Glen Powell: 'Best Man's Ghostwriter' mines wedding anxiety for laughs

NEW YORK, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- Actor and producer Glen Powell says pretty much anyone who has been involved in a wedding will be able to relate to the emotion and anxiety he mines for laughs in his new Audible Original, The Best Man's Ghostwriter.

"When you're charged with defining a relationship and being vulnerable in front of a bunch of strangers, it's a tall order," Powell, 35, told UPI about best man speeches in a recent phone interview.

"It's really the summation of somebody's love story and it's a really scary thing for any friend to take on. I think that's why a lot of best men usually hit the open bar pretty hard beforehand and that usually goes wrong," he quipped.

"With the pressure and tension also comes a lot of comedy. Weddings are just chock-full of the most dramatic moments of anyone's life. It's a pressure cooker."

This rarely tapped, but fertile ground for humor, is what drew Powell to The Best Man's Ghostwriter .

Written and directed by comedian Matthew Starr, the scripted podcast drops Thursday.

Powell -- who is known for his roles in Twisters, Anyone But You, Hit Man and Top Gun: Maverick -- plays Nate, a freelance speechwriter known for making grooms' close friends, brothers and cousins look good when they give their toasts at weddings.

Nate meets his match, however, when he lands the highest-profile client of his career, and finds Dan (Nicholas Braun), the best man he is hired to coach, to be hilariously, hopelessly awkward.

The series is based on Starr's real-life experiences.

"You can clearly see he's an amazing speechwriter," Powell said about his collaborator.

"His writing has such a great cadence to it. He just used -- this is one of my favorite types of storytelling -- a very silly premise to be the Trojan horse of really poignant storytelling. I was just really honored to be able to say his words."

Powell pointed out that since every wedding and couple is different, toasts must be tailor-made for the occasion.

"It's not a cookie-cutter speech. He doesn't just write one. He writes for every single best man," he said of Nate, the character Starr inspired. "You have to get to know the guy. You have to get to know the couple a little bit, so it really is a fascinating premise."

The series also features the voice talents of Ashley Park, D'Arcy Carden, Lance Bass, Lukas Gage, Alex Wolff, Debra Messing, George Takei, Jack McBrayer, Nicole Byer, Zach Cherry, Lennon Parham, Neil Flynn, Jason Mantzoukas, Ben Marshall, John Higgins, Martin Herlihy, Jonathan Van Ness and Sherri Shepherd.

A lot of the cast members are neighbors Powell said he jokingly asked to "keep the sweat pants on, roll down the hill and go play in the studio for a bit."

"Nick Braun and I have been friends for many, many years, and he's super-talented. We met at an organization called the Young Storytellers Foundation a long time ago when we first moved out to LA," Powell said.

"I got to put together a lot of people that I've really wanted to work with and have been such a fan of for such a long time," he added. "Chemistry is so crucial to this story, so it was really, really fun being in the booth with them."

Powell said he is enjoying producing projects as much as acting in them these days.

"A lot of actors that I've respected -- the people that I admired growing up and trying to do this job -- really took a strong seat at the table of their own careers, and really provided jobs and employed their friends and got to go to work with the people they wanted to work with and really weren't waiting for a call," Powell added.

"They were delivering something to people with their own creative instincts, their own stamp on it. I feel really proud that I get to be in this moment where i get to do that. It's been really fulfilling."