Chad Powers is an American sports comedy television series created by Glen Powell and Michael Waldron, starring Powell in the titular role. But it might as well have because Chad Powers’ (Glen Powell) secret is now out, at least when it comes to his relationship with coach Ricky (Perry Mattfeld). The new Hulu series Chad Powers is something I’ve been excited for and now co-creator Michael Waldron broke down the inspiration behind the series. In an interview with TV Insider, Waldron explored who Russ (Glen Powell) is, what movies they pulled from, and more!
The series resists clean answers. What viewers don’t get to see is how Russ’ reveal might ripple through the rest of the team - and their coaches, Jake Hudson (Steve Zahn) and Byrd (Quentin Plair), as well as Tricia (Wynn Everett), the head of the booster trust - if they learn that Chad was a fraud. By the end of the six-episode first season - executive produced by NFL legends Eli and Peyton Manning and inspired by an ESPN skit that saw Eli go undercover - Chad shows up at the last minute to play in the Georgia vs.
The cast includes Steve Zahn, Toby Huss, Perry Mattfeld, Clayne Crawford, Wynn Everett, Frankie A. Rodriguez, Colton Ryan, Keese Wilson, Xavier Mills and Quentin Plair. The show is based on a man named Russ Holliday who is a disgraced former college football star. When Russ decides to try his hand at football again, he takes on the persona of “Chad Powers,” meaning he wears a disguise and tries to walk on the Georgia Ducks. So inspiration from movies like Mrs. Doubtfire and Tootsie also make sense given the disguise part of the series.
Chad Powers premiered on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ in the United States, and on Disney+ internationally, on September 30, 2025. Glen Powell as Russ Holliday, former arrogant, narcissistic college football quarterback whose career has been nuked after disgracing himself in a championship game. Glen Powell and Michael Waldron created Chad Powers and received a series order from Hulu in February 2024. It is based on Eli Manning's character from Eli's Places. Eli and Peyton Manning were involved in the show's production, assisting in securing football arenas and props for filming. They also provided guidance to Powell on authentically portraying a star quarterback.
Chad Powers ranked No. Chad Powers was created by Glen Powell and Michael Waldron and received a series order from Hulu in February 2024. It is based on Eli Manning's character from Eli's Places. Eli and Peyton Manning were involved in the show's production, assisting in securing football arenas and props for filming. They also provided guidance to Powell on authentically portraying a star quarterback.
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Eli Manning as Chad Powers
The Genesis of Chad Powers
Three years ago, I got a call from [actor] Glen Powell and [screenwriter] Michael Waldron, saying we want to turn this into a show. I'm like, this is a whole new level. I'm out of my league. I don't know what's going on. I was very happy when they told me I would not be playing Chad anymore because I knew I was over my head at that point. And I learned a few important lessons: People seem to like me better when I disguise my face. Makeup artists had to work a lot harder to make Glen Powell ugly. You never know what might happen.
I got to sit in on a few of the writers' rooms sessions, and I just got drilled with questions. Everything from: What's the role of a head coach's wife when you were in college? What are meetings like? What's a Tuesday like when you're in college? What's an off day? All these things. What do you do after a game? Just going through the life of a college player. It was 20-plus years ago for me, so I'm trying to remember, and I know things have changed quite a bit. I started calling my nephew, [Arch Manning], who's at Texas, asking him a few questions just to see how things have changed. But it was fun to go down memory lane a little bit.
It was really important to Glen and Michael that everything looked and felt authentic to college football. That's what drew me to them after that first meeting. I heard their passion around college football. Michael is a big Georgia fan, and Glen being a big Texas football fan, they wanted to make sure they got those things right. They got to go to the halftime of a Georgia game where Glen was out there on the field, and they got fans to boo him as he's coming out. I mean, that's very authentic. Having the SEC schools promote this and use real uniforms, that was all important. Obviously, it's a ridiculous story, but we're going to highlight the great things around college football.
Glen would send videos for feedback as he was throwing and doing drills. We'd go through it, looking for things like how his hands are placed when he's taking a shotgun snap. Where his feet are, what his cadence is, some of the rhythmic things that are very genuine to a quarterback. Those are the things that Peyton and I were very serious about. We gave Glen pretty extensive notes on what it should look like, what the timing should be, what it should sound like to make that authentic. It's the little tendencies that quarterbacks have, whether you lick your fingers before you throw or if you fix your shoulder pad, you have these habits you get into. You gotta figure out what your habit is and make sure it's there on every snap.
