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Poker Face canceled by Peacock, but creators have a plan for a season 3 - with Natasha Lyonne replaced by Peter Dinklage

Peter Dinklage replacing Natasha Lyonne in future Poker Face only makes sense, given how often the two are confused by audiences

It’s a familiar set up for TV fans: a stranger rolls into a new environment that’s dealing with some kind of a problem. Despite everybody having just met this person, they display an almost supernatural ability to discern right from wrong, and end up solving the problem at the end of an hour-long episode before moving on for good… and the stranger doesn’t always look the same, with different actors playing the same character through the series run. Here’s the twist, though — I’m not talking about Doctor Who. If executive producers Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne have their way, I’m actually talking about Poker Face.

The procedural crime show, which had previously had Lyonne as protagonist Charlie Cale, a drifter who has the ability to tell when someone is lying or not, has just been cancelled by streaming service Peacock after two seasons… but the actor, along with series creator Johnson, have a wild plan to sell it to a new home: keep everything about the show the same, but put an entirely new actor in to replace Lyonne as the series lead. And they even know who: Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage.

In a joint statement given to Deadline, Lyonne and Johnson said, “We’ve been germinating this next move together since writing the season two finale. 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.”

Here’s what might be even crazier about the plan: if the show does get picked up by another broadcaster or streamer, Dinklage wouldn’t be sticking around longterm — the producers would want to replace the actor playing Charlie Cale every two seasons, no matter what.

It’s a fascinating way of keeping Poker Face — which, despite being cancelled, was one of the most-watched shows on Peacock even in its second season; apparently, it’s the cost of the series, which has high profile guest actors play the murderer in each episode, that doomed it at the platform — fresh, even beyond the murderer-of-the-week set up… and also an in-built way to replace actors with cheaper alternatives if the studio demands it.

Will Poker Face find a new home with this new plan moving forward…? That’s one mystery that won’t be solved in the space of an hour. We might want to see if Netflix could be interested, however; it’s the home of Johnson’s next movie, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, which debuts on the service November 26.

For now, Poker Face seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on Peacock.


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Graeme McMillan

Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.

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