Bringing Powers to the people
From skit to six-part comedy series, Chad Powers stars Glen Powell as a shamed American football player who seeks redemption in disguise. DQ speaks to co-creator Michael Waldron and the cast about adapting the original sketch, stadium shoots and creating the South Georgia Catfish.
As a writer and producer, Michael Waldron is used to working with characters from established IP, not least the Marvel comics that led him to create Disney+ series Loki and write feature film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. He has also co-written Marvel Studios’ upcoming movie Avengers: Doomsday.
But for his latest small screen project, Hulu and Disney+ comedy Chad Powers, he partnered with co-creator and lead actor Glen Powell to make a show that has its origins in more unusual territory.
The character Chad Powers first appeared in a 2022 skit performed by two-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback Eli Manning, who transformed his appearance to go undercover as ‘Chad’ to take part in walk-on tryouts with the Penn State college football team. After impressing both the coaches and his fellow recruits with his performance on the practice field, he then pulled the prosthetics, blonde wig and moustache off his face to reveal his true identity, much to the surprise of everyone there.
The idea to turn the sketch into a series – produced by Eli’s older brother and fellow double Super Bowl champion Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions – was then presented to football fans Waldron and actor Glen Powell (Twisters, Hit Man).
“It’s not the normal IP, especially for me,” Waldron tells DQ. “I’d seen the sketch. I thought it was funny. I thought it was stupid, and what drew me to it was, ‘Let’s try to make the best show of the year out of this crazy, silly skit.’ Glen and I started to talk about what it would look like to do a show about this character putting on a mask. We just kept finding unexpected layers to it. And it never stopped being fun. It kept getting more and more interesting. The silliness of it, of the initial sketch, is exactly what has made the show so fun to make.”
The result is Chad Powers, a six-part comedy that debuted this week on Hulu in the US and Disney+ internationally. Powell stars as Russ Holliday, a hotshot quarterback whose promising college football career goes up in flames after an unforgivable mistake in the championship game. Eight years later, he tries to resurrect his dreams of stardom, and shed his playboy image, by disguising himself as Chad Powers – a talented oddball who walks into the squad of the struggling South Georgia Catfish.
Waldron, Powell and Eli and Peyton Manning are among the executive producers on the series, which comes from 20th Television, Omaha Productions, Anomaly Pictures, ESPN Films and Powell’s Barnstorm Productions. The cast also includes Perry Mattfeld, Quentin Plair, Wynn Everett, Frankie A Rodriguez and Steve Zahn as Catfish head coach Jake Hudson.
With the original sketch forming the basis of the opening episode, which sees Russ steal items from his prosthetics designer father and head to Georgia after hearing that the Catfish are hosting open tryouts, the challenge for Waldron and Powell was how to expand the world of the show and its humour across six half-hours.
“Eli had been so funny in the sketch – the sketch is hilarious – and the sketch gives you a good template for Chad, what he looks like and also just how he acts,” Waldron explains. “He’s a weirdo, he feels like he was born a man out of time a little bit. So we drew a lot of inspiration from that.
“In terms of comedy, Glen and I chased our own comedic sensibility, and we wanted the show to have an edge. We wanted it to make us laugh. We didn’t want to be a show that masquerades as a comedy but maybe isn’t really trying to make you laugh, so we went for it. We tried to make it as weird, funny and emotional as possible. We tried to give you a full meal in this one.”
Their discussions drew upon references including Mrs Doubtfire and Tootsie – both films featuring men who undergo transformations to become female alter-egos – and sports movies like Bull Durham, Major League and Jerry Maguire that each had a romantic through line, which is an important element of Chad Powers.
“But also Breaking Bad and Barry, things that had a lie at the centre,” Waldron notes. “Certainly we talked about Friday Night Lights, just the heart of that and also just being a great football TV show.”
Waldron and Powell then wrote the pilot together, with a lot of texting and video chats taking place while Powell was on a movie shoot. They were “kicking pages back and forth, taking an outline that we had and saying, ‘Alright, let’s split up these scenes and let’s try to make each other laugh.’ Glen and I, we’re almost the same age, we have the same cultural references, so we’re both each other’s ideal audience,” the writer says. “Once we knew we were really making each other laugh, we felt like we had something pretty special.”
Stars Everett and Rodriguez agree. “I was obsessed right away,” says Rodriguez, who plays Danny, also known as Whiskers, the Catfish mascot and one of the few people who knows Chad’s true identity. “I read the first 10 pages three times in a row because I was cackling so much. There were tears in my eyes, so I had to go back to page one to make sure I was getting everything. That was even before my character was introduced, so I was already on board from those first 10 pages.”
“It just flew off the page,” says Everett. “Glen and Michael’s writing, I was cackling out loud.”
Rodriguez (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series) says Danny and Russ would likely never cross paths in real life, but they quickly form a bond in the series that sparks a fun dynamic. “To play that, we talked a lot about the meaning behind all of it, and how maybe Danny, this is like his Frankenstein [monster] that he’s like piecing together. So he’s the mastermind behind it all,” the actor says. “That was really fun to play because it’s just such a wild storyline, but the way they piece it all together and through the writing, and then also Glen and his humour, it’s just works so perfectly.”
