Villain or Victim, Why Top Actors Jumped to Guest-Star in ‘Poker Face’

Poker Face pulled off many things in its debut season. With its murder-mystery-of-the-week plot in a new spin on the detective genre, the Natasha Lyonne-starring Peacock series from Rian Johnson revived the concept of procedural television for streaming, saw Benjamin Bratt turn a catchy Blues Traveler song into a poetic monologue and recruited Star Wars legend Phil Tippett for one episode’s special effects. But perhaps most impressive, Poker Face assembled an eye-popping roster of guest stars.

How did they nab Nick Nolte to play opposite Cherry Jones in Hollywood saga “The Orpheus Syndrome”? Who knew that Ellen Barkin and Tim Meadows would have such fiery chemistry in theater sendup “Exit Stage Death”? How did they convince the likes of Adrien Brody, Stephanie Hsu, Ron Perlman and Tim Russ to come in for one episode just to be killed off? And, who knew that S. Epatha Merkerson and Judith Light would delight as foulmouthed villains?

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When you ask Johnson, he will tell you that scheduling top actors to come play in the world of Poker Face in an episodic guest-starring role was no easy feat. But with each installment opening with a murder and sometimes running for 15 minutes before Charlie Cale (Lyonne) steps into the frame, the pitch of playing either a meaty villain or a memorable victim was alluring. And that’s especially true when you are a friend or longtime collaborator of Johnson or Lyonne.

“I remember Rian and I standing in my kitchen at one point, and we made a list of all our dream people who we wanted to work with, without any scripts,” says Lyonne. “We were like, ‘This person would be fun’ and ‘This person would be great.’ We ended up with quite a few of those people where it was either that we love them or had worked with them before, or it’s always been a dream to work with them.”

Among the usual Johnson players who were cast are Noah Segan (Brick), who has cameoed in every Johnson project and continued his run by appearing in the pilot as a cop investigating the murder of Charlie’s friend (Dascha Polanco, a frequent collaborator of Lyonne’s, having starred with her on Orange Is the New Black and Russian Doll); Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who guest-starred as the bad guy in the season’s penultimate episode, “Escape From Shit Mountain”; and Brody, who helped set the tone of the series as the villainous son of an equally villainous casino owner (Perlman) who jumps to his death after Charlie catches him in an epic lie.

“When Rian pitched Poker Face to me, I said that I had an idea to do something quite similar. And he said, ‘Well, I beat you to it!’ ” shares Brody about the call he received from Johnson, who directed the actor in 2008’s The Brothers Bloom (which also featured Segan and Gordon-Levitt). Not only did the pilot, “Dead Man’s Hand,” have to function as a scene-setter for what viewers could expect each week from Poker Face, but it also introduced Charlie’s special skill of being a human lie detector, the show’s hook. Scenes between Lyonne and Brody, who plays one of the only characters who is aware of Charlie’s gift, feature the Asteroid City actor contorting himself not to tell an outright lie while trying to cover up the fact that he had her best friend murdered. “Rian’s writing is wonderful and extremely intricate,” says Brody. “You have to be extremely well prepared to have it roll off the tongue. It’s a really choreographed way of working.”

Johnson says the only part he wrote with someone in mind was the role for Segan, “because I’m always thinking, ‘How can I get Noah in there?’ ” But he did have Brody and Gordon-Levitt in the back of his mind, the latter for “Shit Mountain,” which Johnson also directed. “I didn’t know if he’d be able to do it,” he says. “It feels like a mini miracle when you get anybody solidly cast, and that includes friends, because our friends are talented people who are busy. So you protect your heart, assuming they probably won’t be able to do it. And it’s delightful when they can.”

Lyonne’s longtime friends and collaborators who showed up on the series also included Chloë Sevigny (Russian Doll), who plays the villain in episode four’s rock romp “Rest in Metal,” and Clea DuVall (But I’m a Cheerleader, The Intervention), who plays her onscreen sister in the season finale, “The Hook.” She also recruited Alia Shawkat for a reading of the first episode, and they brainstormed ideas for Maya Rudolph, who produces the series under her and Lyonne’s Animal Pictures banner. (Don’t be surprised if either shows up in season two.) When acting opposite close friends and regular collaborators, Lyonne says there is a “baked-in bond” viewers can see in the final edit. “The camera somehow just smells the truth,” she says. “We were trying to make it a keep-it-in-the-family kind of thing, and that whoever new was coming in also felt like the old people to us.”

