Season 1 of Poker Face, Rian Johnson’s eclectic crime dramedy starring Natasha Lyonne as a lady who can all the time inform when somebody is mendacity, was one among Peacock’s first really incredible sequence. Every Columbo-esque episode spun a uniquely wild story of homicide, thriller, and folks realizing how totally different their understandings of the reality might be. And you possibly can see that its large solid of visitor stars was having a ball hamming it up as ridiculous characters that felt like they had been ripped proper out of a sport of Clue.
Although each episode dropped Lyonne’s character, Charlie Cale, into a brand new scenario involving folks she’d simply met, Poker Face’s first season was nonetheless very a lot a bigger story about her being on the run and attempting to remain one step forward of shady figures from her previous. The harmful stakes of that narrative appeared like one thing that Poker Face would possibly wish to crank up when Peacock renewed the sequence for its second season.
However after I spoke with Johnson lately, he instructed me that he was by no means all that all for fidgeting with the scope of Poker Face’s narrative. For him, the enjoyment of crafting Charlie Cale’s story has all the time been rooted in determining the right way to create novel, emotionally pushed connections between her and the odd folks she meets. And because the authentic components labored so effectively the primary time round, Johnson felt that sticking to it for season 2 can be his finest wager.
The interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
I’ve to ask: how did The Verge find yourself in Glass Onion, Rian?
You guys are one of many websites I examine day by day each in your tech and leisure protection, and after we wanted an outlet that may be writing about somebody like Miles Braun, you guys made loads of sense.
He’s undoubtedly the type of man we’d be discussing in Slack.
[laughing] Yeah, there would possibly presumably be some present-day equivalencies between him and folks within the information.
I used to be listening to an interview of yours the place you defined how, with season 2, you weren’t actually occupied with taking the present in a brand new path, however fairly sticking with the basic components and getting recent issues out of it. What kinds of issues felt “recent” to you as you had been planning out these new episodes?
This present is a lot a tribute to the kind of TV that I grew up watching. Columbo’s the plain one, however Quantum Leap is one other that we’re actually taking loads of inspiration from. To me, the freshness each week comes from the world that Charlie finds herself in and the little microcosmic world that you find yourself exploring in that particular episode.
That’s the Quantum Leap issue, I feel. However Charlie’s relationships with the folks she meets are additionally essential. As a result of Charlie’s not a cop and it’s not her job to research this stuff, one of many challenges and enjoyable issues about writing the present is discovering a means in for her each week. That needs to be emotional, and it needs to be a relationship-based factor that pulls her into fixing the thriller.
Have been there any stuff you needed to do otherwise this season?
Actually, with each single episode, as a lot as each setting needs to be totally different, we’re additionally attempting to determine new methods in for Charlie when it comes to how she will bounce up towards new characters and kind new dynamics with them.
I’m actually, actually happy with how “Sloppy Joseph,” the grade faculty episode, got here out. That began with us within the room asking “what are the bottom stakes we are able to construct a Poker Face episode on,” and it ended up turning into an actual nail-biter of an episode as a result of while you’re in a grade faculty, there’s nothing larger stakes than the interior politics of youngsters. So, you will have Charlie coping with a basic, The Dangerous Seed–model relationship with a child, however we additionally see a real romance between her and Cory Hawkins’ character in “One Final Job.”
Peacock
What do you make of this second proper now the place we’re seeing single actors taking part in twins, or in Poker Face’s instance, quintuplets?
That’s a extremely good query, since you’re proper, there may be form of like a second occurring proper now, however I’m not completely positive why. For Poker Face, although, that was one other means we had been reaching again to Columbo — particularly the episode “Double Shock” the place Martin Landau is taking part in a pair of evil twins. And that episode can be actually taking part in into soap-opera-style storytelling the place twins being performed by the identical particular person is custom.
You talked about “One Final Job” and “Sloppy Joseph.” Are both of these episodes your darlings this season?
They’re all my youngsters. However, as a result of this season overlapped precisely with the manufacturing of Wake Up Deadman, I solely obtained to direct one episode this season, “The Recreation Is A Foot.” It’s an episode that Laura Deeley wrote and it has Cynthia [Erivo] taking part in sisters.
It was a extremely, actually particular expertise attending to work with Cynthia — seeing her convey her expertise to the desk, but in addition her sense of calm. She needed to maintain all these characters in her head, and we had been taking pictures for 10 days in a really low-tech means the place we might simply go away the digital camera arrange, she would do one half of the dialog, go do a 45-minute costume change, come again, and do the opposite half. To see someone with that sort of expertise working at that stage and holding all of it collectively in such a cool means was an actual spotlight.
Poker Face season 2 premieres on Could eighth.