[This story contains spoilers to the penultimate episode of season one of Poker Face, “Escape From Shit Mountain.”]
By the time Poker Face viewers hit play on “Escape From Shit Mountain,” the audience for the Natasha Lyonne-starring murder mystery series knows what to expect: There will be a murder, and Charlie Cale (Lyonne) needs to solve it.
But, what happens when the target is Charlie Cale?
The ninth and penultimate episode in the first season of the hit Peacock series created by Rian Johnson plays with the show’s howcatchem format, bending its own rules the most yet. There have been surprises in previous episodes (“The Future of the Sport” saw zero deaths, while last week’s installment, “The Orpheus Syndrome,” claimed three fatalities). But none have put the show’s protagonist closer to death’s door than “Escape From Shit Mountain.”
“We have always endeavored to stay true to our structure and to our formula, but find new ways to tell a story in there,” Lilla Zuckerman, who co-wrote the episode with her sister and fellow showrunner Nora Zuckerman, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And having Charlie as the victim was this really kind of jaw-dropping realization that we could do something like that within the structures of this show.”
The episode introduces Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the weekly villain, with the Johnson favorite playing a white collar criminal on house arrest for insider trading. When a winter blizzard blows out the power — and his GPS ankle monitor — Trey (Gordon-Levitt) goes on a wild drive through the storm and hits a woman, who is later revealed to be Charlie. The episode pulls off a bait-and-switch, after first suggesting Charlie’s on-the-road companion, Morty (played by Everything Everywhere All at Once star Stephanie Hsu), as the possible victim.
When it’s revealed that Charlie is in fact the injured party, the two women end up stranded in a motel lodge with Trey and his friend Jimmy (played by David Castañeda). As Charlie puts her human lie detector skill to work, she realizes that Trey has killed in the past, and that both Trey and Jimmy covered up the dead body. To cover his tracks, Trey kills both Jimmy and Morty, and leaves Charlie for dead in a tree where he previously dumped the other body. He nearly gets away with it, if his ankle bracelet hadn’t been swiped by Charlie — who is last seen clutching it and still-breathing in the final moment.
What’s most surprising, in chatting with the Zuckermans, is to hear that the episode was actually the first one they filmed of the 10-episode season. And how bringing Charlie to the brink of death helped shape Lyonne’s approach to the character as they continued to shoot the rest of the show. “Because she had gone to that extreme, she could know that character in a way that she didn’t before,” Nora tells THR.
Below, in a chat together with THR, the showrunners go inside the filming of the episode that was also directed by Johnson, share his reaction when they first pitched the idea, discuss its overarching impact on Charlie (whose fate will be revealed in next week’s season finale), and share just how invincible Charlie Cale is now that Poker Face is getting a second season.
I can’t believe this was the first episode that you shot.
Lilla Zuckerman: Yes. It was the first episode that we shot and the reason it got ordered that way is because it takes place in winter. When we were shooting in the Hudson Valley [in New York] and all those exteriors, we needed to make sure that there were no leaves on the trees, even though we didn’t really have snow up there and we had to manufacture all this fake snow. So that was the first episode that we shot, and then we shot the pilot, which was great because Rian [Johnson] was the director of both of those episodes. So, it fit together.
When watching this episode as a viewer, the penultimate one in the season, you are thinking, “They really have this show down by now.” What were some of the challenges of starting with such an intense episode?
Nora Zuckerman: I think the biggest challenge was with Charlie because she’s in such a dire place. You’re basically starting her at a 10. We were all kind of worried about that. But Rian was really conscious of it and, as we worked through the performance with Natasha, he felt like it actually unlocked Charlie in a good way. Because we started in such an emotional, intense place and because she had gone to that extreme, when it came to next playing Charlie in the pilot, Natasha could kind of know that character in a way that she didn’t before. It really worked out, and she gives an amazing performance in this. But yeah, the first few times you saw Charlie on screen, she’s a mess! She’s covered in mud. She’s been dragging herself through the woods. So when we all got to see sort of OG Charlie [with the pilot], we were relieved, like, “Oh, that’s Charlie. There we go.”
Lilla: It’s certainly her most physical performance and also, it’s emotionally gut-wrenching. And what I think it did, though, is it grounded Charlie in a human way for the rest of the season.
Why was this the episode of the season that you two wrote and, since this started off your filming relationship, what was it like to collaborate with Rian Johnson as director?
Lilla: This is actually one of the episodes that we pitched early on in the writers room; we didn’t come up with it near the end of the season. As soon as we started breaking it, we realized that it belonged as the penultimate episode. And what I love about it is that it really is an exploration of Charlie’s character, and she’s very much in the center of this episode, as opposed to on the fringes, and you’re not even sure why. Also, I’m so proud of the switcheroo that we pull in this episode. We have always endeavored to stay true to our structure and to our formula, but find new ways to tell a story in there. And having Charlie as the victim was this really kind of jaw-dropping realization that we could do something like that within the structures of this show.
