The new Disney+ and Hulu sports-comedy Chad Powers is flying high among the streaming service’s most popular titles. It sees Glen Powell play a failed sports superstar who pulls a Mrs Doubtfire to restore his reputation by joining a college football team.
Powell’s character is leading part of the show’s comedic flair, but, frankly, it’s the rest of the cast that the show couldn’t survive without. I’m talking about chair of the college’s trust Tricia, played by Wynn Everett, and team mascot and Russ’ mentor Danny, played by Frankie Rodriguez.
Of all the characters in Chad Powers, Tricia and Danny are two beaming characters who, despite their seemingly ill-fitting place in the world of college football and roles off the football field, are two of the show’s most integral characters.
From being an authoritative woman in sport to serving as a mentor for the team’s star player, here’s what actors Everett and Rodriguez reveal about their character and what they think makes them so special.
From one icon…
Tricia is truly larger than life, and her boisterous personality beams through from the moment she appears on screen. Everett reveals that there are many sides to Tricia, which is a reflection of the many women that inspired her to base the character on. “Tricia is inspired by like ten different women that I grew up with in Atlanta, Georgia”, she shares, but it was one in particular that she drew inspiration from,” she said.
“My mother is very southern. One moment she’ll say ‘I’m praying for you, we’re going to pray about this’, and then 10 minutes later she’ll drop something on me. But yes the women in my life are strong, powerful, incredibly southern icons, and I just pulled from them and pieced Tricia together”.
Being an iconic southern woman is just the surface of Tricia’s character, though. In reality, she has a tight ship to run, which requires sheer confidence to be the chair of the college’s football team – a role where she’s granted more power than the men on the team. “I love the fact that she can hold something over Coach Hudson, that I actually have a little more power than he does and that I have the ability to fire people,” Everett said.
It was in these moments that she was most comfortable, and it shows. “This is something I definitely embody. I mean, I would never want to fire anyone anyway, but I love her balls to the wall life motto and that she is going to get what needs to be done to get a national championship.”
Above all the dramatic over-exaggerations that come naturally to Tricia, the singular most prominent aspect of her character is her role as an authoritative woman in sport, which Everett credits to the way she was portrayed on paper. “I truly don’t feel like I had to portray anything because the words were so perfect. They were given to me as a gift and (they) created this character, this woman, and I just really tried to ground myself in her,” she said.
…to the next
Tricia is an icon in her own right, but so is Frankie Rodriguez’s Danny, Russ/ Chad’s closest companion in the show. When Danny isn’t running across the field as the team’s mascot, he’s busy helping Russ keep up appearance with his disguise as Chad – creating an unlikely harmonious pair.
“I think it’s because you have these two people who would never interact in real life and their circles are so separate. So when you put them together, it really is like the ‘odd couple’,” Rodriguez said.
As a viewer, the contrast between Russ’ burly exterior and Danny’s creative personality results in great character chemistry and genius comedic timing. Rodriguez offers his insight: “For some reason, it works, because they both need something from each other,” he said. “And they’re kind of each other’s last resort at friendship, but they have a weird way of navigating that. So I think that’s what’s fun about them”. But Danny is much more than that.
Being the mastermind behind the Chad Powers disguise is just one of Danny’s integral roles. Moreover, he’s an important mentor figure. “I think that (Danny) teaches (Russ/ Chad) to slow down and not just go balls to the wall. I think Russ is the kind of person who acts off instinct and there’s a lot of aggression there. I mean, he’s a football player! Danny just teaches him to think things through.”
On the other hand, Danny is a student just as he is a head-strong mentor, as Rodriguez puts it: “With Russ teaching Danny, I think it’s the opposite. He’s actually teaching him that maybe you should be a little more out there, so I think that’s kind of the loop there”. Their unique bond has only just been explored, and there’s so much scope for an even deeper evolution in Chad Powers season two.
The first three episodes of Chad Powers are now streaming on Hulu (US) and Disney+ (internationally).
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