Natasha Lyonne is telling me about Dennis Franz, the octogenarian actor best known for his role as a detective on the long-running 90s police procedural NYPD Blue. She didn’t mean to start, but after mixing up names while we are discussing Dennis Hopper’s cult film Out of the Blue, she sidetracks, following the riff down the rabbit hole seemingly just to see where it will take her.
“Dennis Franz is also great. Now, Dennis Franz is in NYPD Blue. I think he’s really hot. I’m heartbroken that Dennis Franz has never been in Poker Face,” she says, gaining enthusiasm as she warms up to the bit. “Also Joe Pesci – I’d love to see a sort of triangulation, sort of a romance story with Charlie and Dennis Franz and Joe Pesci, but it hasn’t come up yet.”
This is characteristic of Lyonne throughout our interview, giving answers full of an encyclopaedic breadth of references, going off on tangents, following every thought so that you end up somewhere completely different than where you started the conversation. It’s a quality also characteristic of her show, Poker Face, now in its second season, in which she stars as Charlie Cale, an amateur sleuth with a supernatural ability to call bullshit.
A Columbo-pastiching case-of-the-week format, Poker Face is brimming with shady and zany characters, suspicious circumstances, niche film references, knowing winks, quick-wit, macabre motives, endless empathy and a warm, insouciant charm – a combination that makes for thoroughly enjoyable hours of television. After spending most of the first season on the run from the mob, this season sees Charlie still on the move but for different, more personal reasons; an internal journey that explores what she’s always running from. What remains, however, are the eclectic, unpredictable cases – from a laxative-based reptile prank gone badly awry to a hit on a school gerbil – and, of course, the magnetic charisma of Lyonne which grounds the show even while the plot is spinning off in all directions.
Here she talks to Dazed about season two, her enduring love for Linda Manz, and why it doesn’t matter if you don’t get a text back – we are all going to die anyway.
You wrote and directed episode two. How was that experience? Are you enjoying that side of filmmaking?
Natasha Lyonne: Speaking as a 70,000-year-old, I have had the opportunity to do it now a whole bunch, on Russian Doll, of course, and Poker Face. I’ve been doing this for some time. I think I’m getting younger! I think it’s always really fun to be part of something from inception, whether it’s as early as Rian [Johnson, the creator] and I just getting together to think on what kind of a show might be fun to make together.
It’s also really fun to kind of pop in. I texted my buddy, Taika Waititi, and I said, ‘I heard you’re doing an [Kazuo] Ishiguro novel. Are there any parts for me?’ And I got to fly out there to New Zealand, and I joined him and Amy Adams and Jenna Ortega in a movie called Klara and the Sun. That’s also really fun, not having to be involved or embedded at all in anything but the gig. I think I do enjoy it all.
In episode two, [SPOILER] a vape saves the day. Is that—
Natasha Lyonne: The title of my memoir? It’s not. I was gonna go with it, ‘a vape saves the day’, but it just felt hollow inside, so I scrapped it. But yes, thanks for giving it away. A vape does save the day. I feel like that might be a spoiler.
Sorry, spoiler! So you’re not a big vape fan?
Natasha Lyonne: Me? No I just think that they’re disgusting [takes a big inhale from her vape].
Both this episode and the one you directed in season one are set within the world of filmmaking. Is that your way to pay tribute to films and—
Natasha Lyonne: The deranged business of psychopaths? No. I am, however, a fan of Bob Fosse and All That Jazz and [Federico] Fellini’s 8 ½. I mean, there’s certainly no shortage of great films on the history of cinema. Hell, that show The Studio is fun, right? They’ve got camera moves up the wazoo! So I don’t mind a self-referential thing. I just think that we were coming at it sideways. [The season one episode starring Phil Tippett] was really about that journey from analogue to digital, and the cost of that – that is something that is always of great interest for me. You know, the human soul in the face of technological evolution is a theme I’m quite interested in.
And this year, the episode ‘Last Looks’, I guess I’m always thinking about immortality, the nature of time, and it’s a bitch, isn’t it? A real curiosity. It doesn’t matter how good something is or how important it seems. It doesn’t matter if they text you back, we’re all going to die in the end. But you believe it every single time. So I think it’s something that’s thematically for me – and Alice Ju, who I wrote it with, who also writes with me on Russian Doll – it’s a theme I’m endlessly recklessly fascinated about. It’s funny that the world of film is, I guess, a sprinkle on top. It’s a weird way in which people animate or capture a life, or you can add a zany bunch of characters. There was a Living in Oblivion-quality that felt fun to have. But I think at its core, it’s really about squaring the past, or being able to reconcile ghosts. Actual ghosts don’t interest me that much. But dark nights of the soul, they do. The other episode it’s got no filmmaking in it, if that’s any comfort.
