Atlanta actor Wynn Everett breaks through in locally shot ‘Chad Powers’
Over two decades, Atlanta native Wynn Everett has collected more than 60 TV and film credits, playing everyone from a mad scientist (“Agent Carter”) to a chipper dance mom (“She Dances”) to a complex meta-human nicknamed The Fog (“Doom Patrol”).
But Everett landed her juiciest role to date in the Hulu comedy series “Chad Powers” as Tricia Yeager, a sassy, entitled football booster club president and chicken magnate used to getting what she wants. The series, shot in metro Atlanta but largely set in south Georgia, has returned for a second season on Hulu and Disney+.
“When I saw her audition tape, I immediately knew nobody else could play Tricia but her,” said “Chad Powers” co-creator Michael Waldron, an Atlanta native and University of Georgia graduate.
In the series, which debuted last year to solid ratings, Glen Powell plays Russ Holliday, a disgraced football player pretending to be a West Virginia hick named Chad Powers with prosthetics and a wig, trying to take a fictional Georgia college (the University of South Georgia) to the national championship. Tricia will do whatever it takes to land that coveted trophy, rules and etiquette be damned.
“She says outlandish things,” Waldron said. “She’s kind of untethered from reality like a lot of rich people are. We needed an actor who wasn’t just funny but also believable as a human being. Wynn is the kind of actor who can get away with murder that way.”
Struggling to find any digital footprint on Chad early in Season 1, Tricia in a Southern drawl tells him, “You are just scrub-a-dub-dub from the web like Hillary’s emails.”
Later, when Coach Hudson (Steve Zahn) lands in the hospital after a heart attack, Tricia barges into his room uninvited to watch the game and immediately reacts to the surroundings: “I couldn’t let our ball coach watch the game alone in this disgusting hospital! I don’t think I’ve ever been in one of these! It ironically makes me sick!”
Everett in real life is far kinder and far less manipulative than Tricia, her husband Michael Albanese said. But she was inspired by the many strong, opinionated Southern women she grew up with, she said. Everett is a graduate of Auburn University, known for its legendary SEC college football program. “I channeled the boosters I met from my Auburn days,” she added.
The University of South Georgia Catfish on the show use Georgia State Panthers’ Center Parc Stadium, formerly Turner Field, as its home base,
“My dad used to take me to Braves games there,” Everett said. “When we shot our first day there, I was so overwhelmed, I started to cry.” (The Braves moved in 2017 to what is now Truist Park.)
An acting foundation in Georgia
Everett has deep roots in Atlanta. Her grandfather Edward Everett was the first head of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles in 1943. Her grandmother, Idolene Everett, was active in Democratic politics.
Raised as an only child in Dunwoody with middle-class parents, Everett became mesmerized by the 1942 James Cagney musical “Yankee Doodle Dandy” at age 3 and began singing songs from the film, her mom Avis (who goes by Lovie) recalled. “She’d do fun little skits and entertain the mailman.”
Everett began acting under Yatesy Harvey, head of the drama program at Chamblee First United Methodist Church. Harvey was such a good teacher, Everett said, that she and her family moved to Cumming when Everett was in 10th grade so she could join Harvey’s renowned theater program at Forsyth Central High School.
“She was tough and had an unusually high standard for a high school drama teacher,” said Everett, whose classmates included her good friend Kelli Giddish, who stars in “Law & Order: SVU.” “Like Tricia, she had an extreme determination to win ― not in football, but in theater.”
For instance, when Everett played lead in a production of “Children of a Lesser God” in 1994, Harvey hired a coach to teach the actors sign language. She took her students to New York City to see Broadway musicals like “Miss Saigon” and “Phantom of the Opera.”
A life-changing opportunity
While working on a communications degree at Auburn, Everett sought internship opportunities in New York City. Her mom, a former Atlanta Junior Miss, had escorted America’s Junior Miss for 1963, Diane Sawyer, around Atlanta. Fast forward 47 years: Everett sent a letter to Sawyer, now a “Good Morning America” anchor, seeking an internship. She attached a 1963 photo of her mom and Sawyer.
She got the internship, and then a full-time job at “GMA” as the green room coordinator. A would-be actor, she auditioned for parts and did plays after the show’s early morning hours.
It was also a wonderful networking opportunity, she said: “Every single day for six years was just one incredible guest after another.”
