“Poker Face” won’t be back at Peacock for a third season, but creator Rian Johnson and MRC have a plan for the mystery series to get new life elsewhere.
Peacock opted not to renew the series for a third installment, kickstarting Johnson’s plans to shop the MRC and T-Street-produced show around to other streamers/broadcasters with the goal of a two-season commitment, an individual with knowledge told TheWrap.
There would be one major change in these new seasons, however: Natasha Lyonne is stepping down as a series star, while Peter Dinklage would take over the role of human lie detector Charlie Cale. The decision for Lyonne to step back was made by both Lyonne and Johnson, and she will remain on as an executive producer.
“We’ve been germinating this next move together since writing the season two finale,” Lyonne and Johnson said in a joint statement to Deadline. “We love our ‘Poker Face’ and this is the perfect way to keep it rolling. Give us a beat and we may just see Charlie Cale again down that open highway.”
The new iteration of the franchise would see new actors playing the lead character every two years, with Dinklage being the first to sign on to play Charlie for two seasons. Spokespeople for Peacock declined to comment and representatives for Johnson did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
“Poker Face” first debuted in January 2023 and introduced Lyonne as Charlie Cale, who set off on the road in her Plymouth Barracuda after unraveling the crimes of a mob running the casino at which she and her friend worked. While on the run, Charlie did odd jobs here and there, always finding herself at the center of a murder mystery she couldn’t help but solve. And as soon as the crime was solved, she would get a glimpse at the mobsters chasing her and head to her next location.
By Season 2, the show paused its typical case-of-the-week format to address and eliminate the threat looming over Charlie from mob boss Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman) in just the third episode of the season. After Hasp let Charlie go, she had some freedom to linger in places a bit longer, leading to several New York City-set episodes, but that normalcy was ripped away from her by the Season 2 finale after being fooled by her supposed friend, Alex (Patti Harrison), and ending up at the center of a plot to kill Hasp. By the end of the Season 2 finale, Charlie was back on the road again, fearing for her life more than ever.
“Poker Face” is also known for its stacked guest star roster, which, for Season 2, included John Mulaney, Katie Holmes, Giancarlo Esposito, Awkwafina, Cliff “Method Man” Smith, Justin Theroux, Taylor Schilling, Kumail Nanjiani and Melanie Lynskey, among others.
Nora and Lilla Zuckerman served as showrunners for Season 1, but by Season 2, Johnson brought in a new showrunner in Tony Tost (“Damnation,” “Longmire”).
“Whether or not there’s a Season 3, that’s really between the studio, Peacock, Rian, Natasha, and I’m kind of happily, hopefully, a good, hired hand to help out in it,” Tost told TheWrap in July. “It’s really the Natasha-Rian show, so I think it starts there. And obviously it starts with whether MRC and Peacock see that there’s another season for them, and then the conversations go from there.”
Dinklage is repped by CAA and Lyonne is repped by CAA and Untitled.