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We're taking you inside the world of college football but with the fun twist that everything is built out of a lie. You're curious, like who's going to be in on the lie? What's going to happen if someone finds out? Do they continue the lie? Do they turn him in? How deep is this going to go? Chad is kind of winging it. Every time it's like: How do I get to this practice? How do I get through this game? How do I get through this meeting with the coach without blowing my cover and screwing things up?
There are a few tense moments when you're pulling for Chad, and you're pulling for Russ to pull this off and make it work. There are moments of out-loud laughter. Maybe you hate Russ and yet like Chad, even though they're the same person. I think the complexity and different emotions make the show really fun.
It's the idea of a second chance. You see this kid Russ, who's just not a good person. And probably deserving of everything that happens to him. And then you see him turn into Chad Powers. He's learning how to do things the proper way. Even though he's lying about everything, he's trying to act the right way and in that process is learning for himself that there's another way of doing this, that this is his second chance. You're rooting for him and hoping that he can make something happen.
The Downfall and Disguise
Russ Holliday had everything but a national championship. Instead, he dropped the ball on the 1-yard line, leaving the door open for the other team to score. His worst moment wasn’t the fumble, but what came after: after a cancer-stricken fan in a wheelchair called him his favorite player, Holliday lashed out and socked the boy’s father on national TV, knocking over the child in his wheelchair. “It’s the kind of thing that will haunt him for the rest of his life,” announcer Chris Fowler says during the scene. In the world of Chad Powers, that prophecy sticks.
It also fuels the show’s premise. Chad Powers, a six-episode limited series premiering Sept. 30 on Hulu, follows Holliday (Glen Powell) as he concocts an alter ego-a gifted homeschooled prodigy who sneaks onto a college team roster donning a shaggy wig and facial prosthetic. And the series leans into a deeper question: how does a person remake themselves when the world won’t let them forget who they once were?
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For Powell, the story is just as much about transformation as it is about football. Chad Powers expands a real-life stunt into a meditation on failure, accountability, and the cost of reinvention. The challenge for the actor included embodying two very different sides of a character, mastering football’s technical demands, and balancing humor with pain. “I just knew it was not going to be easy.” Powell tells TIME.
When Eli Manning retired after 16 seasons with the New York Giants, he left as the quarterback who twice spoiled Tom Brady's Super Bowl runs-upsets in 2008 and 2012 that elevated him from Peyton Manning's little brother to New York icon. He was known as steady rather than flashy, walking away with two championships, a lasting place in Giants history, and the respect of teammates who valued his calm in chaos.
Three years later, he found a way to stay in the game, just not on the field. ESPN tapped him to host Eli's Places, a football history series in need of a hook. The Chad Powers segment didn't come from strategy so much as an idea that emerged in pre-production: what if one of football's most recognizable faces tried to walk onto a college team?
Penn State's open tryouts provided the perfect stage-an arena where anonymity still felt possible. Head coach James Franklin agreed to participate only after he was convinced the stunt wouldn't derail his team's rhythm. Wearing jersey No. 200, a shaggy wig, and prosthetics that transformed his face into something vaguely familiar but unplaceable, Manning intentionally lumbered through the 40-yard dash. Agility drills tripped him up. But once he started throwing, the façade cracked.
The segment ultimately ran almost 15 minutes, ending with Franklin announcing that one player had been cut for "terrible testing numbers," before Manning finally peeled off the wig and revealed himself. The team erupted. The clip exploded online, racking up 17 million views on ESPN's YouTube channel, inspiring Halloween costumes, and landing Manning on late-night TV to relive the gag. Within days, Chad Powers shirts were popping up in shops and online.
Behind the scenes, Omaha Productions, the Manning brothers' company, saw the unexpected momentum as a chance to expand beyond documentaries and alternative NFL broadcasts. They began shopping the character around Hollywood, where Powell and co-creator Michael Waldron seized on the opportunity to turn a viral prank into the foundation for a series.
From Prank to Game Plan
Powell and Waldron saw possibility beneath the surface of the prank. Where millions laughed at a stunt, they recognized the potential for a character study-and, eventually, a series. When the two heard Omaha Productions was interested in adapting the Chad Powers sketch, they jumped at the chance to collaborate, rooted in their shared love of college football and a desire to push the premise deeper. “We immediately saw an opportunity to do not just the first really authentic college football show, but also a surprisingly deep exploration of the kind of mind that would put on a prosthetic and change their identity,” Waldron explains.
The series follows the fictional Holliday, a former star whose arrogance burned every bridge. Eight years after fumbling the national championship, he’s still chasing professional glory. But his true nature proved so damaging that only a new persona might offer a way back.
