Glen Powell’s megawatt smile, leading man charisma and that chiseled-by-the-gods jawline have made him one of Hollywood’s breakout stars of 2024. HIs increasingly well-honed ability to pick winning projects — including films like Anyone But You, Twisters, and Netflix’s Hit Man — hasn’t hurt, either.
Of course, even movie stars get a little creative wanderlust now and then, which is how Powell recently ended up in a climate-controlled audio booth after rounding up a bunch of his famous friends like Nicholas Braun and Ashley Park to co-star with him in a new Audible Original podcast. Powell is the producer and star of Audible’s newly released The Best Man’s Ghostwriter, a 10-episode comedy about a man who ghostwrites wedding speeches.
Because it’s an audio show, that also makes this one a rather unique addition to Powell’s increasingly hit-filled IMDb page: For his newest project, unlike with his hit movies, Powell’s aim is to literally get inside your head.
“I’m always down to try new things,” he told me in a Zoom interview, the same day that Twisters became available on VOD. “Especially when it comes to entertaining audiences.
“We’re in a time for humanity where it’s very hard to get people’s attention. Classic storytelling has to evolve, and what’s fascinating about this is — it’s interesting how being inside someone’s head just on an audio level, isolating that variable and telling stories with just that variable, it creates a new level of engagement.”
When it comes to bringing someone else’s words and stories to life, Powell has actually been more or less medium-agnostic for his entire career. He and Braun, for example, have been friends for years and met each other while each participating in a program called Young Storytellers. It’s a charity that helps children write short screenplays, with the actors putting them into a finished form to be staged in front of an audience.
Like the man said — always down for something new.
About the audio format, Powell tells me he thinks it actually helps the comedy and emotion to resonate more. You’re listening with focused intent, in other words, as opposed to passively watching Powell chase tornadoes or get hot and heavy with Sydney Sweeney on the big screen. “And there’s all these interesting ways you can manipulate sound around a wedding. It’s a full experience — you don’t feel like you’re being shortchanged at all by not getting any sort of visuals. Your imagination fills in the blanks.”
In addition to Powell’s new show, Audible has a growing slate of audio-only scripted original comedy series that include Hot White Heist starring Bowen Yang; Excessive starring Chloe Fineman and Joshua Jackson; and New York Times Audio Fiction Best-Seller Heads Will Roll, created by and starring Kate McKinnon and Emily Lynne, featuring Tim Gunn, Meryl Streep, and Peter Dinklage.
The company offers the following plot summary for The Best Man’s Ghostwriter: Powell’s Nate is a speechwriter-for-hire who helps dudes write epic best man speeches. And by the way, that is an actual gig that a guy can get paid for in real life. The show’s writer, Matthew Starr, is a comedian and former best man’s ghostwriter.
Nate sticks to a few rules for what makes a great speech: Don’t mention the exes, don’t bum everyone out, and don’t be rated R. The system works, and life is good — that is, until Nate meets Braun’s Dan, “the dopey, hopelessly awkward best man for the biggest social media influencer’s wedding of the year. On top of that, Nate just engaged to the woman of his dreams, and now he has to find his own best man – forcing him to confront a brutal friendship breakup with his former best friend.”
The laughs are balanced with what Audible promises is a heartfelt look at the “insane and often idiotic world of male friendship.” The show (an excerpt of which you can listen to right here) is also stacked with a first-rate cast, with Ashley Park, D’Arcy Carden, Lance Bass, Lukas Gage, Alex Wolff, and Debra Messing joining Braun and Powell.
“The people that I really respect, there are no sort of limits or boundaries to the forms or mediums that they take on,” Powell adds. “They’re just consummate entertainers. You’ll never see me happier than when I’m on a film set. Look, it can have it’s grueling moments, but I really find that it’s just a joy to show up and play pretend every day.
“The thing about (The Best Man’s Ghostwriter), it really is just imagination. Every job is different, but I think the more you can put yourself outside of your comfort zone and try some new stuff — I think it’s always good to do that as artist, you know?”
