In ‘Poker Face,’ Lyonne gets to try out new character trait
Known for her wisecracking, quick delivery, Natasha Lyonne’s newest role in the Peacock series “Poker Face” grants her an opportunity to play a character with a personality trait she has never played before. Lyonne’s character, Charlie, likes people.
Charlie’s still got zingers, but Lyonne says the character is partly inspired by Jeff Bridges’ famed character, the Dude, in “The Big Lebowski.”
She’s “a person, a little bit set back, who’s kind of got sun on their face,” said Lyonne. “I’m usually more of a city slicker and someone who avoids getting hit by taxis and runs down in a subway.”
Adds creator Rian Johnson, “Charlie’s very open. She’s very sunny. That kind of blew Natasha’s mind. She’s like, ‘Oh, this will be a new thing for me to play. I like people.’ The natural kind of like acidity and sharpness of Natasha’s personality, combined with a character who has a genuinely sunny outlook ... I find it’s super watchable.”
“Poker Face,” now streaming on Peacock, is a mystery series, so it fits Johnson’s wheelhouse, as the writer and director of the films “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion: A Knives
Out Mystery.”
Charlie has a keen ability to automatically know when someone is lying. After events in the first episode send her on the run from a mafia boss and his enforcer — played by Benjamin Bratt — she sets off in her car to drive away from trouble. In each stand-alone episode, Charlie encounters new people, a murder and, of course, lies, that make her want to figure out what happened.
Johnson describes it as a howdunit and
unapologetically a procedural. Charlie knows who commits the murder but has to figure out how.
“We follow the same format with every single episode. We show the murder, then we flashback and see where Charlie was during the murder. We catch up with the murder, and then she solves it. Keeping that procedural consistency was a big, big deal to me because when I tune in to TV, part of what I love is hanging out with the same friends over and over. It’s a comforting pattern of getting a new thrill from something that I know what to expect from every single week. There’s great joy in that ... I embrace it completely.”
As Charlie encounters a new mystery each week, there’s a revolving door of notable guest stars throughout the 10-episode first season, including Lil Rey Henry, Tim Meadows, Luis Guzman, Chloe Sevigny and even Nick Nolte — who appears in an episode that Lyonne directed, which she described as a “sensational” experience.
Another reason Charlie is able to pick up on
something that seems off is because she pays attention to those around her and likes the underdogs, those who are ignored or dismissed by others.
“Charlie’s always going to have her sympathies with the little guy, which is similar to Columbo in a way,” said Johnson.
It’s a trait Lyonne is also drawn to both personally and professionally. She has a production company, “Animal Pictures” with Maya Rudolph, which co-produces “Poker Face” along with Rudolph’s Apple TV+ comedy, “Loot.” It was also behind Lyonne’s popular series “Russian Doll” on Netflix.
Lyonne says she gravitates to creative people, including friends Jenji Kohan (who created “Orange is the New Black”), Amy Poehler, Clea Duvall and Janicza Bravo, and there’s joy in creating content for “misfits and outsiders.”
“We kind of go on a journey together. You’re communicating with the weirdo kids in the back of the class because, you know, they watch stuff, too.”