‘High Potential’ Boss Reveals Tense Negotiations Over Nick’s Now-Shaven Mustache

To ’stache or not to ’stache? That is the question High Potential showrunner Todd Harthan and the other producers of the ABC procedural have been mulling in regard to Steve Howey’s formerly-mustachioed Captain Nick Wagner.

Nick made his debut on the show in the October 7 episode, and LAPD consultant Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson) immediately called out his facial hair. “What’s someone like you doing in a police station? Trying to get that mustache to make sense?” she asked.

But in Thursday’s episode, “Chasing Ghosts,” Nick’s upper lip was bare.

Mitch Haaseth/Disney

“It was time for it to go, and I don’t think it had anything to do with what Morgan said,” Harthan told TVLine in a new interview. “I think he’s probably had plenty of people in his orbit other than Morgan comment on that particular part of his aesthetic, and at some point, you’re just like, ‘All right, enough is enough. This thing’s got to go.’”

As Harthan explained, Nick started off with a mustache because Howey was filming another show that required him to have a beard, and the High Potential producers didn’t particularly want another bearded character on their show.

“So we thought he’d be clean-shaven, but the other show was like, ‘Can we not [shave] the whole thing? Can you leave a little?’ So we said, ‘OK, we’ll leave the mustache and see how it looks,’” the showrunner added. “We looked at it and thought, ‘All right, it’s not quite Tom Selleck, but cool.’”

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But after a lot of feedback, Harthan called up the producers of Howey’s other show and said, “the ’stache has to go,” even if it meant the other show would have to use a full fake beard to make Howey more hirsute.

“I think they called it Stachegate on set,” Harthan said. “I’ve had more conversations about that guy’s facial hair than I’ve had about our season finale plans.”

FYI, the other show might be the upcoming Prime Video series Off Campus, which is currently filming, according to IMDb. In the series — an adaptation of the book series by the same name by Elle Kennedy — Howey will play former hockey legend Phil Graham, father of playboy college athlete Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli), Deadline reports.

High Potential, Tuesdays, 10/9c, ABC