I’ll never forget the day that we came into the room with this pitch. I was like, “Either people are going to love this or people are going to hate this.” Or, maybe people will say, “You can’t do that.” But we pitched the episode to Rian, from the ankle monitor to the car crash to the reveal that it was Charlie, and he said, “Holy shit!” He was so surprised. And that’s when I knew, “Ok, we’re really onto something with this one.”
Jimmy (David Castañeda) and Trey (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) when Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) shows up, seemingly back from the dead, on the doorstep of the motel.
Phillip Caruso/Peacock
When she was lying in the road after Trey hit her and I saw her shoes, I thought, “Hm. Is that Charlie?” And then I thought, “No, they wouldn’t do it.” Did you have conversations about how invincible Charlie is: “Can we actually kill Charlie? No, of course we can’t kill Charlie”?
Nora: I don’t think we were ever like, “OK, we’re going to kill Charlie.” But through the season, you’ve seen her in various states of danger. Sometimes it’s confronting a killer or being nearly run off the road. But this is a danger that you don’t quite see coming. And then to have her in this terrible physical state while still solving a murder and knowing how vulnerable she is became such a cool, fun challenge for Charlie to have. You go from this big, spectacular accident to this almost small play with these four characters in this little motel. And we thought it was just such a cool way to put Charlie through the paces in a way that she hadn’t been previous, and it really sets her up for the finale in such a great way. It’s sort of like when you’re in that state, looking at the year you’ve just had and going, “Well, what’s next?” And then, you’ll see… I guess!
You do put her in the danger zone many times, and she’s slick with escaping. If there is no Poker Face without Charlie Cale, does that put you in a box? Bad things can happen to her, but she also has this superpower skill, so what are you playing with when it comes to her mortality?
Lilla: This show was always designed to run multiple seasons with Charlie Cale at the heart of the show. But that doesn’t mean that she’s superhuman. She’s not infallible. She will get herself into dangerous situations and I think we play with that reality more in this episode. But throughout the season, or, as we were breaking the season, we talked about a lot of ideas of putting her in a lot of peril. This just happens to be the ultimate one. But, moving forward? Yeah. She’s going to be in dangerous situations and she’s going to be confronting wicked people, and people are coming after her. It was fun to really play the stark reality of that in this episode.
I also want to ask about casting Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a big role here, since Rian Johnson fans love to see how he will show up in a Johnson project. (Since starring in Johnson’s directorial debut Brick, he has had roles or hidden cameos in every Johnson movie.)
Nora: He’s somebody who we knew would probably show up in the show at some point, kind of like how we know Noah Segen [who plays a sheriff in the Poker Face premiere] is always going to show up in the show at some point. It’s almost like the Rian Johnson players, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is such a big part of that. We were like, “He’s kind of like Rian’s good-luck charm, so you can’t not have him in the season at some point.”
When we started talking about Trey and Joseph’s name came up, we all got really excited that he could be in what was the first episode we shot. Because a lot of people on the crew had also worked with Rian and Joseph before, it sort of immediately gelled everybody together; everybody felt really safe. And it became just really fun to see all these old friends connect. For us, we’re new to the group. But it was just a really warm, welcoming set having him there. Joseph is an amazing actor, and also I think more of a physical actor than we knew. The physical stuff he put himself through for this episode was just incredible to watch. But I guess I should have known from his musicals that he is such a talented physical actor as well.
Lilla: It was like being invited to a family reunion, doing this episode.
Nora: That’s a good way to put it.
Lilla: And it really did set the tone moving forward in terms of how we’re going to make this show and cultivate all of those relationships. It was such a gift.
Stephanie Hsu as Morty in “Escape From Shit Mountain,” which was written by the Zuckermans and directed by Rian Johnson.
Peacock
Any Easter eggs or fun facts to share from “Shit Mountain”?
Nora: Lil, maybe you should talk about Stephanie Hsu, because we all grew up in the same town.
Lilla: Now-Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu came to set and we were getting to know each other. And we discovered that not only did she grow up in our hometown, but that Stephanie and I had the same high school drama teacher: Jim Bell from Palos Verdes High School, the man who is responsible for turning me into a theater geek and sending me off on this path. Obviously, Stephanie is a superstar now. And we both grew up doing musical theater with the same drama teacher at our high school.
Nora: We had all just gone and seen Everything Everywhere, days before she showed up to set. It was one of the first movies we had seen in theaters since the pandemic, and a bunch of us including Rian had gone to a theater in Poughkeepsie, New York, to see it. So when Stephanie showed up on set, we were just starstruck. We were like, “I think this [EEAAO] is going to be really big for you.” She was like, “I don’t know, maybe!” So hopefully all the fans will come watch her in this episode, because her performance is just great and she’s hilarious.
Poker Face is now streaming its first season on Peacock. This interview was edited for clarity.
