Note: This story contains spoilers from “Chad Powers” Season 2.
Nobody cared about who Chad Powers was until he put on the mask.
Glen Powell and Michael Waldron’s sports comedy, starring Powell as a disgraced football player who dons special effects makeup to pose as a southern, kindly college athlete to become the walk-on quarterback of a Georgia team, returned for a second season Thursday. The show came back bigger than before, with Waldron citing “Breaking Bad,” “The Dark Knight,” “Uncut Gems” and more as inspiration for Season 2.
“We just wanted to elevate it, wanted it to feel cinematic, the sort of show where I want audiences to put their phones down, turn lights off, and feel like they’ve really got to watch it and pay attention and have fun,” Waldron told TheWrap. “More thrilling, maybe. Certainly more romantic. I wanted to push the visuals, the visual ambition of it. We just tried to, as they would say, leave it all in the field.”
Waldron went deep with TheWrap, discussing the season’s dark turn, the future of “Chad Powers” and his work on “Avengers: Doomsday,” “Avengers: Secret Wars” and “Nova” at Marvel. You can read the spoiler-filled conversation below.
TheWrap: You start this season with ‘7th Quarter,’ which really does hit the ground running. It’s not a ‘bottle episode,’ but it’s an entire episode that is focused on this one idea: ‘What if Chad started coming apart on the field?’ When did you guys decide that you were going to start the season with this really fun escapade?
Waldron: We wanted to start with a bang. I think the audience wants football. The audience responds to the football. Obviously, it’s a half-hour show. We shoot on a six-day schedule. There’s only so much we could do, but we were like, how do we give the audience everything we think they want? Collectively, we just decided, let’s do ‘Uncut Gems’ in the football stadium. That was the pitch for this episode, and that really unlocked it. We talked a lot about how the show can’t be about, as we call it, ‘Mask jeopardy’ … But that was really enticing because it immediately forces Ricky (Perry Mattfeld) to work with Russ and Danny (Frankie Rodriguez) to survive.
She has such a striking line at the end of Season 1 where she just straight up tells him, ‘You should have killed yourself.’ How are you guys approaching bringing them back together after such an extreme fight?
We can’t ignore that she said that to him. That can’t have just been a mean thing that a character said to another character. Actually, if we really interrogate Russ’ psychology, that is a thing he would hang on to. Her saying that to him is as hurtful to him as him dressing up as Chad Powers was to her … He has said he’s sorry to her, and by the end of that episode, in her own way, maybe she’s not forgiving him for posing as Chad Powers, which is a big thing, but I do think that she’s apologizing for saying, ‘I wish you would have killed yourself,’ so that gets them another step toward reconciliation.
You do something I love in this season, which is giving Chad a nemesis. Obviously, Gerry was around in Season 1, but he becomes almost like Chad’s Frank Grimes this season.
A big part of that is Colton Ryan, who plays Gerry, is just so good, so we knew we could do it … Then it was just, ‘Alright, let’s just write the Joker.’ I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much we talked about ‘The Dark Knight’ — maybe just how much I talked about ‘The Dark Knight.’ I was like, ‘It’s like ‘The Dark Knight!’’ and my writers are like, ‘Shut up about Batman!’ But he’s this guy who’s obsessed with finding out Chad’s identity, and the fun thing about Gerry, and I think the reason that he’s a fun character to write and a fun character to perform and edit, is that he’s really not wrong.
He’s not wrong at all.
It’s really messed up what Chad’s done to him, and then what everybody else is continuing to do to him. He’s the perfect foil.
I want to ask about the ‘Batcave,’ speaking of ‘The Dark Knight,’ that gets introduced this season, and this idea that Chad and Danny are getting better at pulling this off.
To get away with it, there’s a real assembly line going on down there. So this season, let’s establish that location in the basement. They’ve got the wall of molds, and they’re constantly cooking and everything, in the way that Walt and Jesse, that ‘Breaking Bad’ at its best was always about process … We’re constantly trying to make the audience’s suspension of disbelief as easy as possible. I understand that this show has like a massive buy-in. What the f–k is this guy wearing? But I want you thinking about the character relationships and all of that, so this season, we’re like, ‘Well, let’s look at everything squarely in the eye.’ That’s the great thing about Ricky as the newcomer to the conspiracy. She can be the eyes of the audience.
Something I’m constantly pleasantly surprised by is that somebody as famous as Glen, and as striking as Glen, is in that makeup for so much of this show.
What a tremendous collaborator and such a generous actor, to be Glen Powell and to be like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to show up in this shit and make sure I’m there for everybody’s coverage.’ It’s not just for him. He’s doing it for everybody.
