‘Chad Powers’ Showrunner Michael Waldron On Russ’ Attempt At Reform In Finale Episode, Filming At Georgia Football Game & Potential Season 2 Ideas

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details from the finale of Hulu‘s Chad Powers.

In the finale of Hulu’s Chad Powers, the cat is finally out of the bag — sort of.

It’s the eve of the game that the Southern Georgia Catfish have been anticipating all season and, mere hours before the team is set to take the field against the Georgia Bulldogs, Russ Holliday (Glen Powell) is confronted with the lies he’s been telling all season.

While he considers walking away from it all before the big game, he’s ultimately persuaded to try to bring the underdog team (and himself) the glory they so desire. However, he does exhibit a shred of reform by revealing his true identity to Perry Mattfeld’s Ricky moments before running out onto the field. He was clearly expecting to be absolved of his wrongdoing, but she is not quite willing to let him off the hook. Instead, she threatens to rat him out.

Russ then proves he’s not as evolved as he’d like to think by blackmailing Ricky into going along with his plan to continue catfishing the rest of the team — otherwise he’d gladly go public about her father’s own shortcomings.

“It was really important that we didn’t let Russ off the hook,” showrunner Michael Waldron told Deadline. “The show starts as this fun sort of farce, and I think we’re all conditioned by these stories to maybe know he’s going to get caught at some point, and nobody’s going to be happy about it, but he’s a rascal, and he’ll get forgiveness. I think we were excited in this show about denying him that.”

In the interview below, Waldron breaks down the finale and dishes on his ideas for Season 2, should the series get renewed.

DEADLINE: Now that we’ve gotten to see the scene you filmed at Georgia, can you walk me through the process of shooting during an actual game?

MICHAEL WALDRON: Well, I think we had six or seven minutes total. So we had to really plan it meticulously … because we knew it was going to be so loud, we had a system where all the ADs [assistant directors] had flags. It wasn’t just that we were shooting on the field. We also had like 50 extras, along with several of our principal cast members. So there was a lot of cats to wrangle, but we just rehearsed it a ton on our fields at home and really had a good plan of how we wanted to execute it and of the shots that I wanted to get. I think we did one take following Glen. Me and Mark [Schwartzbard], the DP — all the crew, we were dressed as coaches, so we were disguised, so if we were on the field, we didn’t stick out — but we were hiding behind the goalposts, and I had my little portable monitor, and we did one take of the team running out on Glen’s back. Then we did the amazing oner pulling Glen coming around as Perry comes and tosses in the ball. We did that twice and felt like we had it. Then we ran in a second camera to get some coverage of our actors. It was exhilarating.

DEADLINE: The crowd boos Glen so mercilessly. It’s great. Such an important element of the college football experience.

WALDRON: They were amazing. I never had any doubt. I mean, I went to Georgia. I had full confidence that if we told the crowd to get loud and to boo like there was an opposing team running out … having been in those stands booing before, I knew how loud [it could get]. It makes me so proud of how much that crowd showed up.

DEADLINE: Why did you decide to end the first season right there, as they run out onto the field, rather than letting that game play out?

WALDRON: Well, we wanted the audience to have a reason to come back for more, and we felt like the finale was the story of Ricky finding out the truth. So that was the important story there, not what happens in the Georgia game — and the question of, when Ricky finds out, is she gonna blow it and tell everyone, or is she not? Is she gonna join in on the conspiracy? So we answer that question at the very end. Then, what happens in the Georgia game is for Season 2.

DEADLINE: I honestly really appreciate how mad Ricky is at him for lying to her. It’s a really honest reaction. How did you figure out what felt true for her character in terms of her reaction to this news?

