Natasha Lyonne Stars in ‘Poker Face,’ a Peacock Howdunit

Actor Natasha Lyonne appears during a portrait session to promote the series "Poker Face," in West Hollywood, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023. (AP)
Actor Natasha Lyonne appears during a portrait session to promote the series "Poker Face," in West Hollywood, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023. (AP)
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Natasha Lyonne Stars in ‘Poker Face,’ a Peacock Howdunit

Actor Natasha Lyonne appears during a portrait session to promote the series "Poker Face," in West Hollywood, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023. (AP)
Actor Natasha Lyonne appears during a portrait session to promote the series "Poker Face," in West Hollywood, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023. (AP)

Known for her wise-cracking, quick delivery, Natasha Lyonne’s newest role in the Peacock series “Poker Face” grants her an opportunity to play a character with a personality trait she’s never played before. Lyonne’s character, Charlie, likes people.

Charlie’s still got zingers, but Lyonne says the character is partly inspired by Jeff Bridges’ famed character, The Dude, in “The Big Lebowski.”

She’s “a person a little bit set back who’s kind of got sun on their face,” said Lyonne, “I’m usually more of a city slicker and someone who avoids getting hit by taxis and runs down in a subway.”

Adds creator Rian Johnson, “Charlie’s very open. She’s very sunny. That kind of blew Natasha’s mind. She’s like, ‘Oh, this will be a new thing for me to play. I like people.’ The natural kind of like acidity and sharpness of Natasha’s personality, combined with a character who has a genuinely sunny outlook ... I find it’s super watchable.”

“Poker Face” is a mystery series, so it fits Johnson’s wheelhouse, as the writer, director of “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion.”

Charlie has a keen ability to automatically know when someone is lying. After events in the first episode send her on the run from a mafia boss and his enforcer — played by Benjamin Bratt — she sets off in her car to drive... away from trouble. In each stand-alone episode, Charlie encounters new people, a murder and, of course, lies, that make her want to figure out what happened.

Johnson describes it as a howdunit and unapologetically a procedural. Charlie knows who commits the murder but has to figure out how.

“We follow the same format with every single episode. We show the murder, then we flashback and see where Charlie was during the murder. We catch up with the murder and then she solves it. Keeping that procedural consistency was a big, big deal to me because when I tune in to TV, part of what I love is hanging out with the same friends over and over. It’s a comforting pattern of getting a new thrill from something that I know what to expect from every single week. There’s great joy in that... I embrace it completely.”

As Charlie encounters a new mystery each week, there’s a revolving door of notable guest stars throughout the 10-episode first season, including Lil Rey Henry, Tim Meadows, Luis Guzman, Chloë Sevigny and even Nick Nolte — who appears in an episode that Lyonne directed, which she described as a “sensational” experience.

“Strong recommend for literally everyone. Now, granted, that might get chaotic because Nick likes somebody who is pretty serious, but yeah, I would say I recommend it to all hobbyists.”

Lyonne describes acting opposite so many guest stars as mostly great and seems amused by those that were perhaps more challenging.

“Sometimes somebody comes in and it’s just really joyous. It’s like making music with this really cool musician you didn’t know you were going to play so well with,” she said.

“Other times it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, so this person just doesn’t memorize their lines. OK, this is going to be a long, long day.’ It’s sort of a mixed bag sometimes. I would say that the caliber of people that we were able to put together is definitely, maybe like 99% really, really awesome. There were a few that were like, ‘This is sticky business.’ You never know. You never know.”

Another reason Charlie is able to pick up on something that seems off is because she pays attention to those around her and likes the underdogs, those who are ignored or dismissed by others.

“Charlie’s always going to have her sympathies with the little guy which is similar to Columbo in a way,” said Johnson.

It’s a trait Lyonne is also drawn to both personally and professionally. She has a production company, “Animal Pictures” with Maya Rudolph which co-produces “Poker Face” along with Rudolph’s Apple TV+ comedy, “Loot.” It was also behind Lyonne’s popular series “Russian Doll” on Netflix.

Lyonne says she gravitates to creative people, including friends Jenji Kohan (who created “Orange is the New Black”), Amy Poehler, Clea DuVall and Janicza Bravo, and there’s joy in creating content for “misfits and outsiders.”

“We kind of go on a journey together. You’re communicating with the weirdo kids in the back of the class because, you know, they watch stuff, too.”



Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito Revisit ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ for Its 50th Anniversary

Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
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Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito Revisit ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ for Its 50th Anniversary

Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Michael Douglas, left, and Danny DeVito appear at the 5th Annual Reel Stories, Real Lives Benefit on April 7, 2016, in Los Angeles. (AP)

Jack Nicholson did not want to go to the Oscars. It was 1976 and he was nominated for best actor in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The Miloš Forman film, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a nationwide theatrical re-release on July 13 and July 16, had become a bit of a sensation — the second highest grossing picture of 1975, behind “Jaws,” and had received nine Oscar nominations.

