Glen Powell & Eli Manning Chad Powers Interview: Football Meets Comedy

Glen Powell can do it all. He acts, he writes, he endlessly charms — but the man could not take a shotgun snap. Not well enough for Peyton and Eli Manning, at least.

“They sent Eli and me the videos of his throwing sessions …” Peyton explains.

“You watch [a pro QB] take a snap … his fingers are pointing up and his thumbs are down, angled toward the center, ready to catch,” continues Peyton. “With Glen, his palms were up, like he’s holding a tray, about to serve a platter. Eli and I were like, ‘We’ve got to get that fixed. They’re going to kill the show if the first snap he takes, his palms are held up flat. We cannot let up on this.’ ”

The show Powell’s palms were in danger of killing is Chad Powers, a Hulu comedy about a disgraced former college quarterback — played by Powell — out for redemption. The series, co-produced by the Mannings, is adapted from a 2022 viral video in which Eli, donning prosthetics and a wig, went undercover at Penn State’s annual open tryouts. His nose and hair may have looked ridiculous, but Eli’s version of Chad Powers knew exactly what to do with his hands — they have, after all, won two Super Bowls (and two Super Bowl MVP trophies).

“If there’s one note that Eli and I are going to help to make this show, it’s getting his hands fixed,” Peyton says.

Chad Powers is Powell’s first real TV role since playing another Chad, Chad Radwell, on the 2015 Ryan Murphy series Scream Queens. In the decade since, of course, Powell has broken out as a full-fledged movie star, first in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, followed by Richard Linklater’s Hit Man and then Anyone But You, opposite Sydney Sweeney. Last year’s Twisters solidified his leading-man status. For a star with that kind of white-hot Hollywood trajectory, going back to the small screen carries some risk — even if he wasn’t also a co-creator, writer and producer on the series. That’s some serious (pig)skin in a pretty tough game.

Powell, 36, call Powers “the hardest character” he’s ever played. It probably doesn’t help that it’s two characters.

The show follows former Oregon Ducks quarterback Russ Holliday eight years removed from blowing the national championship in historic fashion, dropping the ball just ahead of the goal line on the would-be winning touchdown. To get back into football, the otherwise too-toxic-to-touch Holliday goes undercover — under wig and prosthesis — as the walk-on candidate “Chad Powers” at the fictional University of South Georgia.

When word came down that the Mannings were fielding pitches to adapt the freshly viral Chad Powers sketch, CAA rang the freshly famous Powell and Michael Waldron (Heels), a pair of clients who had never worked together but had bonded over a shared college football obsession. Unlike many of the other Chad Powers pitches out there, Powell says he and Waldron specifically didn’t want to plug the Chad character into an inspirational story à la the 1993 movie Rudy.

“What made Eli’s thing so magical is the viewer knew Eli Manning was under [the disguise]. So, let’s use the lie at the center of this thing, which creates inherent fun conflict over the course of the series,” Powell says. “We were like, ‘OK, we’re going to Tootsie this thing. Let’s Mrs. Doubtfire it, and let’s see how far we can take this lie.’ “

Peyton, 49, and Eli, 44, loved the pitch, and older bro ran it up the chain at Disney’s 20th Television, where Peyton’s Omaha production banner has a first-look deal; it was a match made in corporate-synergy heaven, which is almost certainly the worst ring of heaven.

Hulu parent Disney also owns ESPN, which it is about to relaunch in a plus, plus, plus kind of way, largely built around college and pro football. (In fact, to justify its $29.99 monthly bill, ESPN has acquired NFL Network, RedZone and NFL Films, which also just so happens to co-produce Chad Powers.)

But all that glorious synergy is not why Chad Powers is on Hulu, according to Disney Television Group president Craig Erwich. “We expressed the most enthusiasm for it,” he says. “Are there rights that are involved that give us some firmer grasps on it? Sure. But it’s not here because of some contract — it’s here because they’ve created something really undeniable.”

