Glen Powell, 2024 superstar, is thinking a lot about friendships and feelings

There is no such thing as “normal,” but talking to Twisters actor Glen Powell raises the possibility that… there might be? 

Powell, who has formed a tight relationship with naturalist filmmaker Richard Linklater over films like Everybody Wants Some!! and this year’s Hit Man, has resuscitated the art of movie stardom through Regular Guy swagger. His clean-cut look made him a fit for the screen, but early on, creators like Ryan Murphy were casting him in shows like the horror comedy Scream Queens to lampoon the Regular Guy. Success came when he ratcheted up the human element, charming in rom-coms like Set It Up and Anyone but You, and doing the hotshot pilot thing back to back in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick and Devotion. He’s rarely taken sci-fi or supernatural gigs outside his appearance in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, his first-ever role at the age of 14, and Twisters, which strives for “cli-fi” realism. 

The actor’s pursuit to play every iteration of the Regular Guy takes an important next step in Audible’s new comedy podcast The Best Man’s Ghostwriter, out this September. An audio-friendly twist on the Hitch formula, comedian Matthew Starr’s series follows Nate (Powell), a speechwriter who specializes in prepping nervous best men whose impulses are to make obscure Batman jokes to wedding crowds. But Nate knows that specificity is key to a powerful reception moment; in the premiere episode, a best man played by Fallout‘s Zach Cherry only cracks his speech after Nate urges him to lean into the pastime he shares with the groom: Dungeons & Dragons. Nate has a vague idea of what a d20 is, but he knows what often bonds friends are the random hobbies and interests they found at the right time in their lives. 

Powell is a natural bounce board for The Best Man’s Ghostwriter‘s eclectic cast — which includes Nicholas Braun, Ashley Park, D’Arcy Carden, Lukas Gage, Alex Wolff, Nicole Byer, Jason Mantzoukas, and Jonathan Van Ness — but I wondered: Is the real Powell actually this “normal”? Yes, he is. Polygon jumped on the phone with the actor to catch up on his everyman journey and what, if anything, he geeks out over.

Polygon: Despite the nerd internet spending lots of time fan-casting you in superhero roles, you tend to play a lot of “normal” people who find themselves in relatively normal situations — is that by choice?

Glen Powell: I think the only thing you have in terms of choosing roles is just your instinct, what you genuinely respond to and what worlds kind of compel you. Just on an emotional level, at this phase of life where a lot of my friends are getting married, I’ve gone to a lot of weddings, you do a lot of thinking at a lot of weddings, and you watch a lot of best men give a speech. You get up there sometimes and you’re on the other side of it, and it’s a high stakes moment that’s loaded. It’s the culmination of a friendship, the definition of a friendship. You don’t have those very often, to try to show up for somebody on the most important day of their life. And I find that when there’s pressure around stuff, there’s usually a lot of comedy around it, too, and there’s usually a lot to be said. 

And so when Matthew Starr brought this to me… not only was he a best man’s ghostwriter, like this is literally what he did, which is so funny. It’s like the Hitch thing — there are people that are Hitch! That’s a real thing. Matthew Starr is the Hitch of the wedding world. I’ve always liked stories about ordinary people, and no matter what odds there are, whether the odds are extraordinary in terms of their internal struggle, or they’re up against extraordinary odds, I don’t know, those are the characters I tend to relate to. But I think all you can do is sort of gauge where you are in your life.

Glen Powell in Spy Kids 3-D, then 20 years later in Anyone But You

Nate doesn’t necessarily understand all the comic book and tabletop game references his clients are making, but he understands why they’re important. On that point, is there anything you are particularly geeky about? 

I think that anybody who knows me knows I’m very geeky about a lot of things. That’s the funny part about the characters that I’ve played on screen — I tend to play, like, really cocky douchebags. But I’m a very passionate person about a lot of stuff. I geek out about a lot of things. I throw themed parties. I love geeking out about movies. I’ll host game nights.

What games do you play at game night?

My family likes this game called Fishbowl. It’s like a three-step charades type of game, which is a big ranch favorite. We play this game called Pitch, we obviously play Mafia, I’m running charades…

You’ve cornered the acting games!

[laughs] Yeah, exactly.

The heart of this podcast is about how friendships, in this case male friendships, are often built on hobbies that persist through time for almost unexplainable reasons. Was that relatable? Do you have those?

As I’ve navigated different phases of my life, I feel like I’ve had a lot of different, very specific chapters, and life’s changed in all sorts of ways, and it’s always fascinating to me, friends that are still around, that stick with you and what bonds you. If convenience bonds you, it’s got an expiration date, and I find that that’s why I was really drawn to this. 

I was actually talking about this with one of my best buddies: We became friends right after he married, and he told me the other day, “I can’t believe you weren’t my best man. Like it blows my mind that you were not at my wedding.” Sometimes you go to a wedding and sometimes the people that are there, who knows if those people continue to be in your life, right? And to find people that navigate all the different chapters and seasons is a fascinating idea. I think it’s really what the speech is about. It’s trying to define if this is the best choice that looks good in a tuxedo or if this is the person that’s gonna marry you and bury you.

You are an actor who obviously knows how to perform for and take advantage of the camera. Here you only have your voice — was there a movie or other project where you sharpened that weapon in your acting arsenal?

I did this Audible original called 10 Days where I play a guy in the G League who gets a 10-day contract on the 76ers. And it’s really good, like really Rocky-esque. And I realized, as I was listening to it, that I really misjudged the medium, and what you can do with the medium, in terms of the sound design and attention, in terms of performance. I was like, Wow, there’s a lot to do here, there’s a lot to play with. The way the audience is listening is just a level of engagement… You’re engaging your imagination, you know? You’re getting to give them a performance that has to be grounded in this scenario, so you have to use your imagination for that, and then trust them to complete this thing themselves. It’s different from anything I’ve ever done. It’s like putting on a play, start to finish, but being inside someone’s head. It’s cool. So I just personally geeked out as we were producing this thing, on a storytelling level and an acting level — it was complex and fun.

The Best Man’s Ghostwriter premieres on Audible on Sept. 12.