist’s love interest Mariko (Tao Okamoto). Unfortunately for Mori, Wolverine finds out that he’s put Mariko at risk through his affiliation with the film’s villain. After a quick interrogation scene, the hero promptly defenestrates the politician.

Tee didn’t suit up as a supervillain for this movie — he got to do that later in his career — but playing an antagonist in a superhero movie is still a big deal. In a 2013 interview with Nerd Reactor (via Comic Book Movie), the actor shared some insight on the role:

“I think Noburo Mori is one of the pivotal characters [in the movie] in the sense of good and evil. He rides a fine line between the two. Just like all politicians. Rightfully so. He’s got this great inner power, and it causes havoc with his political ties, and it’s connected throughout all of Tokyo.”

With the exception of the canceled “Chicago Justice,” which only lasted for a single season, NBC’s One Chicago shows have gone from victory to victory. Chronologically the third entry in the franchise, “Chicago Med,” mixes up the property’s frantic first responder fiction with classic medical drama to great effect, and Brian Tee was at the center of things for the first eight seasons. From 2015 to 2022, he was part of the show’s core cast as Dr. Ethan Choi, the strait-laced former Navy medic who rises in the ranks of Gaffney Chicago Medical Center. Dr. Choi is such a popular character that he’s part of one of the franchise’s many portmanteau romances — in his case, the “Chexton” pairing with April Sexton (Yaya DaCosta).

As an actor, Tee left “Chicago Med” in Season 8 after appearing in a total of 136 episodes, though he has since directed two episodes of the show. In a 2023 interview with Variety, he reflected on his character’s exit from the One Chicago franchise, recognizing the sad aspects of the departure but opting to see the silver lining:

“It’s bittersweet to say goodbye, but I don’t think it’s ever a real goodbye. It’s a see you later. Our paths will cross. It’s what we do, as far as artists or actors are concerned — and even directors or writers. There will always be an end and there will always be a goodbye, but you make certain relationships that last forever. That’s what you hang your hat on.”

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is a decidedly unserious franchise, and arguably doubly so when Michael Bay is holding the producer reins. Despite its dedication to outlandishness (or perhaps because of it), it’s also one of those properties where fans expect to see some very particular elements regardless of the adaptation. Hence, it was disappointing to see some of the more famously peculiar aspects of the brand omitted from the 2014 “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie.

Fortunately, the 2016 sequel, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” (the set of which /Film visited in 2015), corrects course with a vengeance. Not only does the film finally grace viewers with gloriously cheesy live-action adaptations of mega mutants Bepop (WWE wrestler Stephen “Sheamus” Farrelly) and Rocksteady (Gary Anthony Williams) and the alien overlord Krang (voiced by Brad Garrett), but it also recasts the franchise uber-villain Shredder with, yes, Brian Tee.

Tee takes over the vastly expanded role of Shredder from the 2014 film’s Tohoru Masamune, and spends every second of his screen time having an utter blast. Unsurprisingly, he was thrilled to play the iconic villain, and didn’t hesitate to say so in a 2015 interview with the Chicago Tribune:

“When you’re Shredder for Halloween as a kid, and now you get to play him, it’s like a childhood dream come to life. I must have been 8. It was around when the comic books first came out, I believe, in ’84. I was a big reader. I loved these turtles that were somehow mutants and teenagers and they were ninjas. How cool is that?”

Brian Tee has an extensive acting résumé that this list can only briefly scratch. Apart from the aforementioned projects, he’s played significant roles on the Starz drama show “Crash” and in Colin Trevorrow’s dino blockbuster “Jurassic World” (2015), to name but a couple. Still, if you ask the actor what his most important work is, he has an answer. In a 2024 interview with Sharp Magazine, Tee named the Prime Video miniseries “Expats” a personal favorite:

“I’ve been blessed to be a part of [‘Expats’]. I’m so incredibly proud of it. As far as my 25-plus years in the business, the best thing that I’ve ever been a part of — definitely the most ‘elevated’ thing I’ve ever been a part of, and I’m so grateful for all of the positive reactions. I’m just along for the ride and really enjoying every aspect of it. The anticipation of people being able to binge it — to fully experience it as a whole instead of week to week — is a whole other journey and hold on. It’s a six and a half hour movie.”

Based on Janice Y.K. Lee’s novel “The Expatriates,” “Expats” is a drama about rich and somewhat aloof, well, expatriates living in Hong Kong. The central couple of the ensemble series are Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman’s Margaret Woo and her husband Clarke (Tee), whose opulent life is overshadowed by the loss of their young son and a host of social pressures. “Expats” is serious and at times very grim, and while the opportunity to work opposite an actor of Kidman’s caliber no doubt helps, it’s easy to see why Tee loves the show so much.

New episodes of “Reacher” drop Thursdays on Prime Video.