Glen Powell on How He Secured Johnny Depp’s Chad Powers Cameo

The sequence features Powell’s character, Russ Holliday, hiding in an abandoned cinema while meeting an associate. To secure the rights for the footage, Powell reached out to the Hollywood star personally. He confirmed in an interview with Gold Derby that Depp reviewed the request and granted his approval, allowing the iconic character to appear in the show.

Chad Powers follows the story of a disgraced quarterback attempting to revive his career by disguising himself with prosthetics to join a struggling college team. The series draws inspiration from real-life events involving former professional football player Eli Manning, who once went undercover as a walk-on at Penn State. Powell has noted that both Eli and Peyton Manning were deeply involved in production to ensure the football sequences felt authentic, providing technical guidance that helped ground the comedy in a realistic athletic setting.