photography JACKSON BOWLEY
What does it mean to be a Chad? He’s not just a regular “alpha male.” He’s handsome, strong, sweet, and secure in his looks and social status. Effortlessly desirable to women and frustratingly enigmatic to other men. Depending on the context, a Chad conjures aspiration, desire, and envy. And there’s no Chaddier Chad than the original—that three-named Adonis Chad Michael Murray.
How do you remember him? Tall, gorgeous, trademark blonde hair either spiked straight up or tucked softly behind his ears, blue eyes in a perpetual squint. Was it Gilmore Girls? Or A Cinderella Story. One Tree Hill or Freaky Friday. Dawson’s Creek? Those were the north stars of y2k, the somber teen dramas and the candy-pop comedies, and in them, Murray reigned supreme as the rich prepster with a cheeky grin in Stars Hollow, the football obsessed teen in Tree Hill, North Carolina, and the impossibly cool, motorbike-riding bad boy Jake in Freaky Friday.
Now, as of August 8th, he’s reuniting with fellow aughts favorites Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis for its sequel, Freakier Friday (even freakier, if you can believe it). The mid-summer romp is massive fun, but it’s also aware of the emotional punch it has. Suddenly, the beloved fixtures of your childhood—the teen actors you grew up with—have their own children. Suddenly, you have your own children. Therein is the paradox of rebooting such an iconic movie: how do you grow and change without giving up your essence—without losing what made people fall in love in the first place? That is the story of Freakier Friday. It’s also the story of Chad Michael Murray.
In person, the Buffalo, New York-born actor is down to earth. He says, “Oh my Gosh,” a lot. He loves football and his family. He’s funny without being cynical. In fact, he is overwhelmingly nice. He asks questions frequently and waits patiently for the answers as if you’re the one being interviewed. And he’s very, very handsome—still boyish at 43, but settled into his features. Over the past several years he’s starred in rom-coms The Merry Gentleman and Mother of the Bride. He’s also written a number of books—the graphic novel Everlast and the romance American Drifter. Currently, he’s working on a screenplay—a comedy-adventure film (he describes his sense of humor as a little childlike and “a little National Lampoon”)—and is about to start shooting season 4 of Sullivan’s Crossing, the Canadian drama he stars in. There’s Freakier Friday, premiering soon. Then there’s the project he’s most passionate about: a documentary he’s producing about his hometown football team, the Buffalo Bills.
Well, technically it’s about the Bills Mafia. In Buffalo, where Murray was raised, “We live and die on Sundays. And for a long time, we died, but now we’re living big time. And so the Bills Mafia… You know what the Bills Mafia is?” I, embarrassingly, do not and venture that it must have something to do with organized crime. Murray corrects me, “It is a beautiful love for the Buffalo Bills and the franchise and football. And it starts every single morning before a game. I mean, [the fans] are partying at 8 a.m. in the parking lot for a night game.” The documentary he’s producing is called Just One Before I Die—as in please god, just win one Super Bowl in my lifetime.
Even for someone born and raised in it, the world of the Bills is wild. Murray tells me, “I’ve taken a shot out of a 16-pound bowling ball. They put liquor in the little finger holes. You take a shot, you slam it, and you drop the ball. Usually, they put cherry liquor, but that wasn’t for me. Let’s just do some high bourbon and burn off any bacteria in there.” I feel like I’m answering a Seventeen quiz. What kind of liquor does Chad Michael Murray like in his bowling ball? Answer: Bourbon. But the buck (the buffalo in this case?) doesn’t stop there. Murray sets the scene of an average Bills tailgate: “People are making bacon on rakes in the parking lot. There’s an old army helmet deep-frying chicken wing. There’s the ketchup and mustard phenomenon.”
The ketchup and mustard phenomenon revolves around a man named Pinto Ron. The mysterious figure (to me), Pinto Ron (who, upon further research, is a tech engineer and Bills superfan) comes out before the game and goes, according to Murray, “‘Hey, you guys got some ketchup and mustard for my burger?’ He opens a burger, and then they just started covering him in ketchup and mustard.” If that image weren’t enough, Murray humbly goes, “I once got to be one of the guys on the top of the van that just hoses him down with giant bottles of mustard. That guy is a trooper. I don’t know how he does it. I couldn’t do it. He’s covered head to tail in ketchup and mustard.” This honor ranks well below the birth of his children and his wedding day, but, he tells me, is definitely in the top 50 important moments of his life. Though Murray demurs, “I don’t want to give it a number, because if I sat back and thought about it, I’d get too analytical. I’ve been pretty blessed to do a lot of really cool things in this world. My OCD would win out, and then I’d go, it wasn’t 50, it was 100.”
What ranks first on his list of 100 cool things is family. Everything he does is for his wife and kids, and he would trade it all for them. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to. In fact, the Freakier Friday premiere marks the first time the full family stepped out on the red carpet together. It’s a full-circle moment. Twenty-two years ago, Freaky Friday’s premiere marked the young Chad Michael Murray’s first time on a red carpet, “It’s all a blur. I don’t remember any of it. It was probably so overly stressful, and I was so worried about, you know, just doing something wrong, just not doing the right thing. I think it was all deleted. I can’t remember any of it, so I wanted to make more of a moment of this one.” To look at those red carpet pictures of a nervous Murray and imagine the scope of the career to come, and then know the culmination, is a sweet moment of circularity.
His kids are just old enough now to appreciate his filmography. “I was shooting A Merry Gentleman last year, and I came home from filming, and I see my three girls—my wife and my two kids—tucked away in bed, watching a movie and it’s A Cinderella Story. I could tell my eight-year-old was invested completely. She loved it.” After that, he showed her Freaky Friday. Murray laughs, “I got picked on more than anything. You know, ‘What’s wrong with your hair?”’ He concedes, “It was a lot of hair, but that was just me at the time. I was committed.”
No spoilers, but you’ll be happy to know that the hair story in Freakier Friday doesn’t disappoint. He’s still rocking a gentle behind-the-ear bob. The significance of such a fan-favorite role isn’t lost. “It’s exciting to go back to something that brought so many people happiness, but also you’re like, I don’t want to screw it up. And then at the same time, you’re sitting there and being a little analytic, trying to figure out, what has Jake been doing for the last 23 years? Where are we going? What’s the funniest option?” If watching the movie feels like a joyful reunion, filming it was even more so. “You get done with a movie and assume you’re gonna see [the other actors] in your lives all the time, and then all of a sudden, you haven’t seen each other in 10-15 years. I think everyone just appreciated being there.” Murray’s serious for a moment, “The only reason I ever became an actor was because I wanted to make people happy. And sometimes you can forget your purpose. You can forget why you came. This film is such a gift. I get to ride on these women’s coattails while they entertain the heck out of everybody, and I get to bring a bit of seasoning.”
As soon as this interview’s over, I promise Murray that I’m going to go down the Buffalo Bills research rabbit hole. That satisfies him: “You go do a deep dive, then you come join me. We’’ll go to a Bills game together. Welcome to the Mafia.” A seasoned heartthrob, a superfan, and still—everyone’s favorite Chad.
