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By TV standards, Maria Sten is pretty tall. She stands 5'10" — a reminder that, before she was a professional actor, or writer (on shows like Big Sky), she was the Miss Universe contestant from Denmark in 2008. But she's not so tall that she looms over every scene partner, and she has a lean, athletic build. You notice her when she appears on camera because she has genuine screen presence, but not because she's some intimidating giant.
Alan Sepinwall
The role she's best known for is giant-adjacent. In the first three seasons of Reacher, she played Frances Neagley, who used to work with Jack Reacher as part of an elite Military Police unit within the U.S. Army. Neagley turns up in a handful of Lee Child's Reacher novels(*), but the creators of the TV show liked her enough to incorporate her into multiple seasons adapted from books in which she doesn't appear. You can understand why. As an old friend whom Reacher loves and respects, Neagley allows him to open up in a way he won't with other people he encounters on each adventure. And her sheer competence and no-nonsense demeanor provides quick shortcuts through various plot problems. Plus, her more frequent presence in Reacher's life provides some added continuity for viewers, since it's unusual to have a TV show where only a single character sticks around from one season to the next.
(*) The character is named for a fan of the books who won a charity auction. It's a less fun origin story for a name than Reacher himself: Child and his wife were at the supermarket, and she talked about how you need a reacher to get things off a high shelf.
You can also understand why Reacher creator Nick Santora, working with veteran TV writer Nicholas Wootton, would want to build an entire spinoff around her. The parent show is a hit for Amazon, and Sten pops off the screen in the role. And because the show has established that she has a day job as a high-priced private investigator in Chicago, there's a clear set-up for a new show that won't just feel like a Reacher rehash.
But the idea of doing a Reacher-verse show, in which Reacher only cameos, raises a large question: how much of the appeal of the original series is dependent on its hero being a giant?