Inside Glen Powell’s ‘Crazy’ Experience Putting on His Unrecognizable Face for Chad Powers: ‘I Scream & I Black Out…’
Glenn Powell is really unrecognizable in his role as Chad Powers. For the new Hulu show, the actor had to sit in the makeup chair for hours to become a rising football legend.
Chad Powers is based on a 2022 skit made by Eli Manning, where the famed NFL player dons prosthetics to try out for Penn State’s football team. The new Hulu show plays on the premise of a disgraced football player named Russ Holliday who wants to redeem his career by putting on an elaborate disguise and going under the name of Chad Powers.
“We wanted this to be a cinematic, badass football show that everyone who was a fan of college football, professional football, who just likes it or is just interested in it, to recognize it, and go, ‘Wow, that’s the real deal,’” Powell told Reuters.
Related: Glen Powell Might Be a ‘Single Guy’ But Take a Look at His Star-Studded Dating History
Is Glenn Powell’s nose real in Chad Powers?
Glenn Powell uses extensive prosthetics while playing the role of Chad Powers. In an interview with E! News, he recalled a time when he fainted while filming a scene. “I’m wearing a helmet and a wig and the mask,” the actor said. “And I’m running this football play over and over and over.”
He ran through the scene for about 2 or 3 minutes, “doing several football plays down the field.” And soon enough, “I got to the end of it, I throw this touchdown,” he said. “I scream and I black out.” Though he wasn’t there mentally, he looked up and saw “an entire field full of football players looking at” him.
He revealed he never had a “wild” health scare like that before, and confessed that it was because he was overheated and had a lot of adrenaline in him. “It was bad,” he recalled. “It was crazy.”
As for how long it took to put on the prosthetics, Powell said that they perfected the process to wind it down to an hour. “We timed every day,” he said. “We got faster and faster, faster.”
Despite the scary experiences, the Anyone But You actor wants to wear his prosthetics and makeup in the real world. “This is probably the first couple of weeks where I’m not working, and it’s the first time I’ve kind of exposed my face to real air,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I think after these last couple of weeks I will call Kevin [Kirkpatrick] and Alexei [Dmitriew], my makeup and prosthetics people, and just see if I can borrow Chad for a little bit”
Showrunner Michael Waldron made the conscious decision to make the 36-year-old actor as unrecognizable as possible. He told the entertainment outlet, “We have to make Chad ugly, Chad can’t look good, but the Glen-ness comes out and you end up falling in love with Chad almost immediately.”
Eli Manning and his brother Peyton serve as executive producers on the show. The elder Manning recalled to THR that Glenn Powell was “way better looking than Eli” even with the prosthetics. “I think it was just a reminder that thank goodness it’s Glen Powell in this show and not Eli Manning. Watching Eli for eight minutes in that viral video, that’s one thing, but six episodes, that’s a lot of Eli — I stare at Eli every Monday night [on the Manningcast], it’s hard. That’s why I’m here, to be sure that there’s no last-minute change with Eli. He has a cameo in this show, but it’s limited. I’m just glad it’s Glen, Glen looks good no matter what he’s in.”
