INTERVIEW: 'Poker Face' Season 2 Showrunner Tony Tost Talks Guest Stars, Plot Twists, And Season 3 Plans

Peacock's Poker Face was created by Rian Johnson, who was the showrunner for the first season which performed well and got itself a second season renewal. With the second season, we still see Rian Johnson return to direct episodes alongside Natasha Lyonne, who returns as Charlie Cale, but it also brings along a new face to run the show, Tony Tost.

Nexus Point News spoke with Tony Tost and discussed actors who were almost in Season 2, his collaboration with Rian Johnson, the decision to end the hitman story early, AI, and more.

Christopher: Hi Tony, my name's Christopher Mills. I'm from Nexus Point News. It's a pleasure to speak with you today. How are you doing?

Tony: I'm doing good. How are you doing? Nice to meet you and talk with you.

Christopher: I'm doing good. This is like my, my second interview of the day, so I'm running on high energy, but I'm so excited to do this. Initially I had two screening to go out for today for films I'm excited for, but then I got the email to interview you and I said, "Poker Face is literally one of my favorite shows. I can't let this slip by." So, I stayed home just so that I could get the opportunity to speak with you today.

Tony: Well, I appreciate that. It's cool to hear.

Christopher: There are obviously a lot of guest actors in Poker Face. I was wondering for this season, were there any actors you tried to get to get that you wasn't able to that fell through maybe at the last moment?

Tony: There's a lot of actors that we reached out to that wanted to do the the the show, but the scheduling didn't work out. Natasha and Rian have so many friends. I've talked about maybe trying to have Aubrey Plaza come in, but it didn't quite work out. There was Fred Armisen, who Natasha is very close to and Rian is friends with. Those were a couple of people that I think we tried [to get], but we just couldn't quite get the scheduling to sync up with us.

Natasha Lyonne and John Mulaney in 'Poker Face' © Peacock

Christopher: I'm assuming, for a future season, you try to maybe get those people along. Are there any other people that you would love to see on Poker Face?

Tony: Rian has talked about, and it's something that I love is just like if somebody is in season one or season two, there's no reason they can't come back in season 3 as a totally new character. That's something that these old school 70s-80s shows would do. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if say, you know, Tim Blake Nelson, or anyone, came back as some different character. My favorite actress of all time is Sissy Spacek, who played Loretta Lynn and Coal Miner's daughter. I think she is just a genius. She's someone whose flag I'm always gonna wave for a future episode. For whatever reason, I'm obsessed with casting Ron Howard as a bad guy cause he's got this pure opines, and I think there's just something that would be delightful to have him as a Poker Face killer.

Christopher: It's so funny that you say that because, I don't know if you've seen The Studio, but Ron Howard is like a kind of villain in in that show.

Tony: I haven't seen it yet, but it's ripe there for the picking. I only hear the best things about him behind the scenes. He's a fantastic actor. He's a really underrated director. He's terrific. I'll have to check out The Studio to see Ron Howard as a bad guy cause that's something that's been on my wish list for a while.

Christopher: I love that you mentioned actors kind of turning into different characters. In another one of my favorite shows, Doctor Who, there's actors that you'll see in past episodes who return to play like main centric characters. There's never the question of seeing them before. They're just acknowledged as different characters.

Tony: This is a thing that TV does, like embracing the TVness of a TV show. There's nothing wrong with like, doing an 8 or 10 hour movie, or doing the great American novel as a TV show. There's no fun show to hang out with each week that's just trying to tell you a good story with some interesting characters and fun guest stars. TV kind of got away from that, but I think people are rediscovering that a little bit. We're not the only show doing that, but if there's a great actor or actress that fits the show and that the people making the show really like working with, why not bring them back?

Christopher: I have two wish lists guest actors for the show: Anya Taylor Joy and Daisy Ridley. I'd love to see that in the world of Poker Face.

Tony: I could totally see that. I could see both of them, especially as killers, I think that would be fun to see Charlie pair off against them. We'll tuck those away into the back pocket.

Christopher: Fingers crossed. You didn't work on the first season of Poker Face and you've come on to season two as showrunner, executive producer, and you've written an episode as well. I just wanted to ask, what was that experience like talking to Rian?

Tony: I loved season one, it's a terrific show. It took me a little while to check out the show. I was in the process of brainstorming not the exact same thing, but something similar to Poker Face as a modern day take on Colombo. I was wanting to do a modern day spin on a Rockford Files type of show, with the same idea. I wanted to get a charismatic lead actor, fun guest stars, with a case of the week premise. Then I saw Poker Face coming out and I was like, "Oh crap, they beat me to it."

And then I found out that they were looking for a showrunner and they reached out to my reps to see if I'd be interested. This is even better than I thought it would be. I mean, it's daunting to come in. The Zuckermans did terrific work in season one. It's one thing to come in and try to keep a show going, it's another thing to make a show. There wasn't a season zero of Poker Face for them to reference to. When we're in the process of making season two in the writer's room, I'd rewatch episodes, go back to what's unique in Poker Face. They didn't have that luxury. I have all the admiration for what they were able to pull off in in season one. I was not the only candidate for the job. It wasn't handed to me. I had to make my case. Then it was very much coming in and downloading as much of Brian's brain as I can in the writing stage while also getting Natasha's point of view on the show and trying to hold them both together. My job in making season 2 was just to get this collection of great writers to come up with ideas that hopefully got Rian excited or got him tickled. A couple days a week he'd come in the afternoon, we'd pitch out our ideas, go through them, and then he would either thumbs up or thumbs down the idea, or he would, throw curveballs at us. It's just that that kind of process. I could go on and on about different elements of the show, but on the writing side, that's that's kind of the process.