The Omaha production banner, named after the audible call made famous by Peyton (though Eli swears he used it first), has had plenty of legit success in the nonscripted sports space. It’s the banner behind ESPN2’s well-watched Monday Night Football alternative telecast the Manningcast as well as the hit Netflix docuseries Quarterback and Receiver. But Powers marks the first foray into scripted content for the company, and Peyton says he didn’t initially grasp how adapting the one-off goof into a full scripted series was possible. “This whole [scripted] world is new to me, but I’ve learned very quickly. Don’t ever tell me, ‘That’s a bad idea. That will never work. That will never be a show,’ ” he says.

Though Powell, the Mannings and Erwich don’t love discussing the parallels, Chad Powers has an obvious predecessor: Ted Lasso, itself based on a 2013 promotion for NBC’s Premier League soccer coverage starring Jason Sudeikis. Both series are generously warm versions of their unlikely source material featuring fishes out of water and set in the world of “football” (one American, one British). Though each comedy is titled after the main character, they’re both ensembles: for Chad Powers, that includes Perry Mattfeld as Ricky, Quentin Plair as Coach Byrd, Wynn Everett as Tricia Yeager, Frankie A. Rodriguez as Danny and Steve Zahn as Coach Jake Hudson.

Also like Ted Lasso, Chad Powers totally works. Good writing, good vibes and a great leading man are just some of their (many) shared ingredients for success.

Erwich calls the comparison “a narrow view and quite a disservice to both shows.”

Protestations aside, Lasso became an Emmy-gobbling global hit for Apple TV+ that paved the way for it to launch an entirely new soccer streaming service in MLS Season Pass. So, there could be worse company to be in.

***

Two years after Eli Manning hung up his well-worn No. 10 New York Giants jersey for good in 2020, his strong right arm would be called on once more, though this time not by an NFL team one player away from contention, nor for his famous family’s prestigious Manning Passing Academy. No, this time, it was purely for the laughs.

Eli was in Happy Valley, where the Penn State Nittany Lions prowl, for an episode of his ESPN+ show Eli’s Places, a spinoff of big brother’s Peyton’s Places, in which he travels to locations that loom large in college football lore.

As a QB, Eli was a bit rusty. He knew that. But once he donned the Chad Powers wig and prosthetics, Eli Manning came out. He got into the character, into the competition, even into the college-issued No. 200 tryout jersey … that was a bit tight.

“I knew I wasn’t going to run a great 40 time,” he tells THR, referring to the all-out 120-foot sprint, a staple in evaluating football prospects. “I knew I wasn’t going to look real good. I’ve got the dad bod; I was 40 years old.”

But he’s still a Manning, and the Mannings are QB royalty. Like Eli, Peyton has won two Super Bowls. Their dad, Archie Manning, was a very good NFL quarterback who played on terrible teams. The lineage continues at Powell’s alma mater, the University of Texas, where Eli’s and Peyton’s nephew Arch Manning is poised to have the Longhorns ranked atop college football this season.

To paraphrase a recently controversial American Eagle ad featuring Powell’s Anyone But You co-star Sydney Sweeney, they’ve got good genes.

Save head coach James Franklin, who was in on the gag, the rest of the Big Ten team’s staff was shocked by what they saw out of this Powers kid, who most certainly did not look like a kid at all.

“There was one other quarterback there trying out,” Eli recalls. “Sweet kid, not a great quarterback. And so, all these receivers trying out are coming to me.”

“They’re like, ‘Hey, Chad, I’m going to run a post … I’m going to run a post-corner, I’m going to run a comeback,” he says. “They knew I could get it to them, and it might make them look good. At that point, I’m honestly like, ‘Hey, I can maybe help some of these guys make the team!’ I kind of forgot what I was there for, to play this role.”

Powell says that “watching the original Chad Powers … one of the things that really surprised me is Eli’s ability to improv. And there was a lot of weird heart in the character.”

Powell’s Chad Powers has even more of that “weird heart” than Eli’s — the opportunity to flesh out a character across six written episodes (from a 15-minute segment) being a notable advantage.

