[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for Season 1 of Poker Face.]Written by show creator Rian Johnson and directed by Janicza Bravo, the Season 1 finale of the Peacock original series Poker Face, called “The Hook,” brings it all back to where things started, with Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) stuck in a dangerous situation between rival crime syndicates looking to put her lie detector talents to good use. When a power play not only puts her in the crossfire, but also puts the gun in her hand, she has no choice other than to head back out on the road again.

During this interview with Collider, showrunners Nora & Lilla Zuckerman talked about the Season 2 pickup for the series and figuring out the shooting schedule, the importance of playing with your established rules while never cheating the audience, having many seasons worth of ideas, continuing to learn more about Charlie’s life, the light-up dick ring, whether Charlie could ever find herself working for the FBI, and their hope of bringing back some of the guest stars from Season 1 as totally different characters, along with lining up new guest stars.
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Collider: Congratulations on the Season 2 pickup. What did you learn from doing Season 1 of this show, that you’re hoping to apply to Season 2 or build on because you thought it worked really well?

NORA ZUCKERMAN: In terms of the writers’ room, as opposed to production, we eventually really figured out how to subvert expectations and have fun with this format. When we started writing, we were figuring out how to do the howcatchem format, in general, which is a flip on the regular procedural whodunit. Once we figured that out, then we really began to play with it in a fun way, and I hope that we’re able to continue to do that in Season 2 and really push ourselves. Watching how audiences have absorbed the episodes and what their experience has been like watching them, will inform us that we can have fun with it.

LILLA ZUCKERMAN: I was always in the room saying, “We can’t break our structure. We really do need to stick to this, first you see this out of POV murder, then you understand how Charlie comes into it, and then we move forward in solving the case, hopefully with some big twist in the middle of that part of the story.” I was always adamant about keeping that format, but we found really interesting ways to innovate and play within that structure, andI know that we’re gonna come up with even more exciting possibilities in Season 2.

NORA: You never wanna totally tie yourself in knots, in terms of rules, for a show like this. You wanna play with them a little bit, but never cheat the audience.

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This show is a bit of a hybrid, where you have your first episode that sets everything up with Charlie and puts her on the road for the season, but then that’s book-ended with the finale turning the focus back on that. Did you know, from the beginning, that was how the show would be set up? And are you looking to carry that over for each season, or do you also want to play with that?

NORA: I think we’ll still probably continue to play with it, but that was always the plan for Season 1. We knew we would pick up the Cliff and Sterling thread, at the end of the season, and that there would be a little bit of check in throughout, but we really set about creating these individual stories and making them as compelling as possible. And then, in an instance like episode four, when Cliff came into the end of it, finding cool, organic ways for him to pop up in a way that was surprising and fun.

LILLA: But we always knew, at the end of Season 1, that Charlie wasn’t gonna be settling down and getting a day job and starting a family. It feels appropriate and really satisfying that she launches herself back across the roads of America to see what’s in front of her.

How soon do you think you’ll be able to start making Season 2, especially with Rian Johnson being busy with the third Knives Out movie? Is scheduling the biggest challenge, when it comes to doing this show with this cast, these guest stars, and this creative team?

NORA: Yeah, it is. It’s wonderful to be working with these incredibly talented people, but that also means they’re very busy. That’s just how it’s always gonna be. And the pickup was a bit earlier than any of us expected, so we’re still figuring out schedules. Rian is obviously gonna always be making movies, and we’re Natasha’s second television show. I think that’s always gonna be a thing that we deal with. We’re just so excited that we got this pickup and so excited to bring the world more Poker Face.

You got this pilot script, read it, and were sold on it. Is the pilot that we see now, the script that you first read? Were there any major changes, before you started shooting?

LILLA: Remarkably, it was exactly what we read.

NORA: It was almost exactly. We made a few tiny changes for production, like maybe one interior became an exterior, but it was very small. It was exactly Rian’s vision. What he wanted was what we were able to accomplish with that pilot. It’s such a great, great pilot. It’s been one of the most exciting things to see come together. We’re really, really glad that we got to be a part of it.

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You guys have talked about having many seasons worth of ideas for the show. Because this is the type of show where you can set up any type of murder and choose to set it anywhere, do you just keep a running list of places, and then try to match characters and actors to them?

