Photoshoots > Outtakes > Session 040

BUSTLE – The famously nice star of Anyone But You isn’t afraid to fight for what he wants.
It’s been over 24 hours since Spotify Wrapped dropped, and Glen Powell seems to be the only person left on the planet who has yet to open his. Granted, he’s had some obligations that might have taken precedence over gazing at a personalized portrait of his own music taste: celebrating the holidays (at his old friend Paris Hilton’s #Slivmas last night), filming a Twister sequel (for which he’ll decamp to Oklahoma tomorrow), and promoting his latest film, Anyone But You (via photo shoots like the one we’re on the set of today). But because Powell is a famously polite, infectiously enthusiastic, self-proclaimed people pleaser, he’s willing to undergo this intimate ritual in front of me.

itting in a rented house in Laurel Canyon — with record-lined walls, vintage oriental rugs, and imposing wood beams — Powell whips out his phone. As the slideshow begins to load, I guess what Powell’s listening data will reveal. The actor, 35, is a proud Austin native and a Texas Longhorns superfan. He’s also a writer and film nerd, who instantly recognized Francis Ford Coppola’s lesser-known drama, Rumble Fish, when it came on in the background of the shoot. A soulful, introspective guy who’s not afraid to say things like, “The older I get, the more I look at my parents with awe at the fact that it’s really hard for love to survive 40 years in this world.”

So maybe Zach Bryan will clinch the top spot? Or he’ll endear me with some Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris?

Alas, the first song to be highlighted is “Unwritten,” by Natasha Bedingfield. Also known as The Hills’ theme song.

“I had to learn every word of this for Anyone But You,” Powell insists as the song blares off his phone. (I can confirm it is one of the movie’s best bits.) “Oh God, that is truly embarrassing if it wasn’t.”

Exposure to soaring, feel-good anthems is one of the hazards of being America’s current Top Rom-Com Guy. His big break was Set It Up, the 2018 Netflix movie that inspired countless think pieces saying that the rom-com was back after a long drought. After that, Powell was cast in Top Gun: Maverick, which inspired countless think pieces about how Hollywood was back post-pandemic. Now he’s in Anyone But You, a modern take on Much Ado About Nothing out Dec. 22. Co-starring Sydney Sweeney, whom he was briefly rumored to be dating (he’s not), it’s a classic enemies-to-lovers tale that sees a pair of arch-nemeses reunite at a destination wedding, where they pretend to be a couple.

But you will not hear Powell dissing romantic comedies, as The Kissing Booth star Jacob Elordi did recently. That’s partly because Powell is a scholar of the genre. He grew up watching The Wedding Singer with his two sisters, who teased him for sharing a name with the film’s villain, Glenn Guglia. (“When you look at movies, Glen’s always the asshole or the weird neighbor. I’m like, ‘God dang, man.’”) One of his first jobs in the industry was working for one of Hollywood’s most accomplished female producers, Lynda Obst, who was responsible for Flashdance, Sleepless in Seattle, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. He started off as her intern, then was promoted to script reader, where he provided feedback on the many, many rom-coms that came across her desk. He became a student of the Hollywood system, understanding what makes a good script and what he had to offer to one.

So years later, when he discovered a rom-com that he knew checked those boxes, he didn’t care that the Washington Post had recently declared, “The rom-com is dead. Good.” He put his all into landing a role in Set It Up. (The movie was also the breakout for writer Katie Silberman, who went on to be Olivia Wilde’s go-to screenwriter. Powell and Silberman are still close. “I just talked to her last night,” he says.)

“I chased Set It Up so hard. I was working with the same producers on a movie called Sand Castle, but they didn’t really see me in the role [because] I don’t think anybody in my life would summarize me as a dick. I try to treat people well.” Powell’s executive assistant Charlie had to be cocky enough to represent his high-powered venture-capitalist boss, but kind enough to be an eligible match for Harper (Zoey Deutch), a far more earnest assistant. Powell says that the aggression he brings to set compensates for disposition: “As an actor, I am best on my front foot and I think that sometimes feels dickish on screen.” Meanwhile, Powell’s natural sweetness is what makes you root for Hangman, his Maverick character, in spite of his douchebaggery.

