Natasha Lyonne (Orange Is The New Black, American Pie) and Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Looper) recently spoke about their hit show Poker Face during their panel at the Deadline Contenders Television event in Los Angeles. The crime drama has been one of Peacock’s biggest shows and quickly became its most streamed premiere. Unsurprisingly, it has already been renewed for second season.
Johnson is the mastermind behind the series. Lyonne stars as the protagonist, Charlie, and also serves as a writer, director, and executive producer.
Via Deadline, Johnson attributes the success of the show to Lyonne. He says, “I had the idea in my head of wanting to do a case of the week, episodic type show. Something that was kind of like the TV shows I grew up loving like Magnum P.I., Murder, She Wrote and Quantum Leap. I wanted to go back to that versus a show with a mystery that runs across the whole season. What I realized is that what these shows have in common is they all have an incredibly charismatic star at the center. I’m following the mysteries, sure, but I’m mainly watching to hang out with Peter Falk every week. There aren’t that many people out there who can do that today. So when I saw Natasha in Russian Doll, met with her and we became friends, I knew Natasha was someone who could pull this off.”
Later, Lyonne gives the audience a glimpse into how episode eight of the season — “The Orpheus Syndrome” — came about: “Pretty much everything that has to do with Poker Face is Rian’s fault. I was in Puerto Vallarta trying to sleep. Then Rian sent me a documentary on Phil Tippett and we sort of had this vision quest and from there it blossomed into what it was going to become with Nick Nolte and this story of regret and a very catchy title, Orpheus Syndrome, that’s important. I think Rian had this idea to tell this story about this man up against technology and what it means to have integrity in the art… It was interesting to watch this story about what it’s like to have regret and I think part of what we’re talking about and part of what Rian’s idea was this sort of Vertigo idea that’s very overt in the episode—even in the score, and everything.”
In the end, Johnson divulges his main objective for season two. “We want to keep doing it and I feel like it is very much built so that there is an overarching story but it’s kind of similar to the story of whether Sam is going to get home on Quantum Leap,” he says. “It kind of doesn’t matter really, it’s just an engine to be able to keep her on the road and keep her moving and keep doing these little mysteries and having exciting people in them. Our goal is to just keep doing that as long as we can.”
The rest of the cast includes Benjamin Bratt (Miss Congeniality, Coco), Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory, Florence Foster Jenkins), and Pedro Hollywood (Kaleidoscope, The Scent of Passion), among others.
All episodes of Poker Face are available on Peacock.