Peeling the 'Glass Onion': How the new 'Knives Out' mystery switches up the usual suspects

Benoit Blanc, Daniel Craig’s delightfully enigmatic Southern sleuth in the “Knives Out” movies, is no fan of Clue.

“Ticking boxes, running around, searching all the rooms. It’s just a terrible game," the ace detective drawls in the new murder mystery “Glass Onion” (streaming on Netflix Friday).

His latest case doesn’t involve the likes of Colonel Mustard or Miss Peacock. Instead, director Rian Johnson surrounds Blanc with suspects of a modern persuasion: a YouTube influencer (Dave Bautista), a genius scientist (Leslie Odom Jr.), a flighty fashionista (Kate Hudson), a morally questionable politician (Kathryn Hahn), an outcast entrepreneur (Janelle Monáe) and a tech billionaire (Edward Norton).

‘Glass Onion’ is layered with new characters and familiar faces

Johnson and his cast talk with USA TODAY about the personalities inhabiting “Glass Onion":

• Norton’s super-rich guy is the orbital center of a colorful cast of characters.

• Audiences will get some insight into Blanc but he’s still a big mystery (and for good reason).

• The new “Knives Out” features the final on-screen roles for musical-theater icon Stephen Sondheim and legendary actress Angela Lansbury.

Rian Johnson revisited a favorite author to fill out his suspect list

Miles Bron (Norton) gathers old friends – and Blanc – to his private Greek island for a murder mystery getaway, which becomes all too real when someone actually ends up dead. The rich guy at the center, who buys things just because he can, and the archetypes around him will seem familiar to today’s audiences, and Johnson went back to Agatha Christie for inspiration.

“She was always engaging with the present moment in the culture in her books. This genre is such a beautifully formed machine for creating a little microcosm of a society and examining it in depth, all while encased in this candy shell of a fun murder mystery,” Johnson says. “If Agatha Christie were writing today, she would be writing about these people, tech billionaires and influencers. She would have Twitter in her book. She was doing all that stuff back then, just to her moment.”

Kathryn Hahn’s politician walks a fine line between power and integrity

Claire Debella (Hahn), one of Miles’ original gang of “disruptors,” is the current governor of Connecticut with an eye toward a senate seat. An activist for clean energy, her intentions are good but her actions lean a little iffy. “Money and power are needed sometimes to affect change. And so where does one's integrity start to dissolve?” Hahn says. “That was a fun thing to play with, those fine lines.”

While Claire doesn’t have a direct real-world influence, the actress adds Johnson was prescient with all his roles. “All of a sudden things that Rian couldn't have possibly even imagined are connections to characters in this film."

Kate Hudson sinks her teeth into a narcissistic nitwit

Hudson’s persona Birdie Jay is a style icon who loves to party yet almost always is saying the wrong thing. She’s often one tweet away from a racial slur or some other comment that will get her canceled. “To be so off the wall is really any comedic actor’s dream,” Hudson says. “The important thing for Birdie is her lack of intelligence, because I really do think it comes from absolute ignorance.

"One of the important touchstones for me was that, in my mind, Birdie just is hearing every third word. Whether she's like severely ADHD or whatever's going on internally with her brain, she's not present. You mix that with narcissism and there's Birdie.”

Janelle Monáe is the most interesting wild card of all

The one person no one's expecting to see at the swank shindig is Andi Brand (Monáe), Miles' ex-business partner, and there's still a lot of hard feelings and bad blood there. "Andi is a mysterious tech entrepreneur who's a leader. She's a gatherer. She's a truth teller," says the actress, who scored a Critics Choice supporting actress nomination for the role. "She really does want to do good with her power, with her influence, with her light, but everybody has complicated relationships with each other."

Fun fact: In real life, Monáe is a big fan of hosting her own murder mystery parties. "It's a good way to just understand people a little bit more," she says.

Daniel Craig's master detective remains a mystery

After being introduced in the original 2019 "Knives Out," audiences get a new glimpse at Blanc's personal life in "Glass Onion." He yearns for his next "great case" dealing with pandemic boredom and the sleuth is revealed as gay and living with a partner. However, Craig feels Blanc "should remain as much of an enigma as possible," he says. "It's his interaction with the (other characters) that's important, not whether or not he had a nosebleed when he was 6 years old."

But the character is as inquisitive as ever, Craig adds. "He finds people fascinating, he puts people at their ease and they tend to tell him things. Of course he has plans, but they're all about allowing people to sort of hang themselves."

‘Glass Onion’ rounds up a legendary Zoom call

The new “Knives Out” is littered with fun cameos, but one early scene features a couple icons: Blanc is playing a round of “Among Us” online and video-chatting with friends Sondheim and Lansbury playing themselves. It’s the final on-screen performance for both: Sondheim died at 91 in November 2021 followed by Lansbury, who was 96, this past October.

“They were both incredibly generous and so gracious and I can't believe they're in the movie,” says Johnson, who directed Sondheim over Zoom and met with Lansbury and recorded her via laptop. Her ties with murder mysteries are obvious (“Murder, She Wrote,” anyone?) but one of Johnson’s all-time favorite whodunits, “The Last of Sheila,” was co-written by Sondheim. “There were a lot of reasons why I felt very lucky to be able to make that connection with both of them.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Glass Onion': Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson lead 'Knives Out' suspects