In terms of the actual makeup, we joke they’re like an F1 pit crew trying to get him in and out of there in 45 minutes or so, because we shoot on a crazy TV schedule. We’ve got big ambitious stuff we’re trying to get through, and so we don’t have time to have him in prosthetics all day … He does spend so much time as Chad that it’s weird for all of us to see him as Glen. We were just together, and every time I look at him is Glen, it’s kind of weird.
Yeah, where’s your nose?
At this point, you’re like, ‘My good friend is Glen, and now you’re actually my better friend, Chad. But he’s amazing.
It’s so fun how much you guys play with the reality of the situation and this idea that he would kind of go through ego death over the course of this. In this season, we see that he’s starting to blow past his initial goal. What can you say about Chad’s endgame? What does he think is going to happen at the end of this?
That is the question that we talked about the most. We talked about that on day one of the writers’ room with Glen. We were like, ‘That’s the most important question to have people ask Russ.’ You see his dad’s asking him and Ricky is asking him really point blank in this season. Glen gave a really eloquent answer that at least at the top of this season, the feeling was that, in Russ’s mind, it’s just about winning a national championship. It’s about erasing the original sin, this feeling that ‘If I had just won that national championship, if I hadn’t dropped that ball, my life would have went differently and I would be happy, and so if I win a national championship for Chad,’ to him, it’s just like blackout. Credits roll.
But characters like Mike, played by Toby Huss, and Ricky, are challenging that this season, saying, ‘What happens next? What are you going to do? Are you going to do this forever?’ and making him reckon with that. The fun of this season is maybe right at the moment where, thanks to Ricky and Danny and Coach Hudson and all these people who care about him, he’s evolved to a place where maybe Russ is OK, maybe I’m not such a bad guy, maybe the good about Chad was actually due to some good that exists in Russ. Now, here comes Tricia (Wynn Everett). Now Tricia’s in on it, and now he’s ensnared in a way and she’s like, ‘You’re going to be Chad Powers forever.’ I think in Tricia’s mind, ‘You’re going to play here as long as you can, and then you’re going to go play for the Falcons or you’re going to do this forever,’ because she’s got the money and the apparatus. Russ and Danny have been getting away with this with no resources. So next season, it’s like Walt and Jesse suddenly working for Gus. Those are the ultimate handcuffs.
It sounds like you guys have a pretty strong writers’ room for the ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ and ‘Secret Wars’ now, because we know that (Erik) Sommers and (Chris) McKenna are on it, and then Stephen McFeely and yourself.
Those guys are all so great. McKenna and Sommers were my first bosses in the business when I was a PA on ‘Community.’ So I have to deal with that, their relentless bullying, which is really just… No, they’re amazing, and they were mentors to me for a long time, so I love those guys. I was on these movies for a long time. I went off and made ‘Chad Powers’ when Steve and the Russos came on, and then I came back into ‘Avengers’ and was helping out Steve and Joe and Anthony, and then went and made Season 2 of ‘Chad Powers,’ and Chris and Erik came on, and then came back and have been helping some more, working with Chris and Erik and Steve and everybody. I mean, just those writers are responsible for some of the biggest movies ever made, so I just feel lucky to be working with all of them.
You’re doing ‘Nova,’ which is a project that a lot of people, myself included, have wanted for a very long time. Is there anything you can say about what drew you to that project? What makes you excited to take that character on?
I don’t know if I can say anything about anything I’m doing with Marvel. But I will say, I love Nova. I love Rich Rider. However we expand the cosmic side of the MCU will be really cool.
Do you have a favorite Richard Rider story? Mine’s ‘Annihilation,’ which I think is just incredible.
‘Annihilation’ is, I mean, I guess that’s the go-to, right? But the character spans a lot of generations, and I think maybe that’s why it’s taken some time to get him to the screen, is figuring out, where do you start that story? Do you start him on Earth? Do you start in space, as part of the Nova Corps? Whoever does it, I hope they do a good job.
The Nova Corps obviously kind of got wiped out (in ‘Infinity War’), so that’s something that a story is going to have to reckon with, I’m sure.
They would have to reckon with that. Yeah.
They. They sure would.
They, yeah, someone would have to reckon with that.
You mentioned Season 3. This season does end in such a such a way that sets up a lot of different threads. Are you and Glen ready to come back and do more?
We’ve always said this is a three-season, story. We would kill to make one more and finish the story, you know? It ends on a cliffhanger. Glen is a huge star, got a ton going on. I’m doing all my stuff with Marvel and everything. This show, we will always make time for our audience and this cast. It’s been amazing to watch people fall in love with it. So, hopefully this season, people like, because we want to bring it home. Bring it across the goal line.
“Chad Powers” Seasons 1-2 are now streaming on Hulu.
The post ‘Chad Powers’ Boss Huddles Up on Show’s Batman-Inspired Turn, Marvel Projects and Season 3 Hopes appeared first on TheWrap.
