Poker Face Producer Says Season 2 Pushes the Show to New Heights
We’re really building "on the success of Season 1," showrunner Tony Tost says.
Everyone’s favorite human lie detector, Charlie Cale, is back – and she’s ready to put her sleuthing skills to good use in Poker Face Season 2 with unconventional murder mysteries of the week, stellar guest stars, and the same old quirky charm.
With the first three episodes of the Emmy®-winning comedy series starring Natasha Lyonne now streaming exclusively on Peacock, here’s what showrunner/executive producer Tony Tost had to say about how the jam-packed sophomore season came together.
‘Build on the Success of Season 1’
Tost, who was tapped as the Season 2 showrunner of Poker Face, was a big fan of the Peacock series’ first season. “My big pitch was, ‘Let’s do more of that,’” he recalled telling creator Rian Johnson and Lyonne in one of their early meetings.
Tost believes there are three main reasons why Poker Face works so well and why viewers keep coming back: Lyonne’s unrivaled performance as Charlie, the chance to visit “interesting new worlds with great, fun guest stars,” and the opportunity to become engrossed in a “clever mystery.” “That’s the bread and butter of the show,” he said.
Maintaining the show’s signature format, style, and tone but expanding upon it for Season 2 was exactly what Tost wanted to do. “What I would love to do is try to build on the success of Season 1 and see what arenas, what wrinkles, what places we can push in directions they didn’t have time to [go] in Season 1 and explore new aspects of what a Poker Face mystery might look like,” he said. “And then also, what kind of situations and worlds Charlie could find herself in that would be fun.”
That was the starting point of how he approached Season 2 creatively. “We don't need to reinvent the show,” Tost said. “Let's deliver [a] really fun murder mystery that hopefully surprises and delights – and maybe moves people sometimes – on a week-by-week basis. If we do that, then we're providing really good TV.”
‘The Bar Is Pretty High’
This season, Charlie finds herself investigating oddball murder mysteries, involving a set of sextuplets, a crooked cop, and a mortician, among other idiosyncratic characters. Coming up with new – and more importantly unique – “whydunnits” for Season 2 was a welcome challenge for Tost and the writers.
“It needs to work as a mystery, it needs to work as a character piece, it needs to give Charlie interesting situations, [and] a reason to care,” he said. Plus, it needed to “have some juicy guest parts” and, of course, “be funny.” Poker Face earned four Emmy® nominations in 2023, including one for Lyonne’s knockout performance, and Season 1 is Certified Fresh with a near-perfect score. “The bar is pretty high on the show,” Tost said.
He acknowledged that sometimes the writers dreamt a little too big for Season 2 – even for Poker Face standards. Considering each highly produced hour-long episode is filmed over 10 days, sometimes their Plan B turned out better than they envisioned. “The sheer density of having each episode deliver the unique set of pleasures that Poker Face is designed to deliver, that in itself is challenging,” Tost said.
“That said, we have an incredible writers’ room, fantastic writers, and we've got Rian Johnson as our guiding force to not just give a thumbs up but to actively engage in and improve, and to have each episode be representative of what he had in mind when he created the show,” he added, crediting Lyonne as a “strong voice” that helped steer the ship.
‘Unreal’ Caliber of Guest Stars
If the first season of Poker Face attracted an impressive “who’s who” in Hollywood, from Adrien Brody to Chloë Sevigny to Judith Light (who won an Emmy® for her guest spot), then the new season reaches a whole other level of star wattage. Among the A-listers joining the Poker Face fun are Cynthia Erivo, Justin Theroux, Katie Holmes, Kumail Nanjiani, Awkwafina, John Mulaney, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito, and Lyonne’s former Orange Is the New Black co-stars Taylor Schilling and Adrienne C. Moore.
“[It] was kind of unreal,” Tost said of the wealth of guest stars they snagged for Season 2. “I'd be like, ‘Holy crap, I'm chatting with Carol Kane!’ Or there's movie stars or some of my very favorite actors, and I would be pinching myself or tell a teenage me that I'd be talking between setups with Method Man. And he’s amazing.”
“It's a testament to the work of everyone on Season 1, that the show came out so well that people want to be involved,” he said. “And people like working with Natasha, they like working with Rian.”
Tost and the writers do their very best to give every guest star “a fun role – maybe something an actor doesn't normally get to play – and so it becomes a win-win in that way.” “We very rarely want somebody to come in and do their tried-and-true [characters]” and the prospect of stretching “an acting muscle or an aspect of their persona or talent that they don’t normally get to do.” Rest assured, they always have the role or the scenes “rise up to the level of the star,” Tost said.
A Lot of Surprising Performances
One of the biggest treats of Poker Face is discovering new sides to the actors who come to play week in and week out. Tost zeroed in on a handful of performances in Season 2 that he thinks will surprise fans.
“People are going to be knocked out by Patti Harrison. She was a big favorite for the season,” Tost teased. “Method Man will surprise people, especially if you primarily know him from the rap world, even though he's been working steadily for decades now. But he's the real, real deal.”
“People know that Melanie Lynskey is a great actress, but she just blew my socks off on set seeing her,” he added. “Kumail [Nanjiani] playing a Florida cop is not something he probably thought he would ever do, but he was wonderful at it.”
Stream the first three episodes of Poker Face Season 2 exclusively on Peacock, with new episodes dropping every Thursday.
