Natasha Lyonne, Rian Johnson Brey Hollywood, ignoring hate

Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne are in the studio and put the finishing touches to the 2 final of “Poker Face”, but it is the last part of this magazine story they are concerned about.

“It’s up to you to edit,” says Lyonne in that dry, cigarette-cracked grater. “And I’m so sorry.”

She apologizes because when you get her and Johnson (which she calls ‘Riri JJ’) in the same room, they can bounce for minutes in succession, hopscoting between topics – from John Candy to crying wolves to fax machines. “The fax machine is a very dangerous device,” says Lyonne at minute 13. On this point I have not asked any question about “poker face”.

The Peacock “Howcatchem” series (in contrast to a “whodunit”) follows Charlie Cale, a de facto detective with a congenital nonsense detector, which travels through America, who run from the crowd and get into trouble. In a streaming era where even 30 minutes of comedies can turn into 80-minute dramas, “poker face” is unwavering to transform into his dedication.

Each episode starts with a murder before Lyonne arrives on the screen. Charlie always has a loose bond with the murder and brings her to the victim’s job, but she never wonders why she is constantly in the vicinity of such a horrible death. Season 2 takes her to a funeral center, Big Box Store and Minor League Baseball Stadium. Charlie also visits a primary school, but are not worried: no children have caused damage to ‘poker face’. Yet Johnson is urging: “I feel that you can kill a child before you can kill a dog.” (Don’t cut that.)

Each episode is also shot for 10 days at a soundstage in New York City and seven on location in the Tri-State area. Under Showrunner Tony Tost, the series succeeded in changing national New York in Florida, but an idea that was difficult to logistics was “doing Shitty” murder of the Orient Express, “says Johnson, whose” Knives Out “films have been a tribute to Agatha Christie.” It was a great script, but … trains are tough, man. “

If there is one thing that is clear by speaking with Johnson and Lyonne, it is that they are obsessed with Hollywood. During this interview with an hour they mention 16 TV shows, 24 films and 38 actors, many of whom appear in this season of “Poker Face”. In the second season, the show stays a magnet for host stars and attracts Cynthia Erivo to play sex tuplets, John Mulaney as a dirty FBI agent and Kumail Nanjiani as an exotic-like Gator Guru.

“The nice thing about these guest roles is that they are relatively low,” says Johnson. “And so Kumail feels good and playing a character with whom he can take a big, wild swing and is not worried about taking 10 episodes.”

In contrast to most murder-of-the-week series, “Poker Face” does not spend time in court buildings or police stations. “Thank goodness,” says Lyonne.

“This is not a procedural show. It is a hangout show with Charlie,” Johnson adds. “We are leaning much more in humor this season. Maybe it has something to do with the state of the world now, but we just wanted a good time.”

Perhaps counter -intuitively, the tight structure of the show makes it possible to be quite stretchable. With a variety of writer-director-actor pairs, every episode is as a “mini film”, says Johnson, where directors can come in and can take “creative ownership” about their episodes. And without the burden of a character background story-very little is known about Charlie-De Focus of each episode is entirely on the weekly mystery and bottled world construction.

“You can view them in any order, and it gives the illusion that Charlie grows during the season,” says Johnson.

The resistance of the show against large narrative arches distinguishes it from other “Premium” television. It also made it difficult to pitch, says Johnson. “It was very difficult to sell the show. The episodic nature was a scary thing for everyone.”

“I did backflips when I read it,” says Lyonne about the original script. “I expected that all networks would feel the same, but many people were afraid because of the idea that it would not be a fully serialized storyline. You know, Charlie Cale goes back to her childhood and tries to find a husband while they solve things.”

The fact that Charlie does not seem to worry about establishing or finding a partner at all is what makes the show somewhat radical, says Lyonne. Of course there have always been male protagonists who hang out because of the attributes of romance, but “you were not allowed to be a female character with an inner monologue who was not related to finding the man.”

“To lead a female character through a philosophical concept, or an ethical soul journey, is a really daring act of one of our greatest living authors, who happens to be a man,” Lyonne adds her head to Johnson. “It opens me to do so much shit that James Cagney of Humphrey can do Bogart, and that is damn great.”

Johnson has often said that he planted the seedling for ‘poker face’ after episodes of ‘Columbo’, ‘Quantum Leap’ and ‘Highway to Heaven’ during the Pandemie. Just like his Covid favorites, he wanted to make something old school, led by a wanderer hero with a big heart. But he wanted her to be a woman. Well, a specific woman.

“The idea that he sees all those guys and then thinks:” God, Natasha would be perfect for this “is really an act of feminism,” says Lyonne, without an ounce of snark. “In a strange way it is like you say,” Okay, it’s Daniel Craig or Emma Thompson, but they are a bit the same for me. ” That is a rare gift for me to be able to embody.

While the second season drives out of “Poker Face”, Lyonne shifts her focus to another project: her directing debut, which she wrote with Brit Marling. With the title ‘Uncanny Valley’, the film follows a teenage girl whose grip on the real world unraveled when it is consumed by a popular augmented reality video game. The project will traditionally combine filmmaking with AI, thanks to what it describes as an “ethical” model that is only trained on data -targeted data.

“It’s all about protecting artists and confronting this oncoming wave,” says Lyonne, and emphasizes that it is not a “generative AI film”, but uses aids for things such as set extensions.

When the film was announced in April, many on the internet did not see it that way.

“It is comical that people easily understand the headlines because of our Bizarro culture not to have reading comprehension,” says Lyonne. “Suddenly I became a strange Darth father -character or something. That is a crazy talk, but God bless!”

“I’ve never been in one of those earlier,” says Lyonne about the vortex in return. “It’s scary inside, if someone wonders. It’s not nice if people don’t say nice things to you. It grows up a bit.”

She looks at Johnson, who felt the wrath of “Star Wars” fanboys in 2017 when he undermined expectations about the much -praised, but division “last Jedi”. His advice: exclude the noise and just make things. In an era on social media in which film and TV projects are assessed before they are even made, “every great art appears to be a terrible idea that will never work,” he says. “Something big is made in a bubble. If it wasn’t, it would never pass the pregnancy period.”

For Lyonne there is the chance to help a feature film the hard-earned result of a long career in the Showbizz, characterized by early success with roles in “American Pie” and “but I am a cheerleader”, followed by more than a decadium of scrapping for rolls and then the new black “. “

“I am very grateful for my success because I have been on the other side of the Hollywood tracks, and it is a lot worse,” she says. “You call your agent a lot, and they say they don’t make films now. And you are:” I have seen the billboards, ma’am. It’s just not true! It’s ok to say that they just don’t want me in it. “

Now Billboards cannot get enough of Lyonne, whose red curls have been draped over intersections and bus stops for the majority of a decade. Still, if there is something that she has learned in the course of her career, it is that the real satisfaction is in work and with whom she chooses to do it.

She is about to flow more about Johnson, I can see. But before she gets too sentimental, she starts to hopscot and jump from gala to katy perry memes to why she would probably have to zap the color of her iPhone screen.

As I ask my next question, Lyonne laughs. “Processing good luck.”