Speaking of time and reconciling the past, in the first interview you did with Dazed in 2000 you mention Linda Manz and her performance in Out of the Blue as being a big influence. Charlie quotes a line of hers from that film – ‘Disco sucks! Kill all hippies!’ – throughout the second season.
Natasha Lyonne: Looks like someone needs a little plastic surgery of the brain! [Laughs] Well, I’ve always loved Linda Manz. She’s also so great in that Terrence Malick movie Days of Heaven, and, of course, Gummo. And Dennis Franz – no, well, Dennis Franz is also great. Now, Dennis Franz is in NYPD Blue. I think he’s really hot. I’m heartbroken that Dennis Franz has never been in Poker Face. Also Joe Pesci, I’d love to see a sort of triangulation, sort of a romance story with Charlie and Dennis Franz and Joe Pesci, but it hasn’t come up yet.
Here we were talking about Dennis Hopper, and I do think that that’s a great movie. Chloë Sevigny, who’s, of course, in season one, and I were lucky enough to get to present the restoration of Out of the Blue. In season two, it really only came up because of this need for CB radio that becomes a real subject this season with Steve Buscemi, so I think that becomes her only ally. The Linda Manz Out of the Blue jokes were just a proxy of that, they weren’t necessarily embedded. But yes, I do have a narrow selection of faves that I’ve been growing on for decades now. Pick your person, as they say.
Why do you think that film and Linda’s performance has stuck with you for so long?
Natasha Lyonne: Oh, because, you know, kill all hippies I guess! No, I’m just kidding [laughs]. I don’t know, I think I like a little Elvis jacket. I like that she’s a lone wolf who’s a tough guy and loves punk rock. I like that she talks funny. My heart goes out to her. Also, that little girl from Beasts of the Southern Wild. Remember her? That little girl made me cry, and so does Linda Manz. I guess as a kid I was a big fan of Pacino and De Niro and Sylvester Stallone. So any sort of a tough guy little girl that I see I have a great deal of empathy with because, well, we’re all just inner children trying to make it through the day.
Do you see Charlie as a tough guy character?
Natasha Lyonne: No, I don’t really. You know, I’m a real softie. I just think that it’s how people take an accent. It’s a New Yorker problem or something, I guess. But yes, I’m quite soft, very vulnerable, a real empath. You can break me with a breath. But I don’t see [Charlie as a tough guy] at all. I see it as somebody who’s – it’s not really a choice but they do somewhat walk alone. What’s so great about Charlie is she makes friends in all kinds of places. She’s got a real open mind and is not judgmental and she really likes people. But there is definitely a real Philip Marlowe quality to her. I don’t know that we think of it as loneliness when it’s Elliot Gould in The Long Goodbye or Humphrey Bogart or [Jack] Nicholson or Peter Falk.
So you think loneliness is a characteristic that’s not attributed to male characters?
Natasha Lyonne: I think that when we see Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces, we’re like, ‘What a guy, he’s really going through a journey.’ Or Martin Sheen staring up at the ceiling fan, cutting himself with a bottle in Apocalypse Now we think, ‘Wow, that’s a man on a mission.’ But as soon as you put a woman in a similar situation – even something like Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman – for some reason it seems sad. When it’s a woman it’s always ’what is her job? Where’s her boyfriend and when’s that poor lady going to have a kid?’ We’re not as concerned about Harry Dean Stanton’s white picket fence. We’re just happy that he’s a guy doing his thing. I always wondered about that and made it my business to examine that side of the road.
You had a great interview with Elizabeth Olsen where you both talk about how creativity is at its most fierce and energised when it’s working within restrictions and boundaries. How do you create those conditions in the projects that you work on?
Natasha Lyonne: I’m a real wild thing but I do like parametres. It’s like a car commercial I once saw, there were lines on the road and they drove a car all wild within the lines. Looking back, I don’t see what they were doing all those crazy eights for in the middle of that desert patch [laughs]. That’s not safe. That’s a terrible advertisement for a car, they should shelve that commercial!
But I do think that I like structure and then wildness within. I’m somebody who likes to really know all of the lines exactly as they are in a script before getting to set, just to throw them away. I think that preparedness makes it better. You want to be able to know what the rules are to break them. Or, to quote John Waters, you got to know what good taste is in order to successfully have bad taste.
Poker Face is now available to watch on Sky Max and Now in the UK. In the US, it airs on Peacock.