LILLA: We tried to make it fun. If you sat down with a blank page in front of you, to write an episode of Poker Face, you’d go crazy. So, what we did, when we were putting Season 1 together in the writer’s room, is that we’d have these days where people were invited to pitch worlds, invited to pitch murders, invited to pitch villains, invited to pitch sidekicks, invited to pitch solves, invited to pitch funny situations, invited to pitch clues that you wanted Charlie to get into. We have this treasure trove of ideas. And the way Season 1 came together is that we would hook into, “Ooh, I like the idea of this murder, but it seems like that would be really cool in this world,” and we would start building like that. We do have a brain trust in the writers’ room. We do have a treasure trove of episode ideas that we put aside because maybe we couldn’t figure out how to break it yet. But now, we’ve educated ourselves because we’ve made a Season 1, so maybe we can revisit some of those ideas, but I also think it’s gonna spark fresh, new stories and new places that we wanna take Charlie, as well.

It really does feel like the possibilities could be endless with something like this, which is exciting.

NORA: They are. We’ve got a lot of ideas.

It was nice to see Clea Duvall show up in the last episode, as Charlie’s sister. Will we see more of her, in the future? Are you hoping to get into more aspects of Charlie’s life ?

NORA: I think we’ll always be learning more about Charlie, but in little judicious slices. We want it to feel very special, when you do get an eye into her backstory, in the way that it did in Season 1. Having somebody like Clea as her sister, and knowing the history that Natasha and Clea have professionally, they’ve worked together before, having them as sisters felt very natural and very lucky for us, as a show, to have that immediate connection on screen, between the two of them. We’ll see if we see her again in Season 2, or beyond. I don’t know if I have quite the answer for that yet.

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I have to ask because it’s so funny, how did the light-up dick ring come about and end up having its own storyline? Did somebody just have that and want to work it into the show?

NORA: The idea began with the blacklight chip because that’s a reference to the original Ocean’s 11, where part of the heist involved glowing pathways to escape the casino. So, we liked the idea of having this glowing chip that Cliff could see, so he would know where to shoot in the dark. And then, the dick ring came out of Rian’s brain. I’ve never really been a part of something where the props discussion of building this particular custom piece was a lot of very polite professional conversation about how size and style and glowing ability this particular prop would have. Our team was amazing.

LILLA: What I love about the detail of the dick ring is that, at first, it plays as this moment of humor and an FM Charlie moment. But then, it becomes a keystone of unlocking this mystery. Something we endeavor to do a lot with Poker Face is to have something that plays either as an emotional moment, or a humor moment, or an, “Isn’t that bizarre?,” moment actually has a lot of significance, when it comes down to solving the crime.

NORA: And the drunk girl on the party bus gives it to her and says, “This is a talisman. This will help you.” And it does, which is something that I absolutely love.

At the end of the finale, the FBI guy asks Charlie if she wants a job. Could we see a situation in the future, where she helps out the FBI sometimes, or would that be too formal for her?

LILLA: I don’t think that she will ever have an ongoing side hustle gig with the FBI. Nothing as arranged as that. But if we do get to see her collaborating with Agent Clark in the future, I would be thrilled.

NORA: Charlie doesn’t strike me as much of a joiner, in that way. But I thought the chemistry between Natasha and Simon [Helberg] was really wonderful, especially in that scene in the diner, at the end of the episode. While we were shooting the episode and finishing the scene, I told Simon and Natasha, “When people see this, they’re gonna really ‘ship you guys.” And they didn’t understand what shipping was, so I had to explain what ‘shipping meant, the television nerd that I am. I just think there’s such wonderful chemistry between the two of them. I really do hope to see them on screen again.

You guys have talked about the possibility of bringing back some actors that have already been on the show and maybe having them play totally different characters, in future episodes. Is that something you’re really hoping to do and that you’d like to do? Would you bring some people back for each season, as somebody different each time?

LILLA: The door is always open. In the tradition of Columbo, where they would have actors, like Patrick McGoohan or Robert Culp or Jack Cassidy, come back and play different villains in different seasons, there’s definitely room for that in Poker Face. Somebody that maybe played a victim in Season 1, could come play Charlie’s sidekick, or a totally different kind of dastardly villain. I think we’re always gonna be looking to cast really terrific, interesting actors that can come and play, and maybe play against type. If anybody ever wants to come back, we joke about putting together the Poker Face players. We were so lucky to have so many talented performers.

NORA: And also, a lot of wonderful, talented new people that we were able to introduce to audiences, as well. I think we struck a really wonderful balance between a lot of new younger actors and these familiar faces, and I hope we’ll continue to do that, in the future.

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It feels like the perfect show to guest on because everybody essentially gets their own little mini-movie and they can play a character that’s so much fun. That’s why, when Rian told me that he hopes to convince Jamie Lee Curtis to do an episode in the future, I could see that possibly happening.

NORA: Oh, yeah, she’s on our list, for sure. We hope that, after people have seen the season and gotten a sense of what they can do on the show, they’ll be banging on our doors for Season 2.

Poker Face is available to stream at Peacock.