Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) is calling bulls–t again when she sees it. The plucky transient with the ability to spot a liar is currently solving a new set of mysteries in Season 2 of Poker Face. The latest episode, Season 2, Episode 4 The Taste of Human Blood features Kumail Nanjiani as a police officer in Florida known as Gator Joe.
The series was created by acclaimed director and writer Rian Johnson (The Last Jedi, Looper). While intrigue and murder fill both worlds that Johnson created in his cinematic franchise Knives Out and his Peacock series Poker Face, both present different types of mysteries ripe for storytelling.
RELATED: What Happened at the End of Poker Face Season 1? Everything to Know Before Season 2
NBC Insider spoke to Johnson and Poker Face Season 2 showrunner Tony Tost about the inspiration for the weekly mystery series.
Rian Johnson outlines the stark difference between a Poker Face and Knives Out story
Knives Out brings together a cast of characters (with A-list actors to portray them) who could have committed the crime at the center of the film. Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) unravels the clues left behind to pick the killer out of the group.
“Benoit Blanc movies are whodunnits, and [Poker Face] is a how catch ‘em,” Johnson told NBC Insider. “It’s like Columbo where we show you who did it and we show you how they did it in the first 10 minutes of the episode.”
Columbo, starring Peter Falk, aired for a decade starting in 1968. The treasured show is one source of inspiration for Poker Face’s structure, Tost told NBC Insider.
RELATED: Every Guest Star in Poker Face Season 2 & Where You’ve Seen Them Before
“They’re different forms,” Johnson said, while comparing Knives Out and Poker Face. “The tension is, how is Natasha’s character gonna catch them? Which is a very different form, but I love it. It’s something that doesn’t seem like it should work, but… it’s a really fun thing to watch.”
The show’s premise sets up a stage that “lets the actors play,” Johnson notes. And Season 2 has plenty of acclaimed actors playing with Lyonne as guest stars. Indeed, the first four episodes have already featured Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad), Katie Holmes (Batman Begins), Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory), and John Mulaney (SNL).
“You have a chess game between Charlie and whoever the killer is that you can go back and forth throughout the episode, and that’s really fun to build an episode around,” Johnson said.
What TV shows and films inspired the creatives behind Poker Face?
Other mysteries that have inspired the “bones” of the series are Highway to Heaven (streaming now on Peacock), Incredible Hulk, and Rockford Files, Tost revealed.
“We draw a lot of inspiration from 1970s movies,” Tost furthered, listing off The Long Goodbye directed by Robert Altman, and Stay Hungry starring Jeff Bridges and Arnold Schwarzenegger. “In the writers’ room, I would often have movies silently playing that I thought kind of captured the spirit of the episode we’re working on and just to kind of imbue that… how can we get this kind of lived in soul of these movies that we love in this kind of weekly mystery format.”
RELATED: Can You Really Make a Vinyl Record Out of Human Remains? That Poker Face Plot Explained
Though the costume and production design is heavily influenced by references that Tost and the creative teams draw from, he points out that the show is still set in the present day.
“Maybe talk… about what life is like in America in these communities right now,” Tost offered. “It’s kind of drawing [on] these things, hopefully not too much of a Frankenstein monster. You still want it to feel whole, but we’re kind of consciously drawing from a few different buckets of inspiration.”
You might not be able to catch liars in the act like Charlie, but you can catch her in action by watching Poker Face now on Peacock. The first four episodes of Season 2 are streaming now on Peacock, with a new episode dropping every Thursday
