\n<\/p>\n
Natasha Lyonne has been acting since childhood, but she is not a \u201cnepo baby.\u201d (She wanted to be one, she joked, but \u201cthey\u2019re telling me it\u2019s too late, and that\u2019s unfortunate.\u201d) What she does have in lieu of famous parents, however, is a universe of famous friends ready to heed her call.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have parents or kids,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m just always trying to create some sort of an old-fashioned caravan on-the-road family band that is a real town-to-town pickup sport where we get to reunite.\u201d<\/p>\n
That much is evident in the second season of the Peacock mystery series \u201cPoker Face,\u201d debuting on Thursday. The show stars Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a reluctant crime solver who can tell when someone is lying. The mystery-of-the-week structure allows Lyonne, who is also an executive producer, to call on her closest pals to guest star as victims or suspects. The upshot is that viewers are treated to mini reunions from the stars of cult classics like \u201cSlums of Beverly Hills\u201d (1998) and \u201cBut I\u2019m a Cheerleader\u201d (2000).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One episode features Lyonne\u2019s \u201cSlums\u201d love interest, Kevin Corrigan, as a Teamster on a film set that turns into a crime scene. Another has her character\u2019s brother from \u201cSlums,\u201d David Krumholtz, as a kind father to a boy accused of killing a pet gerbil.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Later, her \u201cCheerleader\u201d co-star Melanie Lynskey<\/a> plays an unsuspecting do-gooder roped into a scheme at a hotel bar. Clea DuVall, Lyonne\u2019s girlfriend from that same comedy, directs an episode that also stars Lynskey\u2019s husband, Jason Ritter; DuVall also played Charlie\u2019s sister in the first season. In real life, Lyonne and Lynskey planned DuVall\u2019s wedding reception.<\/p>\n These are some of Lyonne\u2019s favorite people, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cI ended up an old man and a workaholic, so the only place I see them is on the road from gig to gig,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Rian Johnson, the \u201cPoker Face\u201d creator, said the show\u2019s casting process is somewhat chaotic, with new crime stories each episode that require new actors to bring them to life. Often the ability to text friends is a convenient means to an end; the nostalgia factor is incidental.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not so much a conceptual \u2018Let\u2019s do this reunion or that reunion,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just that people love Natasha, and people who are in her life stay in her life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Because Charlie moves from town to town in \u201cPoker Face\u201d and guest stars appear only briefly as the kooky people she encounters, Lyonne said, she and Johnson tried to slot actors into roles that aren\u2019t necessarily their usual milieus. (Lynskey, for one, was happy she got to play a semi-normal woman given her recent feral turn in \u201cYellowjackets.\u201d)<\/p>\n \u201cAll these rock star giants can probably do practically anything if given a chance,\u201d Lyonne said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have to sustain it for seven seasons or even an hour and a half.\u201d<\/p>\n The show also features other friends Lyonne has amassed over her career. Her \u201cOrange Is the New Black\u201d co-star Adrienne C. Moore appears in one installment; Becky Chin, an assistant director of \u201cPoker Face,\u201d worked on \u201cOrange\u201d and on Lyonne\u2019s Netflix series \u201cRussian Doll.\u201d<\/p>\n But for the actors who met Lyonne back in the \u201990s, there\u2019s a forged-in-fire quality to their partnerships. Lynskey said that during the making of the director Jamie Babbit\u2019s pink-saturated satire \u201cBut I\u2019m a Cheerleader,\u201d in which Lyonne plays a girl sent to a gay conversion camp, she, Lyonne and DuVall were in a \u201ccrazy place\u201d emotionally. (DuVall in an interview described the three of them as \u201c\u201990s scumbags who were bopping around.\u201d) Babbit wrangled them for a film that is now regarded as a queer touchstone.<\/p>\n \u201cNone of us were really content or happy,\u201d Lynskey said. \u201cFor us to be adults in our mid-40s who survived and are working and able to make choices about what we want to do and who we want to do it with, it feels very, very powerful to us to have come from this place of desperation for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n These days, saying yes when Lyonne calls is a no-brainer, said Corrigan, who also starred with Lyonne and Lynskey in \u201cDetroit Rock City\u201d (1999), a \u201970s period piece about a bunch of kids who want to attend a KISS concert.<\/p>\n \u201cShe left me a message after I had gotten the offer to be in \u2018Poker Face,\u2019 saying, \u2018Hi, Corrigan, so, I\u2019ll have the usual,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt was like, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019ll be there to serve it up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Lyonne also directed and co-wrote Corrigan\u2019s episode, about a movie shoot at a funeral home gone wrong. He said it was like \u201cwitnessing the arrival of all that potential\u201d he first saw in \u201cSlums,\u201d Tamara Jenkins\u2019s coming-of-age story about a Jewish family in Los Angeles struggling to make ends meet.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be clear, I was madly in love with Kevin Corrigan,\u201d Lyonne said. \u201cI mean, it was 1998, we all were. We still are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In \u201cSlums,\u201d Krumholtz played the annoying older brother of Lyonne\u2019s character. The shoot was intense, and he still thinks of her as family. \u201cShe is sort of the closest thing to my biological Hollywood sister,\u201d Krumholtz said.<\/p>\n His \u201cPoker Face\u201d turn was also a homecoming in another way: It was directed by Adam Arkin, an executive producer of the series, who is the son of Alan Arkin<\/a>, who played the father in \u201cSlums.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t lost on me that fans would watch this episode and recognize the reunion and then in a nostalgic way romanticize \u2018Slums of Beverly Hills,\u2019\u201d Krumholtz said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a movie that should be romanticized.\u201d<\/p>\n Even for people on set who aren\u2019t technically part of the reunions, it can be heartwarming to watch them happen.<\/p>\n \u201cThe rotating cast of this show means it is a little bit like an episode of \u2018This Is Your Life,\u2019\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI definitely feel emotions when I see, like, Clea and Natasha working on set together.\u201d<\/p>\n Lyonne is just happy to be in a place where she can call on her buddies and give them a fun gig and credit in the process.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m so grateful to be the guy who knocks,\u201d she said. \u201cAs a self-made teenager doing the family taxes at 12 years old, maybe it\u2019s capitalism that grinds into us this concept of competition instead of collaboration. We think it\u2019s each man for himself and, like, that\u2019s America, that\u2019s showbiz, kid. But it\u2019s actually not, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n