Powell drew inspiration for the role from a patchwork of real athletes. Powell tried to mirror that instinct in Holliday. In the series premiere’s opening sequence especially, he says, Holliday’s style is particularly “reminiscent of Johnny.” Powell, a longtime college football fan, also thought about players whose dazzling careers “ended suddenly, or seemingly suddenly.”
Powell trained with Nic Shimonek, Patrick Mahomes' personal quarterback coach, drilling footwork and release mechanics until the Manning brothers signed off. Then came the prosthetics: hours in the makeup chair, silicone adhered to his face, the wig itching under stadium lights. He had to move naturally under all that artifice, sweat pooling beneath the mask as he took snaps and read defenses.
The bigger test, Powell says, was embodying the character. "The ask was extremely high and extremely technical," he says, adding, “I also had to create this tragic backstory that you sort of root for, even with all of his flaws.”
A Battle Beneath the Helmet
What unfolds on screen reflects broader anxieties about identity in the digital age. Unlike another contemporary sports comedy, Ted Lasso, which begins from a place of optimism, Chad Powers begins from a place of self-doubt. Its protagonist isn't a cheerful outsider but a man whose authentic self was too destructive-the only way forward for Holliday, the show contends, lies in performance.
Powell says he felt the weight of the role from every angle: technical, dramatic, even tonal. As co-creator, writer, producer, and star, he was one of the “custodians” of the story, and there were, as he puts it, “no off days.” He had to master the precision of football’s most demanding position, ground the duality of Russ and Chad in something believable, and make sure the show never felt, in his words, “schizophrenic tonally.”
Waldron contends the biggest challenge was walking a tonal tightrope. "It's not Ted Lasso, and while it's inspired by Mrs. Doubtfire, it's not Mrs. Doubtfire," he explains. "For a story like this to work, there had to be some darkness and pathos lurking beneath the surface. It makes it funny in hopefully a subversive way, and I think when we do go to heartfelt, human places, maybe you're able to invest in it in a more interesting way.”
Even the accent became part of the character's psychology. An Austin, Texas native, Powell consulted his dialect coach from Hitman for different accents across West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas and Mississippi, ultimately going with what he thought served the character best. The series resists clean answers. In one sequence-a team-bonding water balloon fight at Coach Hudson's (Steve Zahn) lake house-the gentle Chad Powers vanishes. Holliday's killer instinct surfaces, his need to dominate breaking through the carefully constructed persona. He hurls balloons with the same competitive fire that once drove him to greatness and ruin, unable to let even a meaningless game remain meaningless.
The Manning brothers' presence as executive producers ensured Chad Powers wasn't just a comedy about rebuilding but a football story rooted in preparation and discipline, down to the accuracy of Powell’s shotgun snaps. "Most executive producers just sort of take the credit and run," says Powell, but "Eli was in the writers room making sure we didn't veer off track. To have guys at that level that are willing to be your partners and to be sort of a safeguard for quality is a really incredible thing.”
The Cost of a Comeback
Chad Powers arrives at a precarious moment, when careers can turn on a single clip or comment and redemption unfolds under constant scrutiny: apologies, orchestrated comebacks, carefully managed vulnerability.
Powell and Waldron build light comedy around that modern reality while examining an uneasy truth: reinvention can be exhausting. "We wanted this to take place in the real world of right now," Waldron says. "That meant real pain, real consequences to the things you say or do.”
That focus on accountability sets Chad Powers apart from the redemption tales that inspired it. As Waldron explains, unlike Tootsie or Mrs. Doubtfire, where the ruse ends with a tidy reveal, here the disguise continues to ripple outward, carrying psychological and social fallout long after the mask comes off.
In today's culture, he adds, the more difficult journey isn't simply being forgiven-it's learning to take responsibility in a world that often trains people to do the opposite.
It’s a question that extends beyond the fictional Holliday. Manning’s brief turn as Chad Powers was never meant to last, yet its resonance showed how audiences cling to the fantasy of starting over, even if only in jest. The show takes that fleeting prank and asks what happens when disguise isn’t a joke but a lifeline, when the mask becomes the only face the world will accept.
“This show is really about hope, second chances, and redemption, which is something I think we all need right now,” Powell says.
After Season 1’s penultimate episode ended with Coach Hudson (Steve Zahn) having a heart attack, Episode 6 - written by Luvh Rakhe & Gaelyn Golde, and directed by Michael Waldron - picked up with Chad and Ricky (Perry Mattfeld) scrambling to save him despite not having a car. As promised, “6TH QUARTER” picks up right where Chad Powers left off, with Coach Hudson having a heart attack and Ricky frantically calling 911. After realizing it would take too long for an ambulance to arrive, Ricky and Chad fear they’re out of options. So with Coach’s life on the line, Chad knows there’s only one thing to do.