Christopher: Honestly, I'm glad you came on board. Even though I've not seen the last two episodes, I do prefer this season to the first. I really, really enjoyed the second season. One of the worries I had going into it was if this was going to feel repetitive with the concept of Charlie getting chased across America again. That's quickly scorched early on in the season. What was the decision behind closing that storyline off?

Tony: That's great to to hear! What's your favorite episode this season cause I'm always curious. Did you have a favorite episode in season two so far?

Christopher: I think my favorite episode might have to be the gym one. I really liked the gym one a lot. I also do enjoy the episode where the storyline ends with the police shoot out.

Tony: The gym one that was fun one to do. The ending was really initiated from Rian. When I came in and when we got our writers room together, at Rian's urging, we didn't even talk about the overarching serialized story for season two. He wanted us to really just focus on standalone episodes that just worked on their own, and then we would come back and figure out what to do with the Beatrix task. The first episode we broke was the Gator Joe one, that the cops one, and then the second one we broke was the minor league baseball one. We broke a handful of of those episodes and we're at the outline or script stages on them. I was just assuming that season two would just kind of carry forward the Beatrix Hasp storyline. [We were trying to figure out] how we were gonna incorporate that in, and Rian was just like, do we have to do it the whole season? What if we just kind of resolved it and then opened it up where Charlie's on the road by her own choice? And it becomes more her trying to figure out what her life is. Then we don't have to keep coming up with characters rushing in at the end of episodes. They did that very well in season one, and season two needs to do its own thing. We got more and more excited about gently pivoting in this direction that kind of carries us through the middle section of the season. When people see the last couple of episodes, they'll see that season 2 does have a story; it just kind of takes an unconventional way of telling itself.

Christopher: That's honestly great saying. There was some speculation online in this latest episode that came out that there may have been some use of AI. I was just wondering if there was actually any use of AI when they're looking into the gator's eyes and you feel the whole zen.

Tony: I don't think there was. Once we wrap production, and I did my last passes on the last episodes in post, I've only been involved on the post production to come in on sound mixes to be Rian's support. On the VFXs side of things, I haven't really been weighing on it, but I do know that Rian reached out to our post production coordinator and we've been assured that it's not AI generated. I don't know exactly how the image is generated because, again, the nuts and bolts of that stage came in later in the process. I have no reason to not believe that it's actually not AI even though I think some people suspect that it is.

Christopher: If you don't suspect it, if the other people amongst teams don't, you know, suspect that there's no AI, who are we to say otherwise? There's none.

Tony: When you do a VFX spotting session, which I was involved in, you're talking with your post production producer and your VFX supervisor on the show about what we're kind of going for. Then they go reach out vendors and find who bid on it. The vendors come back and present with you, you give notes, and it develops that way. It's not necessarily an in-house thing, but again, if the vendors tell us it's not AI and our post producers say it's not AI, I believe it's not AI.

Christopher: Honestly, that's just great to hear. Thank you so much for your time. I can't wait to get to watch these last two episodes when I get the chance to. I just hope we get more Poker Face. I don't know if you've heard of anything if there's a season 3 renewal.

Tony: Everybody's still kind of catching their breath after finishing season two and kind of seeing how season two is being received. I'm sure there will be conversations down the line in terms of that, but there hasn't been those discussions yet. I think everyone's just kind of enjoying that we finished it and that people do seem to be enjoying it and watching it. I'm sure we won't keep it a secret once those conversations take place.

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About Poker Face

Premiere Date: May 8 2025

Episode Count: 12

Executive Producer/Showrunner: Tony Tost, Ram Bergman, Nena Rodrigue, Adam Arkin, Nora Zuckerman, Lilla Zuckerman

Writer: Laura Deeley, Alice Ju, Natasha Lyonne, Wyatt Cain, Tony Tost, Kate Thulin, Taofik Kolade, Megan Amram, Tea Ho, Raphie Cantor, Andrew Sodroski

Director: Rian Johnson, Natasha Lyonne, Miguel Arteta, Lucky McKee, John Dahl, Adam Arkin, Mimi Cave, Adamma Ebo, Clea Duvall, Ti West

Production: Animal Pictures, T-Street

Distribution: Peacock

Cast: Natasha Lyonne, Adrienne C. Moore, Alia Shawkat, Awkwafina, Ben Marshall, B.J. Novak, Carol Kane, Cliff "Method Man" Smith, Corey Hawkins, Cynthia Erivo, David Alan Grier, David Krumholtz, Favionte "GaTa" Ganter, Ego Nwodim, Gaby Hoffmann, Geraldine Viswanathan, Giancarlo Espositio, Haley Joel Osment, Jason Ritter, John Cho, John Mulaneyy, Justin Theroux, Katherin Narducci, Katie Holmes, Kevin Corrigan, Kumail Nanjiani, Lauren Tom, Lili Taylor, Margo Martindale, Melanie Lynskey, Natasha Leggero, Patti Harrison, Rhea Perlman, Richard Kind, Sam Richardson, Sherry Cola, Simon Helberg, Simon Rex, Taylor Schilling

Synopsis: Poker Face is a mystery-of-the-week series following Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie, who has an extraordinary ability to determine when someone is lying. She hits the road with her Plymouth Barracuda and with every stop encounters a new cast of characters and strange crimes she can’t help but solve.