That extended Poker Face family, which showrunners (and sisters) Nora and Lilla Zuckerman have referred to as their growing “Poker Face repertory theater company,” collectively say they cherished their time on set. Hearing that feedback means something to Johnson. “To me, the experience of making the thing is the thing,” he says. “Why wouldn’t you want that experience to be a good one? You’re always rolling the dice when you work with people you’ve never worked with before, but we got so phenomenally lucky with the people that came on.”

The casting team — Mary Vernieu, Bret Howe and New York casting director Christine Kromer — took that “friends of the family” vibe and ran with it when recruiting new players to the roster. “Having worked with Rian Johnson and [producing partner] Ram Bergman since [2008’s] Brothers Bloom, you just know it will always be a great creative experience,” says Vernieu. But the fast-paced scheduling was indeed a challenge, a “crash course in anthology casting” she says, given that they were hiring actors for mini-movies every two weeks. The first two installments they filmed were the penultimate episode and the pilot, and from there they cast episode by episode, which required them to run auditions and go out directly to guest stars while also lining up backups.

One of the actors they went directly to was Merkerson, and the feedback they got from the Law & Order star and theater legend was surprising. “Her agent said that she read the first pages of the script and immediately was like, ‘I’m in. I get to say that?’ ” says Vernieu.

Merkerson explains why she jumped at the offer for “Time of the Monkey,” the show’s fifth episode. “In the first 15 pages [my character] gets to say ‘motherfucker,’ and I throw the finger. No one ever casts me like that,” she says of the role of Joyce, a seemingly sweet woman at a retirement home who reveals herself to be a domestic terrorist. “I found out that Judith Light was going to be in the other role. I don’t even remember the last time I had that kind of fun, because I’m never seen as comedy or that other kind of girl — bad girls! And let me tell you, I have a filthy mouth.”

Theater has allowed Merkerson to play all sorts of roles. “I’m not typecast in theater. I get to do a little bit of everything,” she says. “But in television and film, I’m always the boss, the bitch, the sister. Mostly the hard-ass boss. And to be able to have this kind of freedom was just tremendous.” She also describes the vibe from top-down as being a true no-asshole policy: “I can honestly say when we did my episode five, I don’t remember any assholes. I do believe that it has a lot to do with the writing, absolutely, with the directors and the producers. They know what kind of set they want.”

Merkerson and Light are examples of unexpected guest-casting, which Vernieu and Howe say was something they set out to do. “A common theme throughout the show was having beloved actors we all know and really thinking about them playing against their normal type,” says Howe. Other examples include perennial best friend Lil Rel Howery (The Carmichael Show) and Danielle Macdonald (The Tourist) playing co-conspirators to murder in episode three’s barbecue fratricide, “The Stall.” Both Macdonald and Hsu were eyed for the pilot role that went to Polanco, but they were cast in later episodes. “When you are casting, you always try to be like, ‘They are so good, where can we put them in?’ ” says Vernieu. “That’s how you end up getting really good people for all the different parts, by doing that puzzle.”

Hsu says she put out into the universe that she wanted to work with Johnson when speaking to a mutual collaborator, composer Ryan Lott, during the SXSW premiere of what would become the Oscar-winning megahit Everything Everywhere All at Once. “I said, ‘I think I’m supposed to work with Rian Johnson.’ Then I went back to New York for press for Everything Everywhere and I got an audition for Poker Face,” she says. The soon-to-be breakout star arrived on the Poker Face set to film her “Shit Mountain” episode right after EEAAO hit theaters, and Johnson and the Zuckermans had just seen the movie with members of the crew.

“Filming for Poker Face was the first time that I ever got a flutter of performance anxiety,” says Hsu. “Rian had texted me and was like, ‘Holy shit, this movie is crazy! You’re incredible, and I can’t wait to work with you.’ And I was like, ‘Wait, no!’ I had never been so spit out into a moment like that before, and so I felt so witnessed in a way that made the stakes and the visibility different,” adds Hsu, who earned an Academy Award nomination for EEAAO.