After Russ Holliday loses the big game, he loses his cool, punching out the father of a cancer-stricken child. The collapsing dad then inadvertently knocks the boy out of his wheelchair. Cellphone video of the incident goes more viral than the original Chad Powers and Ted Lasso skits combined.

When we see those kinds of meltdowns, says Powell, “everybody shakes their head and goes, ‘What the heck was he thinking?’ But you never live with that person afterward, right?”

As Powell describes him, Russ Holliday is “an asshole … the worst dude on the planet.” Until he “puts on the face of a good teammate and accidentally becomes a good teammate.” Chad Powers is, he says, “basically Forrest Gump: the nicest, sweetest, most genial Southern guy you’ve ever seen.”

Beyond the fake face, name, voice and hero school, Chad Powers is steeped in authenticity. Each of the fictitious South Georgia Catfish’s season-one opponents are real teams: the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) Rebels, the University of Tennessee Volunteers and the University of Georgia Bulldogs.

Beyond the ESPN rights, those are the alma maters of Eli Manning, Peyton Manning and showrunner Waldron, respectively. It’s an homage, sure, but more so a pragmatic choice — those are the schools that were the easiest for producers to get permission to use.

When dealing with colleges and athletic directors, it was “such a great hack” to have the Mannings on board, Powell says — but not so much that Powers’ school itself could be real.

Talks with “other colleges who will not be named” were “a nightmare,” he says. “They made it very difficult with some of their asks, even just in terms of using some of their signage and color scheme.” At the end of the day, the show “had to take a lot of liberties with it that no school would ever let us,” Powell says. “We could not afford any [outside] creative oversight.”

***

It turns out Powell is not just a pretty face — though he certainly is that, as Russ Holliday, if not so much as Chad Powers. But as we’ve seen since the advent of the sports movie, it’s not easy to “act” athletic.

When Eli is asked to critique Powell’s quarterback play, Powell quickly interjects: “Eli is so impressed. He has told me he has not seen talent like this in a long time.” Eli then jokes that he knew Chad Powers would need a big budget to cover how much work Powell needed to play a convincing Division I QB.

“I saw you throwing in Top Gun and wasn’t all that impressed,” Eli tells him, referring to the “dogfight football” scene in which Navy fighter pilots portrayed by Powell, Tom Cruise, Miles Teller and others play beach football … with two balls.

“Dogfight football” is not about the football, Powell concedes; it’s about flexing muscles under a vat of baby oil. For real, though, Powell “throws it well,” Eli says. “He’s an athlete.”

Chad Powers co-creator Waldron says Powell has “the best arm” of the entire production staff — minus the real football players on set, of course. To keep up with them, Powell did what any good pro does — he practiced his ass off. Producers hired Nic Shimonek, the personal quarterback coach to Kansas City Chiefs superstar Patrick Mahomes. “That’s why he’s such a star, he works on all those little things to make it authentic, to make it look good, to work,” says Eli.

Powell’s North Star for Holliday/Powers was Johnny Manziel, the Heisman Trophy-winning QB at Texas A&M whose nickname was Johnny Football. “He was so exciting to watch, and he was dynamic,” Powell says.

Manziel, like Holliday, was “a complicated figure,” as Powell politely puts it. Drug and alcohol abuse, a domestic violence charge (that was dropped) and struggles with mental health derailed his professional career.

“We wanted Russ Holliday to be extremely likable, but also a guy who represented a really fun, charismatic, wild character to watch that would give in to his best instincts on the football field and his worst instincts off the field,” Powell says, “and I think Johnny definitely represented that.”

So, it was serendipitous when, six months before filming began on Chad Powers, Powell met Manziel after playing golf in the Waste Management Phoenix Open Pro-Am.

“I went out with Johnny, and I was like, ‘This guy is such a blast,’ ” says Powell, recounting their night having dinner at Mastro’s before ending up at Casa Amigos, a nightclub and bar. “Anytime you catch me at the club, it’s always research,” he adds with a smile.

