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Are ‘Poker Face’ and ‘Knives Out’ related?

Another one of Johnson's 'twisted webs.'

Natasha Lyonne in Pokerface and Natasha Lyonne in 'Knives Out 2'
Photos via Peacock and Netflix

Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc might have sussed out Edward Norton’s Miles Bron as the culprit behind the mysterious “Glass Onion” case in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, but crime fanatics are donning their thinking caps to figure out whether or not Rian Johnson’s Knives Out and the upcoming Peacock comedy-drama Poker Face are related.

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Premiering on Jan. 26, Poker Face stars Orange Is the New Black alum Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, an individual with the extraordinary ability to tell if someone is lying. She hits the road to discover new mysteries to solve and new characters to meet and greet, essentially making Poker Face a weekly airing of Knives Out-esque conundrums. But that doesn’t necessarily tell us if Knives Out and Pokerface are somehow connected.

For those who have seen Glass Onion, they’ll agree that one of the stand-out scenes features Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc in a bathtub (not in a weird way). Deep in a lockdown-fueled depression, Blanc invites some of his closest friends — Stephen Sondheim, Angela Lansbury, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Natasha Lyonne — to play the party game Among Us on a Zoom call. Blanc is found to be the impostor, prompting a discussion between the quartet about how “hard” lockdown has been for all of them and the concern the four of them feel for Blanc, who, according to his domestic partner Philip, “hasn’t left the bathtub in weeks.”

https://youtu.be/s7ZjDlWahKc

In the short scene, Natasha Lyonne is playing — and credited as — herself, but she’s actually supposed to be broadcasting the Zoom call from inside a hair and makeup trailer for Poker Face.

In an interview with Variety, Johnson revealed the same, saying that Nastaha Lyonne is “in hair and makeup as Charlie in her trailer in between setups on the set of ‘Poker Face.'” He elaborates, “So in the world of ‘Glass Onion,’ ‘Poker Face’ is a show that his friend Natasha is shooting. It’s a twisted web that we weave.” So we’ve confirmed that Poker Face takes place within the Knives Out universe, thereby making the two of them inexplicably linked through Natasha’s friendship with the fictional Benoit Blanc.

From that analogy, we could assume that Benoit Blanc will also be streaming Poker Face on Peacock in the coming days.

Joining Lyonne, Poker Face also stars Adrien Brody (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Judith Light (The Menu), and Chloë Sevigny (Bones and All).

Poker Face begins streaming on Peacock on Jan. 26, 2023.