When it comes to actor relationships in Hollywood, I can’t think of any better mentor/mentee bond than Tom Cruise and Glen Powell. The two stars first got the opportunity to work together in the making of Top Gun: Maverick, and they have seemingly been close ever since, with the latter frequently turning to the former for advice about his career. As a seasoned veteran of the industry, Cruise has a lot of great experience that he can share, and that even includes how to act while wearing a whole bunch of prosthetics – as he did playing Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder.
Glen Powell recently went through the prosthetics experience himself in the making of the new Hulu comedy series Chad Powers, and it probably comes as little surprise that he looked to Tom Cruise to provide him with some tips on how to deal. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter (via TikTok), the Running Man star explained how turning to his mentor was a no-brainer given his work on director Ben Stiller’s hit 2008 comedy. Said Powell,
Tom was extremely helpful in helping [us] to not go down the wrong path in terms of the prosthetics. As with a lot in my life, he was my first call, where I was like, ‘OK…’ Very early on, [when] we were breaking the show, I was like, ‘OK, how do you actually get away with this?’ Because Les Grossman’s an iconic character, and a very three-dimensional character.
In Chad Powers, Glen Powell plays Russ Holliday, a talented college football quarterback who flushes his entire career down the toilet when he blows a bowl game by dropping a ball on the 1-yard line while ramping up for a touchdown celebration. When he hits rock bottom years later, he devises a crazy plan: he steals the prosthetics kit belonging to his SFX artist father (Toby Huss) and attends a walk-on tryout at a Georgia college pretending to be a bumpkin named Chad Powers.
The makeup that Glen Powell wears on the new Hulu show isn’t nearly as intense as the transformation that Tom Cruise underwent to play Les Grossman, but the prosthetics still meant adjusting the way he worked, and he got tips on how to make that happen from his former co-star. In the process, the actor also revealed the nickname that he evidently has for the Hollywood legend, saying,
So I always use [Tom] as a resource. He’s kind of played every character in the book. So, on the prosthetics, he really kind of pointed us in the right direction and made sure it was really gonna work. Because, if you don’t buy the fact that the world believes that this is a real human, the whole experiment falls apart. So we thank T.C. for that.
Those of you now needing a Les Grossman fix (still waiting on that solo movie to happen…), Tropic Thunder is now available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription. But for those of you who are excited for Chad Powers, the first two episodes are now available to stream with a Hulu account, and new episodes will debut every Tuesday between now and the end of October.