But playing Mortimer “Morty” Bernstein, the kleptomaniac ski bum who’s murdered after a brief stint as Charlie’s sidekick, ended up being an affirming moment for the actress. “You would never see Mortimer Bernstein and think, ‘Stephanie Hsu is perfect for that.’ But that’s what I love about it!” she says, also citing Hong Chau’s episode-two trucker character (another fan-favorite Charlie sidekick). “I love working with directors who give their actors permission to go to the edges of the unexpected and strange in order to discover something new; that’s where the magic lies,” says Hsu. “And those are the types of characters I would so like to continue to play, who are new and kind of strange and don’t feel ethnically tied to anything if you allow your imagination to expand.”

Lyonne recalls her own starstruck moment of acting opposite Nolte in the episode she also co-wrote and directed. “When I say I’m intimidated to work with that person, I don’t know what levers they’re going to be pushing. And, of course, I was scared as shit that he was going to be, like, ‘You’re not tough enough.’ But then the great gift of my life has been to discover that I, in fact, am tough enough,” she says. When talk turns to Johnson, she gushes. “Rian has this uncanny ability that I’ve really never experienced, and I’ve been around for at least a few years now,” she says with a laugh. “But it’s so, so rare to feel like you got it at the end of the day. There’s this calmness when Rian is on set [and the scene has been done] as it is in his mind and it’s time to go home. The show is played in the key of Rian.”

With the writers strike, production on the second season remains up in the air. But given the success of the first season, the casting team expects an even easier rhythm to the process when work does gear back up. And because Poker Face is inspired in part by Columbo, the creative team is open to bringing back some of the family in either reprised or new roles, as often happened with guest stars on the long-running Peter Falk-starring series, which has found renewed popularity thanks to streaming. (Every actor who spoke for this piece says they would happily accept such an offer to return.)

“In that Columbo mode, I would bring any one of our actors back — it’s also weighing that against the fact that there are so many fun people out there we want to work with,” says Johnson. “We worked with some of our best friends the first season, but we both have so many actor friends who we are always saying, ‘We have to find something to do and be on a set together.’ So it’s balancing wanting to have another experience with these great people with the fact that it’s really fun to get out there and date new people!”

Along with Rhea Perlman (no relation to Ron), who after a voice-only role in season one will return as the “big baddie of season two,” Johnson and Lyonne throw out such names as Jamie Lee Curtis, Aubrey Plaza, Ted Danson, Dennis Franz, Joe Pesci and Forest Whitaker as dream gets for season two. “I’m taking notes!” jokes Howe, who adds that Whitaker was on a few season one episode lists but was unavailable because of scheduling conflicts. Howe adds of Perlman’s role, “I have a feeling Rhea’s character is going to be really terrifying. I’m excited to see who we can surround her with.”

Bratt’s villain and DuVall’s Cale sister are two other roles likely to return (though no official conversations have begun). “For season two, I think that kind of overarching plot of Rhea’s character would be similar in function to what Ron [Perlman]’s character was in season one,” says Johnson. “But it’s not going to be what the season is about per se. It’s still going to be a mystery-of-the-week at all the spots where Charlie lands.”

Next up, Johnson has his third Knives Out film, and while Lyonne still has the third season of Russian Doll percolating, she says she’s channeling her energy into making her first feature, inspired by Johnson. But they both say they don’t want too much time to pass before delivering a second season of Poker Face. Perhaps Poker Face will even make its own cameo in the next Knives Out. “In the world of Benoit Blanc [the star detective played by Daniel Craig in the Knives Out films], his friend Natasha is on a show called Poker Face. He could visit the set, potentially,” muses Johnson of the prospective Easter egg. “It’s pretty meta!” Lyonne says, adding, “I could only be so lucky.”

The pair also reiterate their hopes to go for many seasons. (Columbo ran for 10.) “We keep joking that we want to use all the actors on the planet,” says Johnson. “Eventually, we’ll run out of working actors. It goes along with our dream list we talked about. There are so many.”

This story first appeared in the June 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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