“Can he ever win her back?”

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[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for Chad Powers.]

Summary

The Hulu comedy series “Chad Powers” tells the story of a disgraced quarterback who disguises himself as the adorable Chad.
The half-hour series balances heartfelt sports authenticity with universal human issues among its ensemble of characters.
Season 2 will tighten the screws, after Chad and Ricky’s possible romance explodes with an unexpected identity reveal.

Yes, the premise of Hulu’s half-hour comedy series Powers of Chadabout a hot quarterback who wants to resurrect his college football career and decides to disguise himself to do it, is absurd. But with someone as charming and friendly as Glen Powell playing Russ Holliday, a disgraced player who made an unforgivable mistake that kept him from returning to the field eight years prior, you actually find yourself rooting for him to rename himself Chad Powers. With some prosthetics, a wig, teeth and a Southern accent, he is successful enough to join the South Georgia Catfish. However, it’s not as simple as convincing his coaches and teammates, because when Ricky Hudson (Perry Mattfeld), Coach Hudson’s daughter and an assistant coach herself, learns his secret, she doesn’t even have the time and space to deal with her own anger and hurt feelings because the team needs Chad if they want to have any chance of winning.

During this individual interview with Collider, co-creator Michael Waldron talked about how he ended up telling stories set in the world of sports, fine-tuning the look of Chad Powers’ transformation, having a plan for season 2, that big reveal moment between Chad and Ricky, which characters he’d like to delve deeper into and follow the Break the bad model.

Co-creator Michael Waldron turned his love of sports into ‘Chad Powers’ and ‘Heels’

“If you became a screenwriter, chances are you weren’t the greatest athlete in your youth.”

Image via Hulu

Collider: Are you someone who always thought you would tell stories set in the world of sports? Are you surprised that you did Heels and now Powers of Chad?

MICHAEL WALDRON: In general, if you became a screenwriter, chances are you didn’t grow up to be a great athlete. But I loved sports growing up, whether it was trying to play them or just watching them. Maybe that makes sense, in the sense of writing what you know. I love wrestling. Maybe it’s just me trying to avoid doing research. With wrestling, I didn’t need to do any research to write this series (Heels). With Powers of Chadthere was no research. I already knew that. I have been a huge college football fan my entire life. It’s probably rooted, honestly, deeply, in laziness.

I have to say, I’m someone you would never catch watching sports, and yet I loved both. Heels And Powers of Chad. There is something so heartfelt about both shows.

WALDRON: That’s the problem, it’s the heart. With Heels And Powers of Chadit was really important to us that it was authentic. With Heelsonce we got the seal of approval from the wrestling Reddit, I was like, “Oh, we did it.” “And I hope we get that from college football fans, too. But you really make it a universal story. Like all good sports stories, you want them to appeal to people who have never played the sport.who doesn’t know anything about it, but I hope you find that there is something human in it that everyone can hold on to.

Did it take time to perfect Chad’s look? Was it too far? Has it evolved?

WALDRON: There were disgusting versions. Glen [Powell] and I will publish them. I have a photo of him where he looks like a gargoyle. It’s so hideous. It was like creating a character in a video game. We went to a special effects shop in Hollywood with this great artist, Vincent Van Dyke, and it was like, “All right, let’s try this nose. And this show nose with these cheeks? All right, now let’s try the black wig. What about the mustache?” You mix and match like Mr. Potato Head until you find something that doesn’t make you want to vomit. It was great. It was so much fun.

You have a lot of characters on the show, and I love a show that has such a great ensemble that I would love to watch any of them at home. Is there anyone you’re looking forward to giving more to in another season, that you haven’t had a chance to explore enough this season?

WALDRON: They’re all great. I definitely want to see more assistant coaches, Coach Byrd, played by Quentin Plair, and Coach Dobbs, played by Clayne Crawford. He’s so funny. Of everyone, I wish we had more Tricia Yeager, the booster played by Wynn Everett. She’s so funny. She somehow embodies this outrageously crazy character without ever breaking the tone of the series. I would like to see what his home life is like. What’s it like when she gets home to her mansion? We always talk about how all of our characters, in their own way, wear a mask. As the show progresses, seeing what’s underneath everyone’s mask is going to be a lot of fun.

I feel like Tricia and Danny could be friends.

WALDRON: Absolutely. The writers were really going for the idea of Danny getting an internship at Yeager Family Farms. We’re going to bring these two together, one way or another.

Co-creator Michael Waldron says there’s a plan for ‘Chad Powers’ season 2

“Season 2 would be about the walls closing in on our guys.”

With where you are at the end of this season, do you already know where season 2 would go? What kind of plan did you have from the beginning, and how has it evolved or changed?

WALDRON: We definitely had an idea at least of where the series would go and maybe where it would end. The best shows tend to have a sense of their endpoint, sooner rather than later. I know what we want to do with season 2. Like any good series built around a lie, like Break the badseason 2 would be about the walls closing in on our guys. The fun is getting in there and writing yourself into a corner. In the case of this season, with the big reveal happening in episode six, I always thought it would happen at the end of episode six, and instead it happens much earlier in this episode and becomes the entire meat of this episode of the conflict between Chad and Ricky. And so, it’s fun to have plans and then accelerate that schedule.

What was it like to experience that moment on the bus between Chad and Ricky? There’s something very heartbreaking about it because we really care about these two characters at this point. Has this scene changed at all, or did you always know what this moment was supposed to be?

WALDRON: I directed the finale and I had my writers in Atlanta with me, which was incredible. We were writing the show while we were shooting it. I knew it was going to lead to this confrontation between Chad and Ricky. The atmosphere at a pregame is so loud and so crazy, and the bus is almost closed, so you can have this intimate confrontation where hopefully the audience is wondering if they’re going to kiss? Are we going to get what we perhaps hoped for? And then it goes the other way. I wrote it and didn’t change it much. I had a new baby, so I fell asleep at 4 a.m. while writing, really in the throes of psychosis. And then we repeated it. It was really important to rehearse that scene with Glen and Perry. [Mattfeld] because it’s a tight space, so we taped off the entire length of the bus and walked it. We had to figure out where we could put our cameras and everything else. This is about a seven minute scene and I’m so proud of what these actors did. They just let themselves go, and I think that’s a real highlight of the series.

How does it come back? We want them together, but you left them in this place where it seems impossible for that to happen?

WALDRON: To answer your question, that’s the job of season 2. Will he ever be able to win her back? For me the show is a romantic comedyand maybe that becomes important here. Chad and Ricky are, in many ways, the real heart of this case. What’s exciting about keeping the show going is: how will it work out between them?

‘Chad Powers’ Is Over Once Too Many People Discover His Secret Identity

“We’re just trying to stack the odds against our characters as best we can.”

Perry Mattfeld as Ricky Hudson standing next to Glen Powell as Chad Powers in uniform in Chad Powers

When you have a character who is hiding who they are and you choose to reveal it to one of the characters, do you also have to think about who will find out next and how many people will find out how? As with any identity disclosure, you need to consider the extent to which you can continue to share this with other people.

WALDRON: There is a reason Break the bad I’ve been waiting for his final episodes for people to really start to uncover the truth about Walt, and we have to play by the same rules. The show is over, in many ways, once too many people find out about it. The good news is that the stakes have never been higher for Chad. By the end of season 1, it’s not just about getting caught. If he gets caught, what will happen to Coach Hudson, Steve Zahn’s character. No one is more at stake than him. He’s literally weak-hearted now, so it’s starting to feel like a matter of life and death. We’re just trying to stack the odds against our characters as best we can.