Everett (The Newsroom) plays Tricia, one of South Georgia’s financial donors, known as a ‘booster,’ who subsequently becomes far too involved in the running of the team for Coach Hudson’s liking. “I, as Tricia, just desperately want a winning team, and I’ve always felt Tricia grew up in this world; her daddy would take her to the games and we were always invested in this school, and I just want a national championship so bad,” she says. “I see Chad as my potential ticket.”
Hoping to help Chad get that championship are Ricky and Coach Byrd, played by Mattfeld and Plair respectively. “Quinn and I both have some passion for football on a personal side, but it was one of the funniest scripts I’ve ever read,” says Mattfeld. “I literally laughed out loud reading it on my phone. I just thought I hadn’t seen anything like it, and Ricky seemed like a dream role because of my personal passion and the comedy aspect.”
“I just love sports movies, TV, all of it,” adds Plair, a former football player for the University of North Carolina. “Whenever I’m down and really need something, that’s what I go to because there’s always humour, there’s always love, there’s always passion, there’s always pain, all these emotions we feel as human beings. They always come out in sports, so to have the opportunity to be part of that was something I was attracted to.”
Ricky is a rising star among the Catfish coaches, but is often sidelined by her head coach father and others who don’t take her ideas seriously. She quickly forms a bond with Chad, however, as the secret to their respective success could be each other. “I was really grateful for what the writers set up,” says Mattfeld (In the Dark). “Ricky has a really intense emotional arc through season one, and it was really a fortifying opportunity, just as an actor, to have that arc.
“It was a tough role to find. It’s very nuanced, and there are a lot of different boxes she has to tick. She has to be liked by the guys, but taken seriously. She’s the straight man of the show, but it’s a comedy, so finding it was really hard, but I hope everybody likes her as much as I do.”
Plair (Tiny Beautiful Things) drew on some of the coaches he has worked with to create the character of Byrd. “When I first saw the audition, I had a certain take on it, and then working with Michael and Tony [Yacenda], the director…”
“I just want to brag for a second,” Mattfeld interrupts. “The role [of Coach Byrd] was supposed to be totally different. They fell in love with him, and the role became Quentin. What they were originally looking for was not him.”
“Which actually helped me,” Plair continues. “I just pulled from past coaches I actually knew and put them together, and then started building things on top of that. With the writing, it all came together and I was finding it. I’m still finding it, honestly.”
Mattfeld and Plair were particularly taken by the level of detail in the show and the dedication of the production team to make every aspect as authentic as possible, from the use of the real Southeastern Conference (SEC) logo and the names of rival teams to the presence of ESPN presenters and announcers. “The players we use are all real players,” Plair notes. “All of them have at least played college, and some of them were in NFL training camps this go round [ahead of the 2025 season], so we had that to unlock the authenticity.”
With filming taking place in Georgia, that authenticity is heightened by the fact the majority of the football scenes were shot at Center Parc Stadium in Atlanta, which is home to the real-life Georgia State Panthers. Many scenes were also filmed in front of real crowds.
“I remember when we were filming, we had our football team walking through [the stadium], and the real student-athletes were like, ‘Who are these people?’ because our players were walking through their locker room,” Mattfeld remembers.
“It was unbelievable, because I grew up going to that field,” says Everett, recalling the stadium’s former identity as Turner Field when it belonged to the Atlanta Braves baseball team. “Walking on that field for the first time and seeing what the art department did, how they brought the Catfish to life and the amount of extras, it was so magical. It was truly magic.”
Rodriguez had a particularly special view of filming those scenes – from inside his oversized Catfish mascot costume. “I am really in there,” he laughs. “I think there’s only two shots that are not me and it’s a stunt double, but I am in there.
“I got to talk with a few professional mascots. I won’t reveal their identities, for their safety. I was warned it was going to be warm [in the suit], but it’s so much fun. It’s very heavy. I don’t know how they dance and do cartwheels and stuff.”
The stadium scenes were also important for Waldron and Powell. “Glen and I are fans, and I know that as a fan, if I saw something that didn’t feel real or didn’t feel like they made an effort to get it right, I would tune out,” says Waldron, who hopes plenty of viewers – football fans or not – will follow Chad’s adventure with the Catfish and see if he can finally deliver a championship.
He adds: “I hope we get to keep telling this story and see these guys through this football season in the show and see, ‘Can he get away with it?’ What does getting away with it look like? Like Breaking Bad, can anybody get out of this thing alive? Or how many lives is it going to ruin? It’s only going to get crazier and more fun from here.”
“Even if you’re not a football fan, there’s so much to connect to,” Mattfeld says. “There’s a lot of heart and, as funny as it is, it’s emotional and moving. There’s definitely something for everyone.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Ted Lasso: An American football coach with no soccer experience is hired to manage a struggling English soccer club, inspiring his team and fans with optimism and empathy as he finds new purpose overseas.
Blue Mountain State: Three misfit college football players attempt to balance wild partying, campus fame and team antics as they navigate the unpredictable world of student-athlete life at a fictional university.
Friday Night Lights: A small-town high-school football coach faces the pressures of maintaining a winning team while helping his players and their community find hope and meaning amid adversity.
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tagged in: 20th Television, Anomaly Pictures, Barnstorm Productions, Chad Powers, Disney, ESPN Films, Glen Powell, Hulu, Michael Waldron, Omaha Productions