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Chad Powers (Glen Powell) should probably attend class a bit more.
The Chad Powers title character is known around the Southern Georgia University campus for the “athlete” suffix of his student-athlete status. What I’m saying is he’s dumb — but in the most endearing possible way. That’s the way the Hulu comedy’s showrunner Michael Waldron (Loki) likes it.
Waldron says the “most joyful stuff” to write in Chad Powers is the (prosthetically) masked man’s bizarre, roundabout answers to personal questions that could otherwise out Powers as Russ Holliday — or at least as not a real person. The exchanges that spark joy for Waldron do the same for viewers, and they’re not as difficult to write as you might think.
“That’s why I’m writing this show because, in some ways, it’s whatever your first stupidest thought. You don’t actually even have to be funny. The character is a real cheat because he just says stupid shit, and and the comedy comes from the great actor from how Glen sells it and then everybody’s reaction to it,” Waldron told The Hollywood Reporter. “I mean it is a precise thing and it’s like, ‘Well how stupid is it?’ It was fun this season to interrogate it a little bit. It’s like, as Russ says to Ricky, ‘Chad is stupid. I’m making deliberate creative choices.’ Now, I think that’s probably just [Chad] retroactively justifying a crappy performance.”