Everett was able to tell Jimmy Carter in person how much her grandmother adored him. She got author Pat Conroy to call her parents, who were big fans. She enjoyed interacting with the likes of Art Garfunkel, Nancy Reagan, George Clooney and Diane Keaton.
While in Manhattan, she also met her future husband Michael Albanese, a fellow Georgia expat and writer. He became a concierge at two trendy hotels, which let them see Broadway productions and sample meals at fancy restaurants.
“We lived an extremely lavish lifestyle on an artists’ budget,” Everett said.
Acting remained her true passion. In the green room one morning, she told John Travolta’s publicist she was an actor and was referred to Randi Goldstein of the Gersh Agency. Goldstein has been her agent ever since.
“As a human being, it doesn’t get any better than Wynn,” Goldstein said. “What makes her extra special is that she has never wavered from her desires or convictions since I met her.”
Everett left “GMA” in early 2006 to focus on getting in front of the camera. On her final day, Sawyer shocked Everett by handing her a check for $4,000. She told Everett to buy some quality clothing and accessories for auditions.
That didn’t happen. “We were not earning a lot of money,” Everett said. “That money went straight to rent!”
The next three years were a struggle, though she did get the requisite New York acting credit: a role on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” as a woman who was part of a cult and choked a victim.
Taking the plunge
In 2009, Everett and Albanese, now married, uprooted to Los Angeles where there were more TV acting opportunities. After her first daughter was born in 2012, Everett began experiencing both a nervous system dysfunction called POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) that causes dizziness and an immune system disorder MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome) that creates intestinal issues.
“It’s chronic, something I battle on a daily basis, but I work through it,” she said.
She was still able to land decent gigs, including a one-season run on ABC’s “Agent Carter” and a receptionist role in Tom Hanks’ “Charlie Wilson’s War.” But she deliberately avoided auditioning for lead roles in TV shows or movies that would take her away from her family for months at a time.
By 2017, both she and Albanese felt the tug to go back home to Atlanta. “We missed our families,” Everett said.
At the time, an aunt of hers mailed them an AJC clipping about a new Pinewood Forrest development in Fayetteville created by Chick-fil-A chairman and CEO Dan Cathy adjoining the existing Pinewood Studios, home to big-budget movies like “Ant-Man” and “Captain America: Civil War.” Cathy touted it as a place where creatives could thrive.
By coincidence, one of their babysitters knew Cathy personally: She happened to be his goddaughter.
Connecting with her roots
So in 2018, Everett, Albanese and their two daughters Georgia and Grace became early residents of what would eventually become the Town at Trilith, a 235-acre European-inspired master-planned community that now includes 1,500 residents, shops, restaurants, a hotel and multiple walking trails.
“They delivered on the promise for creatives like us,” said Albanese.
Everett quickly landed her first local job as gossipy neighbor Willa on Netflix anthology series “Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings,” featuring stories based on classic Parton songs. Parton, during a break in shooting at Third Rail Studios in Doraville, shared the origin story of the song “Jolene” with her.
“It was,” Everett said, “an out-of-body experience!”
The work in metro Atlanta kept on coming. She was a school counselor in Netflix’s short-lived series “Teenage Bounty Hunters,” The Fog in HBO Max’s “Doom Patrol,” Dana Sue’s disruptive sister-in-law in Netflix’s “Sweet Magnolias,” a meal for walkers in AMC’s “The Walking Dead” and a serial killer’s girlfriend in ABC’s “Will Trent.”
Shooting HBO’s quirky drama “DTF St. Louis” last year as the wife of Jason Bateman’s character was a full-circle moment for her.
“Base camp for ‘DTF St. Louis’ one day was near my old house in Manning Farms,” a neighborhood in Dunwoody, she said.
She has continued to land other roles in Atlanta and will be seen in two upcoming Netflix series shot locally: “Heartland” with Jessica Chastain and “Scooby Doo: Origins.”
“Atlanta is just the gift that keeps on giving for me, my husband and my children,” she said. “It’s a dream.”
Notable “Chad Powers” Season 2 locations
Center Parc Stadium (Georgia State University)
Georgia World Congress Center
East Lake Golf Club
Majestic Diner
Plaza Theater
If You Watch
“Chad Powers,” available on Hulu/Disney+