He assures Ricky everything will be OK, sprints off into the woods, and heroically drives up to rush them to the hospital. Thankfully, Coach doesn’t know what a Cybertruck is. But Ricky does… and the horrified look on her face suggests that the jig is up. As she comforts her dad in the back seat, Chad crafts a last-minute lie and claims Danny bought the $100,000 Cybertruck from money he got after winning a settlement.
Chad tells Danny that Russ had sex with Wendy Hudson and he risked blowing his cover to save Coach from a heart attack. While he tries to calm Russ down and convince him Ricky was just keeping the hospital family-only, when they see her the next morning at practice and learn her dad is stable, she wastes no time setting the record straight. After Chad tells Ricky, “I’m really happy your dad’s OK,” Ricky rips the signature blue band off his arm, exposes Russ’ tattoo, and says, “You’re Russ Holliday.” Rather than explain himself, Chad runs away and Danny follows.
“If Chad goes down, Russ goes down. You think people hate me now? Wait till they hear about this shit,” Russ asks Danny. “The best we can hope for is if I disappear now, Ricky never tells anybody the truth. It’s the only move left… I don’t know how far we could have taken this shit, but it was always gonna end bad.”
When Russ remembers he can’t go home because of the way things ended with his dad, Danny offers to drive with him to the set of his dad’s new Michael Bay move three hours away to make amends. Before we check in with Chad and his dad, Ricky heads to visit Coach Hudson at the hospital and finds him impatiently charting out plays. She convinces him to get back in bed an abide by The Heart Attack Rules. While he doesn’t know the full truth about Chad, he knows he ditched practice, but has full faith he’ll return in time for the game. Coach Hudson comforts Ricky and says he’s focusing on the one job he can do at the moment: being her dad.
Speaking of Chad, Russ and Danny head to the Michael Bay set, and after Danny breaks down the Chad Powers of it all, Russ’ dad is impressed. “That must have been so much work. I’ve never seen you work hard at anything Why did you do it?” he asks, noting he hasn’t seen Russ smile so hard since before his mom died. Putting on his Chad voice, Russ explains, “I wanted to be Chad because I hated being Russ. I just wanted to hide and play football again. And people actually liked Chad. And Chad actually liked people. My team, my coaches, they all believed in me. And Chad just didn’t want to let em down. I’m sorry I stole your makeup and ran away. I’m sorry I was so mean to that sick kid and his dad. I’m sorry I dropped that football at the Rose Bowl. I didn’t mean to, I just got excited. Being Chad was nice. Russ’ dad forgives him for the past and encourages him to give Ricky the same chance.
Without Chad, the team - aside from psyched starting QB Gerry (Colton Ryan) - is essentially bracing for defeat. But as Ricky takes a moment alone on the team bus, Chad return to pour his heart out in hopes of getting another chance. “I’m sorry about all this. I didn’t know who Wendy was, obviously. Russ did that. I’m Russ, but I’m also - and I’ve been this whole time - Chad. Chad Powers,” Russ explains in his own voice. “Not just on the outside. He’s real. 5/0 it’s real. This team is real. The Catfish, winning this game, us doing it together is real.
As she processes his words, Ricky walks over to Russ and asks if she can touch his face. For a few seconds, she gently caresses his prosthetics, then pulls away and slaps his cheek. “How fucking dare you come here and say this bullshit, you lying PSYCHOPATH,” Ricky snaps. “You’re a nutcase. Underneath this gooey shit you are just a pathetic, disgusting, iconic loser. You almost murdered my dad, and then you murdered my fucking friend…You want to know what I feel for Russ? Russ’ face falls, and when Ricky asks him to move so she can get off the bus, he obliges.
When she threatened to “tell the whole world” and “burn [him] to pieces” if he doesn’t get away from the team, however, Russ drops the Chad Powers niceties and regresses, embracing his worst instincts and threatening her with mutually assured destruction. “If you out Chad, our wins will be vacated, the season will be done, and playing with a fake ineligible quarterback, Coach Hudson will be the one to take the fall,” Chad explains. “You won’t just burn me down. You’ll burn everything, including your dad.
OR, we can keep winning as a team. Chad leads the team out onto the Sanford Stadium field and takes in the cheering crowd. In a twist, after he and Ricky exchange layered looks in the middle of the field, the finale ends on a cliffhanger rather than showing the result of the make-it-or-break-it game. Fingers crossed that Hulu green-lights Chad Powers Season 2 so we can see what happens next.
Chad Powers | Official Trailer | Hulu
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