Television shows get canceled all the time, sometimes unjustly and sometimes deservedly so. So when it was reported late last week that Peacock has decided to pull the plug on Poker Face after two seasons, it wasn’t exactly surprising. The mystery-of-the-week series, in which Natasha Lyonne played Charlie Cale, a “human lie detector” with a supernatural ability to tell when someone is being untruthful, was expensive to make, thanks in part to the massive guest stars it managed to reel in for each episode, and Season 2 was a noticeable step down in quality. (At one point, the show expects us to believe that Charlie — who, again, is played by Natasha Lyonne, owner of one of the most recognizable New York accents in show business — has never been to New York City before.)
But what was surprising was the news that series creator Rian Johnson is shopping around the show to other networks with Peter Dinklage attached to star as Charlie instead of Lyonne. Per Deadline, Johnson is looking for a two-season deal for the Dinklage version of Poker Face, with the hopes that a new actor will take over as Charlie every two years, a la Doctor Who. Lyonne, who will remain an executive producer on the show, and Johnson issued a joint statement explaining the decision.
“We’ve been germinating this next move together since writing the season two finale,” the statement reads. “We love our Poker Face and this is the perfect way to keep it rolling. Give us a beat and we may just see Charlie Cale again down that open highway.”
Fans, however, weren’t buying it. Many on social media theorized that Lyonne’s beliefs about AI — and her AI company, Asteria — have made her a pariah in an industry that remains extremely concerned about how the technology can exploit copyrighted material or even replace human actors. Is it possible that Lyonne and Johnson agreed to part ways because her pro-AI stance has ruffled feathers with him or other creatives involved with the show?
For a little more context, Asteria claims to be an “artist-led, ethical AI film and animation studio.” Lyonne’s upcoming feature directorial debut, Uncanny Valley, will reportedly include AI-generated sequences that are “built on data that has been copyright cleared” — something that other experts claim is virtually impossible to do without scraping the internet.
But it seems highly unlikely that any of this would be offensive to Johnson somehow, as his production company, T-Street, is currently working on a Joseph Gordon-Levitt-directed “AI thriller” set to star Rachel McAdams. Very few details about the movie have been released thus far, so it’s definitely possible that it’s about ChatGPT becoming sentient or some other scenario in which AI is the villain. But Lyonne herself also reportedly has a “story by” credit on the film, so it seems she and Johnson are on the same page about the way the technology can be utilized ethically. Gordon-Levitt has been critical of AI in the past, though he’s also spoken about how it could be beneficial for his industry if used in the right way.
“I think that the impact [of AI] could mean that creativity as we know it, sort of goes away, to be really honest,” he said back in June. “I hate to put it in grave terms. That’s a worst-case scenario, but I think it’s on the table. I don’t think it has to happen that way. I think if we all figure out how to steer the ship, so to speak, the technology could be a wonderful thing for creativity, and we’re sort of at that crossroads right now.”
Poker Face similarly finds itself at a crossroads now, and while a show that so openly embraces a more retro, analog, Columbo-inspired feel certainly seems like an odd fit for someone who also founded an AI company, it seems as though there’s no bad blood between Lyonne and Johnson. It’s more likely that Lyonne simply got sick of playing Charlie Cale and wanted to pursue other projects. But whether any other networks or streaming services will be interested in a version of the show without her in it remains a mystery for the time being.
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