Playing football can be hazardous to your health — even in a fictional football game. Just ask Glen Powell, who had a scary on-field incident while filming the new pigskin comedy series Chad Powers, which calls its first play tonight on Hulu.
"There was this one day where we were shooting a oner," the series cocreator and star tells Gold Derby, referring to the demanding one-shot technique made newly famous by Seth Rogen's Emmy-winning The Studio. "It was in the dead of summer, and it's this big, long shot that lasts for several minutes. I've got a helmet on, I've got a wig on, and I've got prosthetics on my face, so nothing's really coming out in terms of heat. It's just all sort of cooking on my head!"
Powell played through the discomfort, but at a certain point even the future Running Man couldn't defeat the elements. "I throw this big touchdown pass, and was like 'Yeah!'" he recalls. "All of a sudden something fried in my brain and I literally blacked out. But I was still standing up, so no one knew! I kind of woke up mid-take and there's a camera in front of me. I just thought, 'There's a camera here, but I don't remember what I'm doing here.' So it got a little dangerous a couple times.
Asked about the blackout incident, Powell's fellow creator and showrunner Michael Waldron calls that moment "terrifying," adding: "Much like a coach when you've got a star quarterback, you just want him to be OK. Glen is my friend, but I was also thinking about the season ahead. And unlike a football coach, I don't have a backup Glen Powell!"
For his part, Powell emphasizes that was a rare off-day in what was otherwise a smooth shoot. And he reveals that a portion of his blackout moment may have made it into the final cut. "I actually think there is a clip from it [in the show], because I'm supposed to be a little dazed in that scene. But it was a wild moment to to wake up in front of the camera crew still standing up."
In case you're wondering why Powell was wearing prosthetics under his football helmet... well, that's the premise of Chad Powers. The actor plays Russ Holliday, a one-time superstar college QB who torpedoes his own career through bad on-field play and even worse off-field behavior. Cast out of the sport he loves, Russ finds a way back to football by borrowing some facial prosthetics that belong to his father (Toby Huss), a renowned Hollywood makeup artist, and trying out of a struggling collegiate squad. One wig, bulbous nose and broad Southern accent later, it's goodbye Russ Holliday and hello Chad Powers.
Powell remembers playing "with a lot of different versions" of what would become Chad's face in the run-up to production. "One of the things I'm really proud of with this show is that it's really a love letter to the hair and makeup department," he says. "We tried to go, 'OK, how would you actually pull this off?' For instance, I couldn't have a chin piece or a forehead piece, because something like that wouldn't hold in a football helmet. You'd also be sweating through all that stuff."
Waldron likens the process of finding Chad's look to building a video game avatar. "You'd mix and match this nose with this brow and then maybe add a black wig, and then that would make you scream in horror," he says, laughing. "It was about finding the right balance between, 'Oh, he's pretty ugly,' but also 'There's something cute and adorable about him.'"
Powell's costars confess to having a tough time adjusting when the star went full Chad. "I definitely thought I was going to lose my job a few times, because it was so hard to keep a straight face," says Perry Mattfield, who plays the assistant coach Chad's new team — and his love interest. "The prosthetics team did an incredible job."
"the first time I saw the whole get up in person, I was in a state of shock," echoes Frankie A. Rodriguez, who plays the team mascot — and Chad's confidant — Danny. "And then to hear that voice was even more hilarious. It was very difficult not to laugh during your first day with Chad. But then as you got to know Chad, he was just Chad."
As for whether we'll see more of Chad beyond this first season given Powell's busy feature film schedule, Waldron teases that they do have some plays left over for a possible Season 2. "Glen and I hope to make more," he says. "Any show built on a lie or a secret owes a debt to Breaking Bad, which was a big influence for this series. As the story goes on, the walls continue to close in around our heroes and it's just going to get harder and harder for Chad."