“I always liked masculine characters that took a punch, got back up, would bleed, and still fight. I always found that the characters that I liked were not necessarily the most badass characters on screen but guys like Harrison Ford or Kurt Russell,” says Powell, whose filmography is littered with military men, including John Glenn in Hidden Figures. (A rare, good Glen.) While making that movie, Powell says, “I went to a baseball game with Kevin Costner. He told me, ‘Choose the roles carefully, because at the end of the day, people sometimes can’t discern between who you are on the screen and who you are outside the screen. So make sure those two things line up as close as possible together.”

Powell’s magnetism is not what one might call “effortless.” His charm is dogged and earnest; it lies in the care and exertion he puts into every facet of his life. It’s there in the way he humors everyone on set by talking to them about their own Spotify Wrappeds, in the obvious work he puts into his eight-pack, and in his 20-year pursuit of this moment. “Hollywood, for some people, it serves it up,” Powell says. He mentions Charlize Theron getting discovered by an agent while arguing with a bank teller. “It’s not my path. I had to kind of fight a little longer and harder for it.”

Alongside Powell on the journey were his parents, with whom he is very close. His father, Glen Powell Sr., recalls the roller coaster of emotions that he and Powell’s mother, Cindy, felt when their son lost the role of Rooster in Maverick to Miles Teller, and then found himself in contention for another part in the project. They were driving up to Glacier National Park on a wedding anniversary trip and talking to Glen on the phone when he got the news. “He said, ‘Tom [Cruise] is calling. I got to take this.’” But Glen Sr. and Cindy were about to leave cellphone range. “So we pulled down and we found a place before we crossed over into Canada and sat alongside the road for about an hour,” says Powell Sr. “Then he called us and he goes, ‘I’m going to do Top Gun!’ I mean, [we were] literally, on the edge of the road and on the edge, but you never stop being a parent.”

John Stamos, who befriended Powell after filming a shower scene together on Scream Queens back in 2015, says that Powell has also long had many cheerleaders in the industry. “We’re all just like, this guy’s going to be the biggest star. It took a while, and then he did Top Gun and we thought, ‘Oh great.’” But Top Gun: Maverick began filming in 2018; it would be another four years before the movie came out. “It was starting to get like, ‘Oh sh*t, are we wrong about this guy? We can’t be wrong. He’s too f*cking talented. He’s too handsome. He’s too nice.’ And I’m glad to see that we weren’t.”

When Stamos took his family on a trip to the Powell family ranch in Texas, he learned that Powell takes throwing parties as seriously as his career. “Every day there was some theme party with 20 to 25 people, and when we got there it was ’80s day. I go, ‘I am the f*cking ’80s. Why do I have to dress up?’ But anyway, we’re out on this pier by a lake and the dude walks up, tackles me, and throws me into the water. I’m like, ‘Why?’ He goes, ‘Welcome to Texas.’ I’m like, ‘Go find my sunglasses.’”

Back in Laurel Canyon, Powell and I make our way through the backyard, up a set of stairs carved into a hill, to the house’s on-site music studio. They’re treacherous for a reporter wearing heeled loafers, and he springs to action assessing the terrain, then hovering behind me, advising me on the best route. Later, when he finds me standing too close in the road to a sweeper truck, he gently taps me on the shoulder and advises me to join him back on the sidewalk. None of these gestures feels showy or patronizing.

