‘Poker Face' EP & Showrunner Tony Tost On His Season 2 Episode 'Hometown Hero' & Not Overdirecting Natasha Lyonne On The Page
During the early part of Tony Tost's writing career, he was a poet and an academic, however, he found a way to TV writing thanks to his pal, True Detective co-creator Nic Pizzolatto. He tells us about his journey and offers up writing advice to aspiring writers on today's Crew Call.
The Poker Face showrunner gets a written by credit for episode 5 in season 2, 'Hometown Hero'. Poker Face creator Rian Johnson wanted to set an episode of the Natasha Lyonne slacker clairvoyant series in the world of minor league baseball.
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'Hometown Hero' follows a used-to-be-a-contender 100mph pitcher Russ Waddell (Simon Rex) whose bad losing streak nearly puts his minor league team out of business. He's given notice by the couch. He then bands with his team members to bet on their losing streak to make an enormous sum of money. A new firecracker pitcher enters the scene. There's black mail and murder, and you have to watch the episode on Peacock to find out what happens. In the mix Lyonne's Charlie Cale. Tost and Johnson took inspiration for the episode from the John Huston directed 1972 boxing movie Fat City about two boxers who comes to blows as their careers take different directions.
Tost takes us into the writing process of Poker Face, what Johnson looks for, the Columbo inspiration of it all, and the trick when it comes to writing for the deadpan and blunt Lyonne:
'So much of that, that gate, that cadence, that way of looking, the line delivery, that's all Natasha. That's what she brings. We try not to overindex it in the script not overwrite it. We do our underwritten version of it. Natasha comes in and tweaks the dialogue…try not to overdirect her on the page; let her go and stay out of the way of it.'
Tost's feature directorial debut, Americana, starring Sydney Sweeney and Paul Walter Hauser, hits theaters via Lionsgate on Aug. 22. The movie which world premiered at SXSW 2023, follows the lives of local outsiders and outcasts who violently intertwine when a rare Lakota Ghost shirt falls onto the black market in a small South Dakota town.
Here's our conversation with Tost:
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