Tom Cruise is always in Glen Powell‘s corner.
After Powell booked the role of Chad Powers in his upcoming Hulu show of the same name and realized how crucial it was to get the prosthetic makeup right, he says his first instinct was to call up his pal Cruise. In the six-episode series, based on Eli Manning’s ESPN spoof video, Powell plays disgraced quarterback Russ Holliday, who goes uncover as Chad Powers to get a second chance at playing football. Cruise also went through a big physical transformation with the help of special effects makeup for his role as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder.
“Tom was extremely helpful in helping to not go down the wrong path in terms of the prosthetics,” Powell tells The Hollywood Reporter. “He was, as is with a lot in my life, he was my first call (laughs) where I was like, OK, you know, very early on we were breaking the show, I was like, ‘OK, how do you actually get away with this?’ Because Les Grossman is an iconic character, and a very three-dimensional character.”
Powell continued, “I definitely always use him as a resource. He’s kind of played every character in the book. So on the prosthetics, he really kind of pointed us in the right direction to make sure he was really gonna work. Because if you don’t buy the fact that the world believes that this is a real human, the whole experiment falls apart. So yeah, we thank TC for that.”
Ever since the two met to work on 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise has become a mentor to Powell. In a May 2024 cover story with The Hollywood Reporter, Powell noted that when he auditioned for the film and didn’t get the part of Rooster, Cruise convinced him to play Hangman by explaining how he selects great projects and then makes the roles great. The advice earned its way into Powell’s “icon wisdom” journal.
Additionally, when Powell was promoting the 2023 rom-com Anyone but You, with co-star Sydney Sweeney, rumors of an on-set romance appeared on gossip sites. Powell leaned into the advice Cruise had shared with him. “I kept coming back to something that Cruise had said, which was, ‘The world’s going to become really loud, and it’s your decision how much you turn up or down the volume.’”
Like Cruise does for his projects, Powell is also executive producing Chad Powers. He also co-created the series with Michael Waldron (Loki, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness). Eli and Peyton Manning also serve as exec producers, among others. Perry Mattfeld, Steve Zahn, Quentin Plair, Frankie A. Rodriguez, Wynn Everett, Clayne Crawford, Xavier Mills, Colton Ryan and Toby Huss round out its cast.
Chad Powers drops on the streamer Sept. 30 with two episodes. New episodes will premiere on Tuesdays for the remaining four weeks.
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