Powell, who broke up with his longtime girlfriend, Gigi Paris, this spring, grows slightly wistful when talking about relationships. He’s enjoying many of the fruits of what he calls having been “relentless and ruthless up until this point in my career.” Particularly, that he can now get writing projects of his, like the forthcoming Hit Man, which he co-wrote with Richard Linklater and stars in, off the ground. But he sounds a little like Drake at his mopiest when he elaborates on how lonely it is to be single and famous. “I’ve been talking to some people in my life and they’re like, ‘Glen, you’re a single guy. I know you’re trying to do all the right things in all the right ways, but you just have to embrace that those failures will be a little more public, a little more hurtful than maybe most people, maybe a little more embarrassing, but it’s OK. But when you’re going to fall, and you will inevitably fall in love, it’ll work,’” he says. Powell is not on Raya, and he says the only person he’s sharing his bed with these days is his rescue dog, Brisket.

When I mention to Powell’s dad that it can’t be all that hard for Glen Powell to get a date, he’s not blind to the irony. “[He’s] coming from a different angle, a different experience in life,” says Powell Sr., chuckling. “It will happen, for sure, but it’s a hard thing to see from his perspective. It’s hard [for him] to know what’s real, what’s not.”

It’s clear, talking to Powell, that he isn’t just a student of the rom-com as a film genre. He also thinks the pursuit of love is a serious, worthwhile subject matter. “There’s this study where they were talking about the difference between cornerstone and capstone relationships. Cornerstone relationships are where you get married young and you grow together so the relationship is the cornerstone of that. Then there’s capstone relationships, where you become two separate strong people, and the marriage is the capstone,” he tells me. “They were talking about what is more viable in terms of longevity. And the truth is there’s no difference, right? Love is unpredictable and you don’t know what’s going to have an expiration date and what’s not.”

Powell Sr., who is an executive coach, also gets in on the relationship analysis. “Glen has always, in his relationships, asked me to do some assessments for him to better understand himself and how he’s wired, but also for whomever he’s dating,” Powell Sr. explains. The actor’s goals are “to be honest with who he is, what his strengths are, where some blind spots might be.” “But not everybody’s open to that,” Powell Sr. adds.

Recently, Powell was invited to a celebration of the Tuskegee Top Gun in Washington, D.C., where his parents lived when they were dating — and where his dad proposed to his mom during their weekly picnic at the Jefferson Memorial. And the event just happened to coincide with the 40-year anniversary of their engagement. Powell couldn’t resist. He brought them along. He served as photographer for the moment when his dad got back down on one knee. He posted his own photo, beaming in a selfie with the pair after his mom said “yes.”

“It’s really fun to see your parents be romantic,” he tells me. “I know that sounds weird, but they’re goofy and really fun.” He says his parents tell him that’s the key to a lasting relationship, making sure to enjoy each other, finding the humor even in the dark stuff. “If I could have what my parents have, I’d be really, really happy.”

DEADLINE – Sony is determined to bring moviegoers back to comedies in theaters and they just dated their Will Gluck directed Anyone But You for Dec. 15.

The trailer dropped last week during the studio’s presentation at CinemaCon.

The screwball comedy, which stars Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, follows two people who loathe each other so much — they can’t resist the other. The pic is set in Sydney and follows the two as they go on various vacation hijinks from falling off boats to getting big spiders down their pants.

Screenplay was penned by Ilana Wolpert and Gluck. Joe Roth produces with Jeff Kirschenbaum and Gluck. EPs are Sweeney, Natalie Sellers, Alyssa Altman and Jacqueline Monetta. Alexandra Shipp, GaTa, Dermot Mulroney, Rachel Griffiths, Michelle Hurd, Bryan Brown, Darren Barnet and Hadley Robinson also star.

The only other wide studio release on Dec. 15 is Warner Bros. Timothee Chalamet movie, Wonka.

