The fifth episode of Poker Face season two brings Natasha Lyonne‘s Charlie Cale to the dugout of a minor league baseball team, where she investigates suspected foul play in the death of a player who was killed by a fast ball to the head from a faulty old pitching machine.
Tony Tost, who took over as showrunner for the second season, wrote the episode, “Hometown Hero,” and says it was a world that creator Rian Johnson wanted to play in for the Peacock murder-mystery’s return. The episode also solidifies Poker Face as a true week-to-week offering. After resolving the lingering plot from season one in the third episode (the first three episodes released together at launch), the fourth episode took Charlie down to the Florida Panhandle — for a death involving cocaine and an alligator (starring Gaby Hoffmann and Kumail Nanjiani) — before landing her in this week’s predicament with a suspicious baseball player (Simon Rex). Next week’s episode will shift tone again when she travels to an elementary school.
“I had conversations in order to get the [showrunner] job and in making my case, I was pretty honest with Rian to say there’s nothing I want to course correct on,” Tost tells The Hollywood Reporter of leaning into the show’s standalone format even further with season two. “I love that the show is a mystery of the week. I wanted to protect that and double down. The show lives in these blue-collar pockets of ‘flyover America,’ but doesn’t make a big deal about it or pat itself on the back. Charlie’s just with the underdog or the work-a-day people, as opposed to the high-status people.”
Below, Tost chats further with THR about what to expect as the Peacock series settles into its sophomore season, including why viewers won’t be learning more about Charlie’s backstory (unless it’s shared with her CB radio buddy, voiced by Steve Buscemi) and how the 12-episode season delivers an unexpected ending amid the “grab-bag chaos” of recasting the show every week with A-list guest stars.
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When you took over as showrunner for season two [from Nora and Lilla Zuckerman], did you get handed any sort of show bible?
I got handed better than that. I got a really great first season of a TV show for reference. The Zucks did such a great job, as did everyone involved in season one. When I did find myself sometimes saying, “How do we tell this story?,” I would just fire up an episode from season one. I had conversations [with Rian Johnson] in order to get the job and I think the show’s great. It works. I love that it’s a mystery of the week. I wanted to protect that.
When I spoke with Nora and Lilla and Rian Johnson at the end of the first season, they said they had many places they could take Charlie Cale for season two — they could bring back characters in different roles; we even joked about a prison spinoff. They said they loved the format but also wanted to surprise viewers. Can you go inside that process of what you considered and why you landed where you did, solidifying the murder-of-the-week format?
The day before we started the writers room, we had boards for each episode up. Rian was like, “Can you just take that down? I don’t want the room to come in thinking about the episodes in the season. Let’s come in and crack a really good Poker Face episode that could land potentially anywhere.” The first one we broke was the fourth episode, the alligator one, which is one of the wackier ones. The thing that the show does really well is that it puts Charlie Cale in some new part of America with an interesting murder to solve. We wanted to focus on that for these first couple episodes, and then in the process of that, we said we’ll talk about the Beatrix Hasp [the villain played by Rhea Perlman] of it all and find the shape to the season organically.
I also came in saying, “Can we bring back Simon Helberg is FBI Agent Luca?” I love that character and thought there was more to explore. There are some characters I would have loved to bring back, like Hong Chau’s trucker character from season one, but we didn’t find the proper world. There were characters and worlds that were up on the board — I knew Rian wanted to do an episode in minor league baseball and I wanted to pitch Charlie getting a CB radio buddy, someone to talk to. But some stuff we didn’t get to; I wanted to have a Bob Seger impersonator character. There was a potpourri of ideas and then the writers came in and pitched more ideas.
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale with Simon Rex, as minor league ball player Russ Waddell, in episode five’s “Hometown Hero.”
Sarah Shatz/PEACOCK
Episode three closed the book on the season one plot of a mob boss chasing Charlie; in this case, freeing Charlie of Beatrix Hasp (Perlman). Now with episode five, you are full steam ahead on being a week-to-week show that viewers can drop into at any time. Did you debate putting episode three later in the season?
There weren’t debates. It was a discovery. We started off cracking individual episodes and at some point, we needed to talk about how the Beatrix Hasp thing plays out over season two. Rian was like, “Do we have to have it play it out over the whole season? We kind of did that in season one. Wouldn’t it be more interesting if it resolved itself earlier than we’re expecting? And then it frees us up to do something else with the character.” Rian and I were much more excited about what we ended up doing than trying to find a new spin on something that season one did quite well.
I also spoke with Rian and Natasha about casting season one with such a heavy-hitting roster and how they would approach casting season two. How did it work when you were coming up with episodes? Were you writing with actors in mind?
It’s a little bit of a grab bag. When [writer] Wyatt Cain pitched the third episode, he pitched “a John Mulaney-type.” Natasha was like, “I was just texting with him, let me ask him.” So it can come that way, or sometimes we’ll be thinking about character and I’m just like, “Who actually would be good for this? Who of Rian and Natasha’s many cool friends might want to come and hang out for a couple weeks?” And then sometimes it’s a more traditional thing where we go through our casting director and see who’s available and make some offers. There’s this grab-bag chaos because every 10 days we’re starting over again. We have to recast and repopulate the whole show.
Sometimes we would cast someone overqualified for the role, so we’d race back through the script and ask the writer to do another pass so we’re not wasting them. All of a sudden, we’ve got this performer doing some funny bits that were inspired by their casting as opposed to the other way around.
