Natasha Lyonne takes the lead role in Poker Face, a new series from Glass Onion writer-director Rian Johnson. In the new Peacock series, Lyonne plays Charlie Cale, a human lie detector who, after previously using her powers to make money as a professional cardsharp, is settling in for a quieter life when her best friend is murdered. After serving her own justice to the killer, Charlie becomes a fugitive and travels from town to town, where she encounters a new murder in every city. In real life, Lyonne may not have quite the same skill level, but she does claim to have a similar talent.
Having had plenty of brushes with some less than-honest people while going through a heroin addiction in the 2000s, that led her to develop her own special variation of the skill of weeding out liars. She told Rolling Stone:
“I would say I’m an excellent bullsh*t detector. Thanks to a life that’s taken me from skid row to the Chateau Marmont and back again, I really have seen some sh*t. And I guess the gift that gives you street smarts. And part of that is to know, ‘Oh, this is a smart person to go into the alley and score from. This is a bad person to go into the alley and score from.’ The way that manifests out there in the world of Hollywood is, I’ve retained that knowledge in many big and small ways. I can see very quickly: ‘ This is a [person] I want nothing to do with. And this person who’s a PA is going to become my right-hand man for life.”
Rian Johnson Pitched Poker Face to Natasha Lyonne Over Dinner
Rian Johnson is currently riding high on the wave of success of Glass Onion, the sequel to his equally successful Knives Out. While the elements of mystery are apparent in both those movies and Poker Face, there was one big difference between the projects. While Knives Out was written before Daniel Craig was cast in the role of Benoit Blanc, Johnson specifically wrote the part of Charlie for Lyonne, which led to him pitching it to her over dinner.
Lyonne recalled Johnson worrying that she would believe he was just giving her another Hollywood promise that wouldn’t be kept. However, it was clear to her from the start that he meant business. She remembered thinking, “This Rian Johnson is a pretty serious person. Why on Earth would he waste his time coming to eat steak with me, sitting here with notebooks.”
As well as starring in Johnson’s series, Lyonne also nabbed herself a cameo appearance in Glass Onion as one of the four Among Us players who are challenging Craig’s Benoit Blanc near the movie's start. While she appears as herself in the scene, that doesn’t necessarily rule her out of an appearance in Knives Out 3, with her fictional self appearing to be an acquaintance of Blanc’s. For now, though, fans can prepare to see her lead her own set of mysteries in Poker Face, which debuts on Peacock on Jan. 26.