Leave it to the city of Philadelphia to have Hollywood collide with Washington, D.C.
Former President Joe Biden went for breakfast Monday at Parc restaurant in Rittenhouse Square, but did so just as the cast and crew of Amazon Prime Video’s hit action series “Reacher” were filming — to the welcome surprise of star Alan Ritchson.
The actor, a vocal critic of President Donald Trump, chronicled the meeting Tuesday on Instagram. Alongside clips and photos set to Giulio Cercato’s “Wow,” he joked in the caption: “So our Reacher set got in the way of these legends.”
The former president’s wife, Jill Biden, and younger son, Hunter Biden, were also in attendance.
“Was a privilege and honor to meet the Biden family,” Ritchson wrote on Instagram. “They couldn’t have been more lovely. Kind, joyful, gracious and present. We chatted briefly about simple stuff, like string theory and quantum entanglement.”
“Then Joe beat me at arm wrestling,” he joked. “All in a day’s work.”
Biden’s arrival was unwittingly captured by local photographer Hugh E. Dillon, who happened to be recording the “Reacher” crew filming a police chase at the time. He told CBS News it felt “bizarre” that “both things were happening at the same time.”
Dillon recalled a black SUV pulled up and people he assumed were actors got out, telling CBS News he thought it was part of a scene being filmed — even when somebody yelled, “We love you, Joe, we love you!”
Dillon eventually realized what had transpired.
“Joe Biden decided he needed some breakfast at Parc Rittenhouse,” he told the outlet.
Paul Marotta/Getty Images
In the footage Ritchson shared Tuesday, the actor chats with the former president inside Parc, before Hunter Biden puts his arm around the actor’s shoulders. The three men posed for a photo together that marked the end of the Instagram post.
A representative for Biden told “Entertainment Weekly” that the meetup wasn’t planned.
Ritchson was surely glad it was Biden and not the current president who strolled onto his set, as he called Trump “a rapist and a con man” last year and condemned Christians who supported him. Conservatives were irate at the remarks, with some even vowing to boycott “Reacher.”
Biden’s outing comes about a month after he revealed he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Read the full article here
