Poker Face: Natasha Lyonne Explains Steve Buscemi's Surprise Role (And Their Long History Together)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Thursday's Poker Face.

There are plenty of guest stars this season on Poker Face — but one of them, we didn't see coming. (Or hear, anyway.)

This week on Natasha Lyonne's Peacock murder mystery, Charlie started chatting with a stranger she dubbed "Good Buddy" on her CB radio, and they became fast friends. And Good Buddy's voice probably sounds familiar: It's the voice of Steve Buscemi, of Fargo and Reservoir Dogs fame.

Buscemi's name wasn't among the dozens of famous names announced as guest stars in Poker Face's second season, but he and Lyonne go way back, she explains. "We've spent a fair amount of time together as New Yorkers... He cut me out of a movie he directed called Animal Factory back in 1998. I played 'Girlfriend.' We joke about it to this day." Lyonne says they first approached Buscemi to direct an episode of Poker Face this season, and he wasn't available to do that, "but he was available to be Good Buddy."

Buscemi is "a hell of a guy" to play the part of Good Buddy, too, Lyonne adds, "because he is like a real tether in the ether" to Charlie as she travels from town to town this season.

The character of Good Buddy came from showrunner Tony Tost, he tells TVLine: "I just love 1970s trucker movies. My parents had CB radios growing up. Smokey and the Bandit, Any Which Way But Loose, all those great cinematic exemplars from the '70s. So we thought it would be fun." But while Tost was looking for a modern-day Burt Reynolds type to play Good Buddy, executive producer Rian Johnson suggested that it'd "actually be interesting to go where we're not expecting, with Steve Buscemi, kind of a consummate New Yorker, as this trucker. There's something interesting there in the connection between [him and Charlie], too."

Tost won't reveal if we'll ever get to meet Good Buddy (and Buscemi) in the flesh this season, but Charlie will definitely hear from him again, he hints: "In Season 2, he's a voice of comfort and reason for her."

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