But Nicholson wasn’t feeling optimistic. In five years, he’d already been nominated five times. He’d also lost five times. And he told his producer, Michael Douglas, that he couldn’t go through it again.

“I remember how hard I had to persuade Jack to come to the ceremony. He was so reluctant, but we got him there,” Douglas said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “And then of course we lost the first four awards. Jack was sitting right in front of me and sort of leaned back and said ’Oh, Mikey D, Mikey D, I told you, man.’ I just said, ‘Hang in there.’”

Douglas, of course, was right. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” would go on to sweep the “big five” — screenplay, director, actor, actress and picture — the first film to do so in 41 years, (“It Happened One Night,” in 1934) which only “The Silence of the Lambs” has done since. That night was one of many vindicating moments for a film that no one wanted to make or distribute that has quite literally stood the test of time.

“This is my first 50th anniversary,” Douglas said. “It’s the first movie I ever produced. To have a movie that’s so lasting, that people get a lot out of, it’s a wonderful feeling. It’s bringing back a lot of great memories.”

The film adaption of Ken Kesey’s countercultural novel was a defining moment for Douglas, a son of Hollywood who was stuck in television and got a lifeline to film when his father, Kirk Douglas, gave him the rights to the book, and many of the then-unknown cast like Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd.

DeVito was actually the first person officially cast. Douglas, who’d known him for nearly 10 years, brought Forman to see him play Martini on stage.

“Miloš said, ‘Yes! Danny! Perfect! Cast!’” Douglas said in his best Czech accent. “It was a big moment for Danny. But I always knew how talented he was.”

A Joyful Shoot

Though the film's themes are challenging, unlike many of its New Hollywood contemporaries it wasn’t a tortured shoot by any stretch. They had their annoyances (like Forman refusing to show the cast dailies) and more serious trials (they found out halfway through production that William Redfield was dying of leukemia), but for the most part it was fun.

“We were very serious about the work, because Miloš was very serious. And we had the material, Kesey’s work, and the reverence for that. We were not frivolous about it. But we did have a ball doing it,” DeVito said, laughing.

Part of that is because they filmed on location at a real state hospital in Salem, Oregon. Everyone stayed in the same motel and would board the same bus in the morning to get to set. It would have been hard not to bond and even harder if they hadn’t.

“There was full commitment,” Douglas said. “That comes when you don’t go home at night to your own lives. We stopped for lunch on the first day and I saw Jack kind of push his tray away and go outside to get some air. I said, ‘Jack, you OK?’ He said, ’Who are these guys? Nobody breaks character! It’s lunch time and they’re all acting the same way!'”

Not disproving Nicholson’s point, DeVito remembers he and the cast even asked if they could just sleep in the hospital.

“They wouldn’t let us,” DeVito said. “The floor above us had some seriously disturbed people who had committed murder.”

A lasting legacy

The film will be in theaters again on July 13 and July 16 from Fathom Entertainment. It’s a new 4K restoration from the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Films with an introduction by Leonard Maltin.

“It’s a gorgeous print and reminds me how good the sound was,” Douglas said.

DeVito thinks it, “holds up in a really big way, because Miloš really was paying attention to all great things in the screenplay and the story originally.”

Besides the shock of “holy Toledo, am I that old?” DeVito said that it was a treasure to be part of — and he continues to see his old friends, including Douglas, Lloyd and, of course, Nicholson, who played the protagonist, R.P. McMurphy.

One person Douglas thinks hasn’t gotten the proper attention for his contributions to “Cuckoo’s Nest” is producer Saul Zaentz, who died in 2014. His music company, Fantasy Records who had Creedence Clearwater Revival, funded the endeavor which started at a $1.6 million budget and ballooned to $4 million by the end. He was a gambler, Douglas said, and it paid off.

And whatever sour grapes might have existed between Douglas and his father, who played R.P. McMurphy on Broadway and dreamt of doing so on film, were perhaps over-exaggerated. It was ultimately important for their relationship.

“McMurphy is as good a part as any actor is going to get, and I’m now far enough in my career to understand maybe you have four, maybe five good parts, really great parts. I’m sure for dad that was one of them,” Douglas said.

“To not be able to see it through was probably disappointing on one side. On the other, the fact that his son did it and the picture turned out so good? Thank God the picture turned out. It would have been a disaster if it hadn’t.”

Douglas added: “It was a fairy tale from beginning to end. I doubt anything else really came close to it. Even my Oscar for best actor years later didn’t really surpass that moment very early in my career.”