Rian Johnson Says Balancing ‘Poker Face’ Season 2 Production With ‘Knives Out 3’ Was More Stressful Than Last Time

It’s no doubt that “Knives Out” director Rian Johnson has a jam-packed schedule — but production on his latest projects, “Knives Out 3” and “Poker Face” Season 2, coincided exactly, creating a conflict that he said was “more stressful” than last time around.

“This time was more stressful because … the two production periods lined up with each other, whereas with the last one, I was in post-production on ‘Glass Onion’ when we were in the writers’ room for ‘Poker Face,’ so I could just go back and forth in our office between the edit and ‘Poker Face,'” Johnson told TheWrap.

However, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” which is slated to debut later in 2025, was shooting in London while the sophomore season of “Poker Face” was filming in New York. While series creator, EP, writer and director Johnson said he was “just as involved” with Season 2 during the writers’ room and production, the overlapping filming schedules made it difficult for him to direct more than one new episode (he directed three episodes in Season 1).

“I was in touch constantly, but it was definitely more stressful not being able to actually just be available during production as much,” Johnson said. “We had some incredibly talented guest directors who came in, and they all took it in hand and it all worked out.”

Due to his busy schedule, Johnson brought in a new showrunner in Tony Tost (“Damnation,” “Longmire”), joining executive producers and Season 1 co-showrunners Nora and Lilla Zuckerman, as well as Adam Arkin, Ram Bergman and Nena Rodrigue. Johnson loved Tost’s background as a poetry writer and, upon reading his scripts, thought his writing “fit really tonally well in with the show.”

“With any TV show, you’re picking someone you want to be in the trenches with, it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of pressure,” Johnson said, noting that Tost’s “cool vibe” felt reassuring to him. He also joked that it doesn’t hurt that his last name invokes “delicious toast,” which Johnson said is “what you want in the writers’ room.”

After establishing Natasha Lyonne as on-the-run Charlie Cale, whose nose for lies enables her to sniff out cold cases as she drives cross-country in her Plymouth Barracuda in Season 1, the second installment brings Charlie everywhere from a funeral home to an alligator farm, giving the writers what Johnson calls a “play box” of varied genres and plots.

“In the writers’ room this season, when everyone came in, I was like, ‘I want you to think of, what is the fun movie that you would never write … [like] ‘Oh, I always wanted to do a rom-com’ [or] ‘I’ve always wanted to write a Western,’ take that and do that as your ‘Poker Face’ episode,'” Johnson explained.

For Johnson, an enthusiastic Dodgers fan, the episode he wanted to make happen most was one set in the world of minor league baseball — and he was happy he could squeeze in a Dock Ellis reference. The filmmaker also pointed to an episode set in grade school that was born from a conversation about the lowest possible stakes a “Poker Face” episode could have, which ended up being a “tense,” “violent” and “disturbing” episode, with Johnson saying, “The reality is, there’s nothing higher stakes than when you’re in grade school.”

“It wildly swings with each episode,” he teased of the varying tones the Peacock series occupies. “Every time those opening titles come up at the beginning of an episode, I like the idea that an audience is going to be excited thinking they don’t know what they’re about to see — that, to me, is really thrilling … there’s an endless bucket there as to the future.”

Season 2 also ups the ante when it comes to guest stars, welcoming actors such as Awkwafina, B.J. Novak, Cynthia Erivo, Giancarlo Esposito, Jason Ritter, John Cho, John Mulaney, Justin Theroux, Katie Holmes, Kumail Nanjiani, Margo Martindale and Melanie Lynskey, to name a few. Johnson said the casting process, however, is anything but orderly.

“We’re casting week-to-week as we’re shooting, which is chaotic and insane, and it always leads to panicked situations where we’re texting our friends, like, ‘Do you want to be here Tuesday to play the lead in one of our episodes, please?'” Johnson said, adding that “everything’s better when you work with your friends.”

“Even though it’s scary and hard, there’s something thrilling about that chaos, and when you get to the end of the whole season, and I look back and see the roster that we actually had in the show, it’s pretty wild,” he continued. “I can’t believe we did it.”

While Johnson admitted he “got a lot of blank stares” when he first pitched “Poker Face” to various networks and streamers years ago, he now feels lucky he “caught the crest of a wave” as episodic TV thrives in new series like Max’s “The Pitt” or CBS’ “Matlock,” both of which scored renewals relatively early into their freshman season rollouts.

“It’s not in a vacuum,” Johnson said of the desire for more episodic TV. “You could even see it with … the interest in even sitcoms like ‘Friends’ and ‘Frasier’ and those kind of shows — it was a desire for kind of the small-bite entertainment that we were missing. I’m thrilled we’re seeing more of it.”

“Poker Face” Season 2, Episodes 1-3 are now streaming on Peacock, with new episodes debuting every Thursday.

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