COLLIDER – Audiences deserve a new face of the genre.
Two of the recurring concerns of modern cinema relate to the shortage of movie stars and romance. Certainly in the mainstream landscape, the superhero monopoly has nearly wiped out the power of the movie star and sexual appeal. All of our actors in mainstream movies have never looked prettier or been in better shape, and yet, the big screen has never felt more sterile. The kinds of actors that should be elevated to stardom are confined to the restrictions of the franchise they represent. During promotion for his new film Magic Mike’s Last Dance, a film that quenches the thirst for sexiness in movies, Steven Soderbergh asked “how are we going to make new movie stars if people’s primary motivation for going to the movies is the IP, not the actors?” To the detriment of adult-oriented audiences, movie stars have devolved into action figures, designed to be exceptionally fit but are lacking in any romantic draw. This crisis calls for the emergence of a modern Romantic-Comedy king, which is a genre that needs a proper revival on the big screen so it can pump some sexiness back into male stars. Enter, Glen Powell.

Glen Powell Has Leading Man Potential

The actor recently got the chance to exhibit his talents in mainstream cinema as “Hangman” in Top Gun: Maverick, and he proved his leading man potential. Powell is majestic in his figure, not to mention traditionally handsome and picturesque. It would be a shame if studios only chose to exploit his good looks and disregard his personality. In an ideal world, Powell would never get sucked into the plethora of franchises, but that is way easier said than done. There is nothing wrong with the draw towards leading men with a statuesque physique. The problem lies when that characteristic is exclusively fixated on for the purpose of selling merchandise as part of a line of superheroes. Unfortunately, for executives of comic book movie franchises, it may be a lost cause. Stars will continue to be sexless action figures as long as the profits roll through the door. This is where the void of a proper romantic male lead icon comes in.

‘Set It Up’ Showed That Glen Powell Is Perfect for Rom-Coms

Powell is still enough of an untapped resource to seamlessly slide into the role of a rom-com king. The 34-year-old actor broke out in the 2015-16 range with notable roles in the Fox series Scream Queens and Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age comedy Everybody Wants Some!! His breakthrough part in the latter is the Rosetta Stone to his potential mega-stardom. The part of Walt Finnegan, the hot-shot captain of the baseball squad and party-seeker, was written as the standout shining star, and Powell capitalized on it. He then starred opposite his Everybody Wants Some!! co-star Zoey Deutch in Set It Up, a rom-com for Netflix, and this is where the momentum churned for Powell to take over as the new face of the genre. What appeared to be a rudimentary story of hesitant lovers was viewed more favorably by critics and audiences thanks to the discovery of Powell and Deutch as romantic leads.

Glen Powell Could Breathe New Life into the Rom-Com Genre

Powell checks all the boxes of an ideal male face of rom-coms and ultimately, a true movie star. He possesses the innate qualities to traditionally appeal to all demographics. Movies targeted towards adults in the last decade have seemingly abandoned the idea of overtly appealing to a unisex audience. Powell is modern enough to attract newer audiences and keep rom-coms fresh, but still classical enough to make the genre feel like a refreshing return to the glory days. The genre is commonly relegated to streaming, partially because it has been limited as a pipeline for developing new stars. Only when familiar faces like George Clooney and Julia Roberts pair up for a film like Ticket to Paradise does the genre obtain a wide theater release, and succeed financially as a result. While he is still a relative unknown from the perspective of a household name, he has previously worked in a variety of genres, from an indie Richard Linklater hangout movie to action-adventure pictures like Maverick and his other 2022 outing, Devotion. In all of his performances, Powell has demonstrated a youthful bravado that could breathe fresh life into any middling romantic comedy. His Texas upbringing gives him that southern warmth that, generally speaking, satisfies the interests of both men and women.

This speculation regarding Powell’s promise as the new face of rom-coms has value, as it was announced that he would be starring opposite Sydney Sweeney in an R-rated romantic comedy by Will Gluck. While all details of the project have remained under wraps, this is a fantastic breakthrough for the genre and the betterment of adult-oriented studio pictures, with this film being made under Sony. With Sydney Sweeney being one of the actresses of the moment, this project could be a huge step in the actor’s rise to super-stardom. The Powell/Sweeney duo could be as huge a success as Powell/Deutch, although we’re still hoping that they will team up again for another rom-com!

We Need More Movie Stars and Rom-Coms!

