Peacock's Poker Face is all about its famous weekly guest stars, and its showrunner knows exactly who he would want to include in a hypothetical Season 3.
Poker Face follows Natasha Lyonne's Charlie Cale, a former gambler who has an uncanny natural ability to see when anyone is lying, to an almost supernatural extent. After getting herself in trouble, Charlie's on the run from the law, where, as she travels across the country, she solves consistent murders (played by a variety of guest stars) that would otherwise go unchecked without someone with her abilities to notice them.
Tony Tost, showrunner for Poker Face Season 2, sat down with The Direct's Russ Milheim to discuss the series and how these new weekly mysteries have evolved from Season 1.
Poker Face Showrunner Shares His Dream Season 3 Guest Stars
Paul Walter Hauser and Jon Bernthal Are High on the List
While Poker Face has not yet been renewed for Season 3 yet, Season 2 showrunner Tony Tost commented on what his dream guest stars would be for future episodes.
- The Direct: "We mentioned crazy guest stars. And just, I wanted to ask in a hypothetical Season 3, yeah, what is a dream guest star that you would kill to get on this show?"
Tony Tost: Well, for me personally, Cissy Spacey, who is on my T-shirt... Getting someone like Paul Walter Hauser, Jon Bernthal. There's a bevy of interesting people to get... Sam Rockwell, Benicio Del Toro would be interesting. Yeah, there are a lot of people, anyone with a very unique perspective on the craft or on life, is someone I think that fits really well in this world.
Tony Tost Comments on How People Die Everywhere Charlie Goes in Poker Face
"She Discovers the Truth Behind the Things That the Rest of Us Are Kind of Happy to Sail Past."
- The Direct: "Charlie has seen a lot of death. In fact, everywhere she goes, someone tends to die. Is the show ever going to tackle the fact that people just tend to drop dead around her all the time?"
Tony Tost: I don't know. I mean, part of the fun of the show is—and I think it'd be kind of disappointing if we had an episode [where] Charlie just has three square meals and then goes to bed, but that might be fun.
I what I tell myself is that Charlie passes, because of her bullshit detector, she's able to, you know, she goes by a nursing home and there are paramedics wheeling out a body, and she's like, Oh, what happened? It's a heart attack.
Most of us would [brush it off], but she knows that person's lying. All sudden, she's gonna start pulling that string. And so I don't think it's so much that, necessarily, that people are dropping dead. I mean, there's a fair amount of death in her life, but it's also that because she has access to something that the rest of us don't that she she discovers the truth behind things that the rest of us are kind of happy to sail past.
How Season 2 of Poker Face Has Evolved From Season 1
Charlie May Try to Settle Down Finally.
- The Direct: "Now, last question, just, when it comes to Season 2, how would you say that it evolves over Season 1, in regards to just the stories it's telling, how it's telling them?"
Tony Tost: I wasn't involved in Season 1. But in Season 2, it's like, okay, the show fundamentally works. It's very much an episode-by-episode story with a kind of a serialized story [at points].
So, what we're trying to do is pay off some elements from Season 1 with the Beatrix Hasp storyline, and then kind of explore Charlie's character and explore what the show can do and see what it looks like for Charlie to try to settle down again, which is a place she gets—something she'll attempt later in the season.
It's very much just kind of trying to see what's there in Charlie, and what's there in the DNA of the show that we can do. And so it's not changing the show as much as like seeing how much we can push it in unexpected directions.
Poker Face Season 2 Won't Reveal Much More of Charlie's Past
"It's Kind of Left to Your Imagination."
- The Direct: "The Season 1 finale finally pulled back the curtain a little bit on Charlie's past. And that is kind of one thing with her character in this show, is that we don't know too much about who she is outside of these incidents that we see her solve and work out. How will Season 2 help flesh out more of just who she is as a person and her history?"
Tony Tost: It won't. It's very much by design that of, kind of embracing that kind of, what we call TV-TV, like old school, just what you're signing up for is a new adventure.
And we don't necessarily dig too much, if at all, into the mythology, the back story, but it's actually, it's kind of left to your imagination. What we're offering is a new adventure, a new mystery each week, without explaining a way the—because tons of shows delve into the trauma of somebody's past, and you can get that elsewhere, we're kind of trying to offer something kind of unique to us.
We're actually going to kind of go in this other direction and see what we can do with that.
Make sure to check out the full video interview here:
Poker Face Season 2 starts airing on Peacock on May 8, 2025.
