The first four episodes of Poker Face debuted on Peacock last week and starred Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a woman who has the ability to tell when people are lying. The first block of episodes featured an array of exciting guest stars including Cheers alum John Ratzenberger, The Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle, and Get Out star Lil Rel Howery. Yesterday, the fifth episode of the series, “Time of the Monkey,” was released and saw Charlie taking on a new job at a retirement home where two of the residents, played by Judith Light and S. Epatha Merkerson, committed the show’s latest murder. The end of the episode features an intense fight, and director Lucky McKee recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the cast’s involvement.
“We had done 70 setups or something that day, working with two cameras. It went off without a hitch,” McKee explained. “Natasha is very serious about the work. She’s about fully understanding every single little beat that’s taking place on screen and making sure that there’s a damn good reason for everything that’s taking place.”
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He continued, “That whole day [of the fight sequence] for 12 hours, I was just constantly checking with Judith … Because she was crawling around on the floor and strangling and biting. And just doing all these really crazy physical things. She was down in the dirt all day long, just going for it. She must have been really worn out the next day. I would have.”
Light added, “When you think you can do something… and what it means to be asked to do that kind of physical work … You can have your team step in and say, ‘No you can’t do that. You think you can fall off the bed, but we’re going to have somebody else do that.’ Or, they can say, ‘If you are going to do that, this is how we’re going to do it: We’re going to place mats and foam down, and we’re going to shoot at different angles.’” She continued, “Particularly for women in our business, they don’t always ask us to do that stuff.”
McKee also talked about how Light was jealous of her stunt double during an earlier part of the episode when her character has to scale a wall.
“Judith, honestly, she watched her stunt double get rigged up with a wire and crawl up the side of the building and then she was like, ‘I could have done that.’ She was so disappointed she didn’t get to do it all herself! She was just game for whatever we wanted her to do.” Light added, “The first portion with a lot of the close-ups and all of that stuff, the early climbing, that’s all me. And when it got a little bit more dangerous, they tethered her up.”
What Other Guest Stars Will Appear in Poker Face?
Poker Face has five episodes to go and the show has already featured some big names like Adrien Brody, Benjamin Bratt, Chloë Sevigny, John Darnielle, Hong Chau, Judith Light, Lil Rel Howery, Dascha Polanco, S. Epatha Merkerson, Nicholas Cirillo, Megan Suri, Simon Helberg, Reed Birney, Shane Paul McGhi, Danielle MacDonald, Colton Ryan, Chelsea Frei. Future guest stars will include Angel Desai, Audrey Corsa, Brandon Michael Hall, Charles Melton, Cherry Jones, Clea DuVall, Ellen Barkin, Jasmine Aiyana Garvin, Jameela Jamil, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Leslie Silva, Luis Guzmán, Niall Cunningham, Nick Nolte, Rhea Perlman, Ron Perlman, Rowan Blanchard, Stephanie Hsu, Tim Blake Nelson, and Tim Meadows.
The first five episodes of Poker Face are now on Peacock.