It is not as though the fate of filmmaking rests on the shoulders of Glen Powell’s potential to emerge as the breakthrough rom-com male lead. However, the void in the film landscape that he is best served to fill is integral to the reclamation of movie stars and healthy depictions of sexuality on the big screen. In fact, the problem does not lie in the current crop of acting and movie star talent. Stars who emerged in the 21st century had the capability to sell a movie on the heels of their charisma, but they were swallowed up by the capitalist demands of franchise filmmaking. There is undoubtedly a reignited post-Pandemic movie-going audience that craves a traditional form of Hollywood entertainment, one that utilizes a star’s physical and personable appeals. Promising box office returns in 2022 for the aforementioned Ticket to Paradise and The Lost City are indicative of a desire for classical sensibilities, and the genre is ripe for a new star. Before he gets lured by the prospects of cape cinema, Glen Powell deserves to take the mantle as the next face of the modern romantic-comedy, and perhaps the future line of movie stars at large.

DEADLINE – EXCLUSIVE: Will Gluck is getting back to his rom-com roots and looks to have landed two of the most sought-after stars in town for his next project. Sources tell Deadline that Sony Pictures has acquired an untitled R-rated romantic comedy, with Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell set to star and Gluck directing.

While the plot is being kept under wraps, the project is based on Ilana Wolpert’s script, which Gluck is rewriting.

Joe Roth, Jeff Kirschenbaum and Gluck (who with his Olive Bridge Entertainment has a first-look deal at Sony) are producing, with Sweeney exec producing for Fifty-Fifty Films. Natalie Sellers and Alyssa Altman are exec producing for RK Films.

Sony landed the coveted package at the end of last year and after figuring out Sweeney’s schedule with her Euphoria dates. Shooting is expected to start at the end of next month.

Following her Emmy-nominated work on HBO’s Euphoria and The White Lotus, Sweeney has spent her Euphoria hiatus building up an impressive upcoming slate starting with the Sony/Marvel pic Madame Web. That production finished last year and began a new strong relationship with the studio and the budding star, as Sony would then land the rights to the package The Registration that she is attached to star and produce. She is also attached to exec produce and star in a new Barbarella movie at Sony Pictures and has also also recently partnered with Fifth Season to produce a TV adaptation of The Players Table. She also recently wrapped production on National Anthem.

For Powell, the film returns him to his rom-com roots as well after his career was launched in Netflix’s The Set Up opposite Zoey Deutch. He is coming off a big 2022 starting with Top Gun: Maverick. He was also recently co-starred with Jonathan Majors and executive produced the historical war epic Devotion for Sony. Additionally, he will team with Chris Morgan in the sci-fi action thriller Deputy X for Universal and has signed on to the buddy comedy Foreign Relations, where he will star alongside Nick Jonas.

Best known for his comedies Easy A and Friends With Benefits, Gluck is currently developing End of the World, an action comedy he wrote with Chris Bremner and which Gluck will direct, and Just Dance for Ubisoft which Gluck wrote with AC Bradley and will direct. On the TV side, Gluck is adapting Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen with Noah Pink for Peacock, which he will direct and produce. He is also producing the Black List-topping Move On, a sci-fi romance by Ken Kobayashi, for Sony, and the live-action adaptation of Aristocats for Disney.

Wolpert is the executive story editor on Season 4 of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series at Disney+. She is developing her original series Turn of the Century Teenage Bitch with Animal Pictures (Maya Rudolph & Natasha Lyonne), Paulilu (Paul Downs & Lucia Aniello) and 3 Arts. Previously, Wolpert sold and developed her original pilot I’m In Love With the Dancer From My Bat Mitzvah at the CW with Rachel Bloom.

Sweeney is repped by Paradigm and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller. Powell is repped by CAA, The Initiative Group, and Johnson Shapiro. Gluck is repped by UTA. Wolpert is repped by UTA, 3 Arts and Ginsburg Daniels Kallis.