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Her hair is red, voluminous and wild. She walks with a swagger. Her voice is raspy, and not in a sexy kind of Lauren Bacall way, but more like Peter Falk.
Long before finding her groove with unconventional roles in “Orange Is the New Black,” “Russian Doll” and now, “Poker Face,” there weren’t many options for a free spirit like Natasha Lyonne, especially when she aged from a pliable child actor into a self-aware adult.
“It’s weird that all of a sudden, one day, everybody looks at you differently and you’re aware of it,” says Lyonne, 46. “I remember the ‘Lolita’ audition, and it was like, ‘Will you slowly eat this apple?’ And I was like, ‘I know what you’re asking of me. I can eat it for you comedically.’ But no, I will not simulate sex with an apple on camera. I mean, I’d studied the history of film. These were not revelations.”
The real surprise? Lyonne forged a career by finding and later creating projects that capitalized on her undeniably intrepid personality, wrapping the roles around her eccentricities rather than conforming to what was expected of a female performer in Hollywood. Lyonne’s latest act of defiance is Season 2 of the Peacock series “Poker Face,” a murder-of-the-week mystery created by Rian Johnson (“Knives Out,” “Glass Onion”) that she stars in and executive produces. This season, in addition to writing, she’s also directing two episodes.
The series, which returns Thursday with three episodes followed by one each ensuing week, continues to follow Charlie Cale (Lyonne), a scrappy Vegas casino employee who is blessed and cursed with the ability to accurately discern when someone is lying. Following the murder of her best friend, she’s forced to outrun the mob in her 1969 Plymouth Barracuda, traversing the byways of America while solving murders along the way.
The hourlong series takes its cues from personality-driven, ‘70s-era detective dramas including “The Rockford Files” and “McCloud.” But it’s “Columbo,” starring the wonderfully rumpled Falk, that’s most heavily influenced “Poker Face.”
Natasha Lyonne stars as an accidental detective in a Peacock series, created by Rian Johnson, that takes cues from ‘Columbo’ and ‘The Fugitive.’
Lyonne recalls the 1971 pilot episode of the vintage TV series, which was directed by a 24-year-old newcomer named Steven Spielberg. “I ripped from it directorially,” Lyonne says. “I like the one long, slow [Robert] Altman-like zoom shot through the office window down to the car. And I hear Spielberg went on to do great things. It’s like, ‘You like that long shot? You’re never gonna believe what this guy does next! Holy smokes. Are you in for a ride!’”
But Charlie Cale is not Columbo. She carries a vape pen instead of a cigar and prefers cut-off shorts to a trench coat. She does, however, share the uncanny knack for arriving just as a murder’s taking place, be it on an alligator farm in Florida or a sprawling East Coast mansion. She’s confronted with a new cast of characters at every stop, and the roster of talent who inhabit those roles is impressive. The lineup includes Cynthia Erivo, Giancarlo Esposito, Katie Holmes, Justin Theroux, Alia Shawkat, John Mulaney, Kumail Nanjiani, Lili Taylor, Margo Martindale, Melanie Lynskey and Rhea Perlman.
Katie Holmes, left, guest stars this season. Also guest starring is Giancarlo Esposito. (Sarah Shatz / Peacock)
“Charlie is a great lover of people,” Lyonne says. “[My former character] Nadia in ‘Russian Doll,’ which I co-created with Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland, it’s almost like she was on her own case. But Charlie’s already been on the journey where we lose interest in ourselves and gain interest in our fellows. The mob is after her. She can’t have a phone. She can’t have roots. She can’t really fall in love. It’s lonely.”
Lyonne’s own journey into the world of acting turned her into a seasoned veteran before she was even old enough to vote. The New York native worked in commercials before kindergarten, and as a grade-school student landed the TV role of Opal in “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” She also appeared in films such as “Heartburn,” “A Man Called Sarge” and “Dennis the Menace.” By her late teens, she landed her breakthrough role as the daughter of a broke single dad (played by Alan Arkin) in the 1998 indie comedy “Slums of Beverly Hills.”
“I’ve been doing this since I was 4 years old, dear reader,” jokes Lyonne, whose acting career now spans four decades. “As a child character actor, there is this kind of inner knowingness. We were completely alert, little businesspeople. If you start at 4, by 6, you kind of get the idea [of what’s going on], like ‘Don’t mumble. The Minute Maid people don’t like that in their commercial.’ By 8, you know where the bodies are buried. You know how to read a room, to perform on command. I can still smell the Pine-Sol from that Pine-Sol commercial in 1986.”
Even as a child, Lyonne didn’t quite fit the mold of precocious yet accessible girl next door: “I was trying to carve out this weird lane while discovering the heartbreak of not getting the role in ‘Curly Sue.’ I was like, I’m perfect for this thing. What’s wrong? Oh, I see. You’ve got to be Shirley Temple or you can’t really hang out.”
Lyonne pivoted to another passion: film and television history. She is a walking encyclopedia of great performances and buried, esoteric moments in both media. For a short time, she studied film and philosophy at NYU. “I was already thinking that I’ve got to transition this into filmmaking from the inside out, rather than just being an actor for hire. It took 20 years for that to materialize into a reality,” she says.
“I was already thinking that I’ve got to transition this into filmmaking from the inside out, rather than just being an actor for hire. It took 20 years for that to materialize into a reality,” Natasha Lyonne says. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
She disappeared from the public eye for over a decade as she battled drug addiction. Her comeback included a recurring role as Nicky Nichols in “Orange Is the New Black,” Netflix’s breakout streaming hit. Lyonne has said she had plenty to draw on for the character, who was a recovering drug addict. Nicky became a fan favorite.
By 2019, Lyonne co-created her own Netflix series, the existential dark comedy “Russian Doll,” where she played Nadia, a New York City-based video game developer who gets caught in a time loop at her 36th birthday party. She’s on a quest to solve the mystery of why she dies, repeatedly.
“There were techniques [I had to learn], like actual filmmaking, actual writing, actual producing,” Lyonne says. “The parts weren’t there, and the parts are still not there. It’s like nobody’s writing them.”
But she credits collaborators like Johnson for creating parts for actors such as herself.
“Rian really is some kind of genius because he took this self-referential gig that I was doing [and turned it] into a kind of character piece. I’m self-made, I suppose,” she says. “This is the way the hair grows out of my head. I’ll commit to it. So he took that and made it into something.”
“Poker Face” is a colorful, entertaining ride through a retro murder-mystery genre, present-day pockets of quirky American culture and Lyonne’s own personal journey as seen through Charlie.
“The show is about losing this nihilistic, self-destructive streak and finding connection with another human,” Lyonne says. “You try to build a life and not kill yourself over and over again. It’s like a marathon man or a long-distance runner. But she’s been through that dark and stormy night of the soul, and come out on the other side with the sun at her back.”
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