When Eli Manning first debuted his Chad Powers character during a 2022 episode of his ESPN series “Eli’s Places,” you’d have been forgiven for not immediately recognizing its potential as a piece of television I.P. The video saw the retired New York Giants quarterback don prosthetics in order to pose as a college football player in a convoluted attempt to get back on the gridiron, but there wasn’t an obvious next step for the narrative.

Glenn Powell and Michael Waldron saw it differently. The “Twisters” star and “Loki” creator had bonded over their mutual love of college football (Powell is a Texas Longhorn and Waldron is a Georgia Bulldog) and wanted a project to work on together. They found a way to expand the concept into one of 2025’s hottest comedies — and as Waldron, pilot director and executive producer Tony Yacenda, director Payman Benz, costume designer Dominique Dawson, composer Natalie Holt, and prosthetics designer Vincent Van Dyke explained during IndieWire’s Pass the Remote panel, presented in partnership with Disney, the undertaking had to be done in one football season and required the dedication of a championship team.

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“I had to dispense with my own ideas of how stupid the idea was and start taking it seriously first off,” Waldron said. “Glenn and I, we were like, ‘If we’re going to do this, we have to really take it seriously and figure out how we’re going to build it toward a genuinely surprising emotional and human place and trust that the comedy would come.’ I think we were never worried about making it funny, but what felt appealing about the opportunity was, well, ‘How can you surprise people with this?’”

A show like “Chad Powers” was always going to live and die by the quality of the prosthetic design, and Van Dyke was aware of the unique challenge that turning one of Hollywood’s handsomest actors into an unrecognizable walk-on would pose. But he credited Powell’s collaborative spirit and open-minded approach with helping him craft the perfect look during a time crunch.

“You never know what you’re going to get into, right? I mean, there are people that want to have everything thrown at them and see what sticks, no pun intended. And then there are others that are really hesitant to explore and dive into a look and create with you. And Glenn is absolutely the person that wants to create with you and wants to have all of those things tested,” Van Dyke said. “So there was nothing that was too wild of an idea. And we had a very short crunch of test time that we had. I think it was three consecutive days back to back where we tried, I don’t know how many different looks. And in that time, it was just exploring, exploring, exploring, taking things off, removing appliances, putting appliances back on. It’s a lot. And he’s laughing through the whole time and talking about it and coming up with other ideas and having his input, and it was amazing.”

The “Chad Powers” writers room opened in May 2024, when many college football teams are deep in spring practice, and shooting began in August. That meant that the show’s production timeline mirrored a college football season — thematically appropriate, to be sure, but not without some logistical challenges.

“Football season was starting with actual practices in the stadium where we were shooting,” Dawson said. “Every single cleat, helmet, and jersey was needed and sold out around the country. So being able to gather all those pieces together in the midst of that was definitely an undertaking.”

But like all great teams, the artists behind “Chad Powers” managed to grow together over the course of a season and peak at the right time. They were able to bask in the art they produced together — but like any good team, thoughts about next season were never far from their minds.

“We were tired, I think like a football team. We grew together and we were exhausted, but really proud of what we accomplished,” Waldron said. “Making anything, much less something good that you’re proud of, takes so many people. And everybody on this call has a lot of people who work with them and under them, unsung heroes of this production and people and everybody’s sacrificing. People are away from their families and away from their kids and their spouses and their partners, and that’s the cool thing about making anything is it’s a bunch of people coming together, working really hard and hopefully making something you can be proud of.”

All six episodes of “Chad Powers” Season 1 are now streaming on Hulu. Watch IndieWire’s complete conversation with the team, presented in partnership with Disney, above.

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