For Eli, the hardest part of playing Powers was creating a voice that wouldn’t make him recognizable to the other walk-ons trying out — and sticking with it all day.

Powell and Waldron wanted their Chad to have a voice that was “naturally comedic and fun,” Powell says, but one that “would also feel like a shot from the hip.” So Powell and his Hit Man dialect coach, Susanne Sulby, aggregated the “dirtiest accents from the South” and “Frankensteined” them together to get to Chad. “If you were to try to invent a character and somebody was like, ‘Hey, throw on a voice right now.’ Under duress, what would you put on?” is how Powell explains his Powers voice.

“The voice is really the fucking shark in Jaws,” Waldron says, explaining: “If the voice doesn’t work, we’re sunk.” Fortunately, it worked (unlike the mechanical shark in Jaws, which infamously didn’t always).

And then there are the prosthetics. There was “a lot of trial and error” for his Powers look, says Powell. “There are shots that I have on my phone of horrific versions gone wrong that are, like, terrifying. Where it’s like, ‘What happened to this person?’ This is a show that no one would watch, it’s so grotesque.”

When dealing with hair and makeup of this magnitude, a football helmet can expose more than it can hide. You can’t wear a fake chin piece with a chin strap, for example, and don’t get them started on wigs and helmets. The worst part: Powell could not have so much as a sip of alcohol throughout filming, as any trace in sweat would dislodge the facial prosthesis. They filmed Chad Powers in the summer and early fall in Georgia.

“During the beginning of football season, I had to be absolutely sober, which was a first for me,” Powell says.

***

With the NFL regular season two weeks away, the Manning bros are about as busy as they were during their playing days. They do their own direct outreach for pre-interviews with the coaches and players for their weekly Manningcast game, and new seasons of Eli’s Places and Peyton’s Places are on the way. Eli has his Giants obligations (and Peyton for the Denver Broncos), including The Eli Manning Show, and he and Peyton see their appearances, sponsorship events and speaking engagements ramp up during football season.

But Powell? Powell is arguably more in-demand in Hollywood right now than a good starting QB is in the NFL; his IMDb page can barely keep up with his career. Season one of the Hulu series is only a half-dozen episodes because of his busy schedule, Erwich explains — not that he’s concerned about Powell’s daily planner should there be a season two. “It’s a quality problem that I believe everybody will be excited and incentivized to solve,” he says.

The partnership between Powell and the Mannings will not end here. The actor will appear in other Omaha projects this fall, including on a Manningcast episode and on an Eli’s Places installment in which he (as Chad Powers) meets Manning (as Chad Powers, in wig and nose, though not necessarily full makeup) so the original can “make sure the legacy of the iconic walk-on is told properly.”

Powell’s next marquee project is a remake of The Running Man, directed by Edgar Wright. And he says he and Sweeney are “still talking” about an Anyone But You sequel, though they’ve agreed to not make one “until it’s the right idea,” which “requires patience.”

He’ll also probably get around to directing — pretty much the only Hollywood job this side of lighting he’s yet to tackle. “That’s something I’d love to do,” he says. “But right now, I’m getting to be in film school, I’m getting to work with [Richard] Linklater and Lee Isaac Chung and J.J. Abrams and Edgar Wright. I’m working with my heroes. And what’s been really, really fun is — every set I’m on, I pick up things. Whenever that time comes, I’ll be much more prepared.”

One thing he is not preparing for is to be the first American 007, an outside-the-box (and kind of absurd) suggestion by some in the business, should the character ever be retooled to come from the States. (Hey, if it’s good enough for the pope …)

Powell shoots that down without hesitation. “I’m Texan. A Texan should not play James Bond,” Powell says. “My family and I joke around, I can play Jimmy Bond, but I should not be playing James Bond. Get an authentic Brit for that job. That’s who belongs in that tuxedo.”

For now, the No. 2 Catfish jersey fits him just fine.

This story appeared in the Aug. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.