Was there one guest star who really surprised you?
There’s a later episode at a weightlifting gym that was a “John Cena- or Dave Bautista-type” and we ended up casting Method Man. I don’t know anybody else now who could have played that role. He’s fucking amazing. He brought so much to it. He wasn’t on the tip of our tongues, but going forward now he’s going to be for anything I write. It’s also fun to take somebody who does comedic stuff and have them play the killer or victim, like Kumail [Nanjiani], who I don’t think gets offered many Florida Panhandle types of roles. He brought so much sweetness but also excitement, which feeds into the joy of that [fourth] episode. I think that’s part of the draw — getting to play something different than the normal roles they are offered.
How often were you tempted to go back to the deep well of your guest actors from season one?
There were discussions. We did bring back Simon Helberg and Rhea, and Clea Duvall, who plays Charlie’s sister in season one, came back to direct in season two, and she’s amazing on all fronts. We were like, “Do we fit Clea in here?” But it just never quite worked. There are lots of people we’re fans of, but sometimes it would feel like we were shoehorning them in. And we said: Let’s focus on this episode, on this mystery. There’s also something about adding to the roster of Poker Face guest stars.
Lyonne with Cynthia Erivo, as one of her quintuplets, in the season two premiere, “The Game is a Foot.”
Sarah Shatz/PEACOCK
Since she’s not in this life-and-death chase anymore, Charlie has a more existential journey the rest of the season. What challenged you about still finding emotional depth for Charlie?
Charlie’s looking for a community. That gave us a handle for the episodes. But Natasha’s such a strong voice on all aspects of the show. There’s not a lot of guiding Natasha about what she’s supposed to do. It’s more like: Here’s what’s on the page. Here’s what we’ve done. Now, let’s see what Natasha brings to it. And what she brings is not necessarily what you’re expecting, but it’s what you are wanting it to be. Let’s try to not go to the same well all the time. Let’s explore different shadings and step back and see what Natasha does with it.
The one overarching plot device you do have is Steve Buscemi in the CB radio voice role. What pupose does he serve for Charlie?
The origin of that is that I like trucker movies. I was raised on Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood movies. Every Which Way But Loose, Convoys, stuff like that. My parents, especially my stepfather, was a very avid CB radio guy. You don’t see that in the culture anymore, and it felt very Charlie. I pitched that to Rian and we realized that, almost like Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks, it’s a way to, in an old school fashion, get to what’s on Charlie’s mind and it just became a friendly companion. We liked how it was retro, like a show from the 1980s like Hardcastle and McCormick or Magnum P.I. or the A-Team would have some confidant who was a recognizable actor’s voice on the radio.
What is your rule book about how many times Charlie can almost die? There’s no show without Charlie, but she gets herself in pretty precarious situations.
It’s more like, how can we surprise ourselves and surprise the viewer? “Wait, did Charlie just get shoved out of a 12th floor window?” You know Charlie’s not dead, but she paints herself into some dangerous corners. So how can we be playful with that at the same time?
Rian said this show is structured so it really could go on forever. Is that what you guys want to do?
Who knows what the world and the entertainment industry will allow. But I think there’s potentially a world where Charlie is solving murders in perpetuity. Her interest in people is not going away, her caring about people and her heart is not going away. Her bullshit detector is not going away. It might be hard for her to keep her nose out of people’s business. Later in season two, you’ll see that she tries to not be in a murder-of-the-week show. That’s an interesting tension to play with.
How many ideas did you have that you couldn’t fit in? Do you already have enough for a season three?
We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. But there’s a stack of murder ideas, story arenas, character ideas that we just never got around to in season two. So there’s a good start, even if it’s not something we’re actively talking about just yet.
Eva Jade Halford with Lyonne in next week’s elementary school-set episode, “Sloppy Joseph.”
Ralph Bavaro/Peacock
Do you plan to unpeel the onion that is Charlie Cale more in the future, in terms of bringing back Clea Duvall and more of her family story?
I’d be surprised. There’s almost a perverse joy in refusing that contemporary television tendency to really dive into the trauma or the backstory or the mythology of a character. That’s something that Rian and I both just delight in, and I think Natasha agrees. You can imagine some aspects of her past and you get little pieces, but we’re never going to explore it like that. People from her past can show up. But I don’t think it’s that kind of show. Other shows do that very well. Let’s focus on this thing that that we do, where we just follow her from adventure to adventure.
Is there one episode that felt like it was the biggest swing?
The season two premiere was a big swing, in terms of the Cynthia Erivo playing the multiple Kasinski sisters. There’s a reason why we moved that up. Once writer Laura Deeley pitched that and then wrote a great script, we wanted to start the season with that. I’m pretty excited for people to see the elementary school episode and the episode with John Cho and Melanie Lynskey, which is a little bit of a different variation on the Poker Face experience. And then the last couple episodes will maybe sneak up on people and play some cards that people aren’t really expecting. I’ll be excited and curious to see how people respond to the last few.
Does the finale set up a third season in a cliffhanger way?
The finale will work in different ways. You don’t want to be presumptuous — the world doesn’t owe us a season three. I think if there is a season three, it sets it up quite well. If there isn’t, I’m pretty satisfied with the finale. You have to see how things pay off. But hopefully, either way, it’s a satisfying end of the season.
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Poker Face season two episodes are now streaming on Peacock, with new episodes releasing weekly. Read THR’s season two chat with Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne.
