Her hair is red, large and wild. She walks with a boastful. His voice is hoarse, and not in a sexy way of Lauren Bacall, but more like Peter Falk.
Long before finding his groove with unconventional roles in “Orange is the new black“” “Russian doll” And now, “Impassive face,” There were not many options for a free spirit like Natasha LyonneEspecially when she has aged a flexible child to an adult aware of self.
“It's weird that all of a sudden, a day, everyone looks at you differently and you are aware of it,” explains Lyonne, 46 years old. “I remember the hearing” Lolita “, and it was like,” are you going to eat this apple slowly? And I said to myself: “I know what you ask me. But no, I don't simulate sex with an apple on the camera.
The real surprise? Lyonne has forged a career by finding and creating projects later that capitalized on her undeniably intrepid personality, ending the roles around her eccentricities rather than in conforming to what was expected of a female artist in Hollywood. Lyonne's last act of challenge is season 2 of the Peacock series “Poker Face”, a mystery of murder of the week created by Rian Johnson (“Knives Out”, “Glass Onion”) that she plays and that the executive produces. This season, in addition to writing, she also directs two episodes.
Natasha Lyonne as Charlie holds in season 2 of “Poker Face” by Peacock.
(Sarah Shatz / Peacock)
The series, which returns Thursday with three episodes, followed by a week that followed, continues to follow Charlie Cale (Lyonne), a decreasing employee of the vegas casino who is blessed and cursed with the ability to discern with precision when someone ment. After the murder of her best friend, she is forced to go beyond the crowd in her Plymouth Barracuda of 1969, crossing the paths of America while resolving murders along the way.
The one hour series is inspired by detective dramas from the era of the 1970s, including “The Rockford Files” and “McCloud”, including “The Rockford Files” and “McCloud”. But it is “Columbo”, with the wonderfully crumpled falk, which is most strongly influenced “Poker Face”.
Lyonne recalls the 1971 pilot episode in the Vintage television series, led by a new 24 -year -old name named Steven Spielberg. “I have torn the director,” explains Lyonne. “I like the long and slow zoom (Robert), an Altman type zoom, turned through the office window to the car. And I hear that Spielberg has done great things. Is it like, “Do you like this long blow?” You never believe what this guy is doing then! Holy smokes. You are in a walk! “”.
But Charlie Cale is not Columbo. She wears a vape pen instead of a cigar and prefers shorts cut towards a trench. However, she shares the strange talent for her arrival just as a murder that takes place, whether in an alligator farm in Florida or a vast manor of the East Coast. It is faced with a new casting of characters at each stop, and the list of talents that inhabit these roles is impressive. The programming includes Cynthia Erivo, Giancarlo Esposito, Katie Holmes, Justin Theroux, Alia Shawkat, John Mulaney, Kumail Nanjiani, Lili Taylor, Margo Martindale, Melanie Lynskey and Rhea Perlman.
Katie Holmes, on the left, stars invited this season. Giancarlo Esposito is also invited. (Sarah Shatz / Peacock)
“Charlie is a great lover of people,” explains Lyonne. “(My former character) Nadia in” Russian Doll “, whom I co-created with Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland, it's almost as if she was in her own case. But Charlie has already been on the journey where we do not lose interest in ourselves and cannot really fall in love. It's the crowd. It's Loney.
Lyonne's own trip to the world of game transformed it into a experienced veteran before it is even old enough to vote. The New York native worked in advertisements before kindergarten and, as a school student, won Opal's television role in “Pee-Wee's Playhouse”. She also appeared in films such as “Heart-Burn”, “A man called Sarge” and “Dennis the threat”. At the end of her adolescence, she won her role as a breakthrough as a daughter of a broken single father (played by Alan Arkin) in the independent comedy of 1998 “Slums of Beverly Hills”.
“I have been doing this since the age of 4, dear reader,” jokes Lyonne, whose acting career now extends over four decades. “As a child's character actor, there is this kind of inner knowledge. We were completely alert, small businessmen. If you start at 4, by 6, you have in a way the idea (of what is happening), like “do not mumble.” The minute of maid does not like it in their advertising ”. At 8 years old, you know where the bodies are buried.
Same child, Lyonne did not quite correspond to the mold of an early girl but accessible next to it: “I tried to carve this bizarre path while discovering the sorrow not to obtain the role in” Curly Sue “. I was like, I am perfect for this thing.
Lyonne pivoted another passion: the history of cinema and television. It is a high performance walking encyclopedia and esoteric moments buried in both media. During a short period, she studied cinema and philosophy in Nyu. “I already thought that I had to pass this in the cinema from the inside, rather than being simply an actor to hire. It took 20 years for this to materialize in reality, ”she says.
“I already thought that I had to pass this in the cinema from the inside, rather than being simply an actor to hire. It took 20 years for it to materialize in reality,” said Natasha Lyonne. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
She disappeared from the public for more than a decade when she was fighting against drug addiction. His return included a recurring role as Nicky Nichols in “Orange is the New Black”, Hit streaming in small groups of Netflix. Lyonne said that she had a lot to shoot for the character, who was a convalescent drug addict. Nicky has become a fans favorite.
In 2019, Lyonne co-created her own Netflix series, the existential comedy Dark “Russian Doll”, where she played in Nadia, a video game developer based in New York who is caught in a time loop during her 36th birthday. She is looking for to resolve the mystery of the reasons why she dies, on several occasions.
“There were techniques (I had to learn), such as real cinema, real writing, real production,” explains Lyonne. “The parties were not there, and the pieces are still not there. It is as if no one wrote them.”
But she attributes to collaborators like Johnson for having created pieces for actors like herself.
“Rian is really a kind of genius because he took this self-referential concert that I did (and I transformed it) into a kind of character. I am assured, I suppose, ”she says. “This is how the hair comes out of my head. I'm going to get involved. So he took this and did something about it. ”
“Poker Face” is a colorful and entertaining stroll through a mastic retro-durers, current pockets of original American culture and Lyonne's own personal journey, as we see through Charlie.
“The show consists in losing this nihilist and self -destructive sequence and finding a link with another human,” explains Lyonne. “You try to build a life and not kill yourself again and again. It is like a marathon man or a long distance runner. But she crossed this dark and stormy night of the soul, and comes out on the other side of the sun on her back.”
