Spoiler alert: The following article discusses the entirety of “Poker Face” Episode 5, “Time of the Monkey”
In “Poker Face,” Rian Johnson’s first-ever TV show following in the tradition of ‘70s detective stories like “Columbo,” Natasha Lyonne is a human lie detector-cum-begrudging murder solver. With each new episode and largely self-contained adventure, Charlie Cale (Lyonne) finds herself entangled in a new web of killings, piecing together how and why it all went wrong. The Peacock series’ latest episode, titled “Time of the Monkey,” features Judith Light as half a badass duo of retirees whose activism during the counterculture period is not as altruistic as it first may seem.
“They’re women that you don’t see all the time in our business,” the Tony and Daytime Emmy-winning actress told TheWrap about her and S. Epatha Merkerson’s characters, Irene Smothers and Joyce Harris. “You have female detectives, but you don’t get to see that kind of mature woman doing all that physical stuff and having a real mouth on them.”
As with previous installments, Episode 5 begins with a sequence that establishes Joyce (Merkerson) and Irene (Light) as the killers, but it’s the first to include a bait-and-switch that keeps the audience guessing about the pair’s morality until the climactic reveal, where it’s shown that the two are domestic terrorists rather than peace-and-love flower children.
Below, Light breaks down how she got involved with the project, if she conducted her own stunts and her upcoming films.
TheWrap: How did you get involved and what was it about this episode that intrigued you?
JL: I got a script from my agents, and I am a big fan of Rian Johnson’s work, and I think Natasha Lyonne is just incredibly gifted. And so when I read the script that was so well written, characters [that were] so deeply developed, that excited me. I was gonna get to work with Epatha Merkerson, who I’ve always wanted to work with, and I was also going to get to work with my good friend Reed Birney [Light’s co-star in “The Menu” and fellow vet of the New York stage]. This character just really appealed to me. I knew that it could be a great deal of fun and one of those very wild kinds of experiences that you have, and it turned out to be all of the above. It was just glorious. We had the best, best time, so when you’re watching it and you’re enjoying it, which is what everybody has said, that’s how we felt on set.
With this episode, not everything is as it seems. What was your reaction to the layers that your character has and that major twist?
JL: There is this mystery built into it and this intricacy built into it, and the unveiling and the revealing of all of it is what I found so well-defined in the characters. When you have great writing like that — you have a great writer like Wyatt Cain and Charlie Peppers writing this together — and you have Rian Johnson overseeing it. And then you have a great director, who happens to be a friend of Rian’s, Lucky McKee. There’s a kind of teamwork that’s going on, so that gets revealed through the script and the filming of it.
Were you able to do your own stunts for the climbing scene—
JL: [Laughing]
Or were there any particularly fun moments like that?
JL: People look at that stuff, and they go, ‘Oh my God, did she do that?!’ Yes, I did. I did a lot of it. And then I had a wonderful stunt double and she did the other part of it. I don’t always like to delineate which is her and which is me so that when people are watching they can’t be wondering. But she did do some of the more dicey stuff.
I also worked with a wonderful guy named Gary Baisley. He’s a quadriplegic, and he was right there to help me with the paraplegic disability, so that when we were doing the fight scenes — some of that was stunt people, but a lot of it was Epatha and myself and Natasha. He always had eyes on me to see that I was doing something correctly. We were very respectful and responsible to that; there’s nothing more important.
With the first episode, a theme of “hit ‘em where it hurts” is established. Do you think justice is served for your character?
JL: The girls are in the cop car at the end. The girls are going back to jail. So in that way, justice is served. But who knows if Irene and Joyce are going to get out of jail at another time and end up somewhere else?
It doesn’t seem like they’re the types who easily give up their goals.
JL: A lot of people have said that; people are really fond of them. They’re women that you don’t see all the time in our business. You have female detectives, but you don’t get to see that kind of mature woman doing all that physical stuff and having a real mouth on them, both of them. I agree with you, and we were hard pressed to give up when we finished. So who knows where they might show up? Maybe she’ll go over to the jail at some point and see the girls.
It’s so refreshing to see that kind of dynamic.
JL: Because who sees that kind of long term friendship? You have women detectives like Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless [in “Cagney & Lacey”] together. You see women bonding with each other and these women have been friends for years. And they take real delight in each other and real support for each other.
These two women have a deep foundation of love for each other, so they can’t be entirely villainous. How did you approach that moral ambiguity for Irene?
JL: In their youth, they believe they were doing the right thing; that didn’t mean it was right. It was more the dark side of them. And you can see that there was retribution and justice for their moral incorrection. There is a moral stake put in there. And yet, there’s a way in which they never really learned the lesson. There’s no black and white. There’s a lot of gray in here.
If it was to be about the morality of all of this, it would be a different kind of episode on a different kind of show. It’d be “Law & Order.”
Right, this one is more of a campy and fun. You also have several projects in the pipeline — “Out of My Mind,” “The Young Wife” and “Down Low.” Is there anything you can share about those?
JL: Two of the films, “The Young Wife,” wonderful creator-director Tayarisha Poe, and “Down Low,” I got to do [that] with my friend Zach Quinto. They’re both for FilmNation, and I’m very excited for them coming out in that they’re very different characters. And that’s something that’s really a joy for me to do, start creating something very different. Same thing with “Out of My Mind,” it’s the story of a gal who is incapacitated, but it’s a beautiful film about coming of age and the coming of understanding of someone’s place in the world and who they are. And so, being able to be in all of these different projects, be part of these really young, vital creative energies is something that I’m really appreciating, really enjoying. It’s a real adventure for me.
The first five episodes of “Poker Face” are now streaming on Peacock.
