‘Poker Face’ Lives or Dies on the Backs of Its Best-in-Class Guest Stars
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This story about the ensemble cast of “Poker Face” first appeared in the Comedy Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
No Emmy-caliber new series relies as heavily on its ensemble of guest actors as “Poker Face” — and fewer still boast the caliber of talent assembled by creator Rian Johnson, star-executive-producer-director Natasha Lyonne and showrunners Lilla and Nora Zuckerman.
Lyonne stars in the Peacock comedy as our woebegone hero Charlie Cale, an off-the-grid, muscle car-driving ex-casino worker who’s on the run from a mafioso (Adrien Brody) who wants her head after she learns the truth about the mysterious death of her coworker (Dascha Polanco). An enticing enough premise on its own, there’s another twist: Charlie is, inexplicably, a human lie detector — a skill that makes her a very good gambler and a rough-and-tumble vigilante detective. That’s where our guest stars come in.
Each of the series’ 10 episodes is structured around a murder-of-the — week format, akin to “Columbo” and other episodic shows of yesteryear. While Charlie bounces from major metropolises to desert-nestled one-horse towns, she encounters ne’er-do-wells while working odd jobs and catching them red-handed. From Joseph Gordon-Levitt to Stephanie Hsu, Clea DuVall to Ron Perlman, a veritable who’s-who of famous faces and character actors play the murderers, schemers and victims.
“It’s really cool to kind of come in and get to tell a whole story but in a really short amount of time. You don’t ever really get to do that,” Danielle Macdonald, who stars as a barbecue murderess in the episode “The Stall,” said. “This was amazing to just be able to do a quick little pocket episode.”
Macdonald and Lil Rel Howery play the wife and brother of a barbecue wunderkind who plot to pass off his death as a suicide so they can continue the family business.
“To be one of the guest stars is kind of a dream come true,” Howery said. “And I got to play a bad guy! I’m always playing a hero or somebody’s favorite somebody, so to be a murderer was fun.” It’s the strength of these guest stars that keeps “Poker Face” so fresh, episode to episode.
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In “Time of the Monkey,” Judith Light and S. Epatha Merkerson are a pair of ex-radical political activists who off a newcomer (Reed Birney) to their retirement home after discovering that he is a friend from their past who betrayed them. Sporting bad wigs and swearing like sailors, the two television vets lean into physical hijinx and capital-v Villainy, turning their atrocities (like planning to kill kids in an act of domestic terrorism) into pitch-black, very funny comedy. Just ask Howery, who cited the episode as one of his favorites: “It was so insane!”
There is also Tim Blake Nelson, who pops up as an aging race car driver facing off against his hotshot younger nemesis (Charles Melton). Cherry Jones is at her conniving best as a film producer with a guilty conscience and a score to settle with Nick Nolte’s special effects whiz. Clad in a corset, Chloë Sevigny electrocutes her band’s drummer in the middle of a live set. And in one of the most inspired strokes of casting magic in the entire series, Hong Chau slaps on a gruff southern accent and a cowboy hat as a nomad trucker who gives Charlie some key living-on-the-lamb pointers. They all give pitch-perfect performances. And they all look like they’re having the time of their lives.
Ellen Barkin truly was. In “Exit Stage Death,” the Emmy winner plays, in her words, a “washed up,” “desperate” actress who “was on a bad TV show like ‘Baywatch’” and is now clawing her way to a comeback via dinner theater opposite Tim Meadows’ equally down-on-his-luck thespian. “It’s been a while since I’ve been in that creative of an environment,” Barkin said. She praised the episode’s director, Ben Sinclair (“I don’t know when I was treated that well, I really don’t”) and the force of nature holding the whole show together. “I see Natasha Lyonne, I see actress,” Barkin said. “Then I watch her on set and I’m thinking, Wow, she’s really doing a lot of work. And she’s doing a great job.”
Howery agreed. “You’re like, they can’t be that cool for real in real life. But she really is so cool,” he said. “And so funny.”
Read more from the Comedy Series issue here.
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