WALDRON: Well, it was really important that we didn’t let Russ off the hook. The show starts as this fun sort of farce, and I think we’re all conditioned by these stories to maybe know he’s going to get caught at some point, and nobody’s going to be happy about it, but he’s a rascal, and he’ll get forgiveness. I think we were excited in this show about denying him that. So just as he completes one of his arcs, which is actually being able to take accountability and say “I’m sorry” for the first time, he runs into someone who is not willing to forgive him. His dad forgives him early in the episode, but Ricky is not ready to do that, nor should she. It just felt great. I think for her, Perry’s performance was so dynamic all season, and she sort of felt like a powder keg all season. There was a real buttoned up, simmering frustration [and] sense of competition. I wanted to see her explode one way or another, and so the way things laid out for us was nice that she could explode at Russ.

DEADLINE: You mention that Russ completes this one arc by admitting his wrongdoing and asking forgiveness, but when she doesn’t forgive him, he turns around and blackmails her into going along with his plan. What does that say about how much he’s truly learned from this situation?

WALDRON: Well, I think, great characters, especially in TV, tend to sort of [take] one step forward, two steps back. Don Draper, Tony Soprano, those guys were never fully changing or becoming good guys all at once. I think that she hurts him, and he’s petulant. He’s not a super evolved guy. The things that she says hurts him, and he’s desperate to keep playing, really desperate just to be around her. That’s the only card he has left to play. It’ll be interesting in the next season to explore, does he even think of it as blackmailing? How does he perceive what he’s doing, and can she ever forgive him?

DEADLINE: The scene with his dad at the beginning of the episode is quite hilarious in addition to being quite tonally jarring. Can you talk about undercutting some of that earnestness with the humor of his dad in a fat suit?

WALDRON: I don’t know at what point we were, like “Toby Huss should be in this fat suit for our big, emotional, cathartic moment,” but I think I got it in my head and could never let go of it, and it’s just so, so hysterical. Glen is giving this masterful performance, making you cry, and then you’re reversing on to Toby, [who] just looks insane. He looks like Fat Bastard from Austin Powers, and I was always just like, “Only in our show can we do this. I don’t even know if we can get away with it. I don’t even know if it’ll work, but let’s do it. Let’s attempt this tonal balance.” In many ways, that scene kind of represents the entire show, or at least what our intention was with it, something ridiculous juxtaposed with something, hopefully, very real.

DEADLINE: Can you speak more broadly to trying to achieve that tonal balance?

WALDRON: Well, you just have to trust the voice in your head. In some ways, that’s my biggest job, showrunning, directing, or whatever, it’s to manage the tone of the thing. We were attempting a certainly unique tone on the show. I would say that the show really becomes probably most akin to what it’ll be moving forward in the last two episodes, because I feel like that’s when it gets really real, when we really start exploring the consequences of this. I think that that’s when it’s most exciting. You just can’t get away with this without hurting people. As we talk about Season 2, we want to make sure we’re not just hand-waving stuff and yada yada. We always talk about, “Let’s try not to skip any steps.” If we’re actually doing this, how would that actually look? So, that is what we’re attempting.

DEADLINE: If you’re renewed, do you anticipate Season 2 would pick up soon after the events of Season 1?

WALDRON: Yeah, I think so. We always talk about Breaking Bad as a model — that kind of was just following this lie and all the destruction that it causes. This hidden identity of Walter White, following it pretty much in real time. That’s really the story of Chad Powers is seeing him through this college football season.

DEADLINE: Glen has talked about wanting to see the Longhorns in Season 2. Do you have any teams you’d like to incorporate?

WALDRON: I put Georgia in there as much as I probably … I already shoved them down everybody’s throat. So, I mean, I would be really excited to go shoot in Austin. That would be really cool. If you’re going to do a story about these Southern college football teams, I think at some point you’re going to want to see Alabama, LSU. So just more of these blue-blooded programs down there.

DEADLINE: What about real-life sports figures?

WALDRON: Well, I would love to get some of the SEC coaches. Kirby Smart, Lane Kiffin, some of those guys that would be really cool to populate, especially Steve Zahn’s world. In terms of players, I’d love to get Jameis Winston on the show.

DEADLINE: [Laughs]. I’m a Florida fan. Jameis Winston destroyed us.

WALDRON: We think Season 2, we’ll probably have a game with Florida. Florida’s color scheme, I think, photographs so well … That’d be a cool place to go. The Swamp is awesome.