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Direct From Hollywood with Ryan Seacrest: What’s the Secret to Writing Chad Powers? ‘Stupidity’ According to Showrunner Michael Waldron · Direct From Hollywood with Ryan Seacrest

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Direct from Hollywood with Ryan Seacrest.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: The common thinking is that to make it as a
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: comedy writer in Hollywood, you have to be witty, clever,
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: and quick to stand out in a highly competitive field.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: But Michael Waldron, the showrunner of Chad Power starring Glenn Powell,
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: says the key to writing his show, at least, is
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  Speaker 2: to be stupid.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: Glenn says some pretty outlandish and kind of dumb stuff
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: on the show. And Michael tells The Hollywood Reporter it
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: doesn't exactly take creative digging to come up with those gems.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: He says it's often about trusting your first stupidest thought.
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  Speaker 4: He even claims that you don't actually have to be funny,
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  Speaker 4: which I think is a stretch. But he calls the
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: Chad Powers character a cheat code because he says such
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  Speaker 4: dumb stuff.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Comedy isn't in the writing, according to Michael. It's in
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: the brilliance of their star, Glenn Powell, who sells whatever
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: they write and then how his co-stars react to it.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: He does admit it takes some precision to be so
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  Speaker 3: stupid on the page and in the performance because you
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: can't be so dumb the story falls apart.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Michael says it's such a joy to be dumb for
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  Speaker 2: a living. He could write Chad Powers forever, but they
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: have no plans to go beyond the third season yet
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: because that's the story they'd always envisioned. You can stream
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: season two now on Hulu.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: That's direct from Hollywood.