Posted in: Peacock, TV | Tagged: Poker Face

Poker Face: Patti Harrison on "Dream Role" as Alex, S02 Finale Twist

Peacock's Poker Face star Patti Harrison breaks down that huge Season 2 finale twist concerning Alex and Natasha Lyonne's Charlie.

There's hardly anyone who can outmatch Natasha Lyonne's Charlie Cale in the battle of wits on Peacock's Poker Face. Still, Patti Harrison's mysterious Alex became her most significant challenge in the final two episodes of season two. As a drifter sleuth with a natural talent as a human lie detector, Charlie crosses the path of an assassin known as the Iguana (Justin Theroux), who blends in as a master of disguise using various prosthetics and killing the targets he poses as, at a wedding in the penultimate episode "Day of the Iguana." At the end of the episode, we discover that the Iguana frames Alex, who befriends Charlie late in season two as they take jobs together, for killing wedding guest Kirby (Haley Joel Osment). At the beginning of the season two finale episode, "The End of the Road," Alex flees with Charlie's assistance as the FBI is hot on their tail. Harrison spoke to Deadline Hollywood about the twist surrounding her character. The following contains major spoilers.

Poker Face: Patti Harrison on Alex Revealing Her Dark Secret to Charlie

When presented with the opportunity to play against type, the comedian jumped at the chance as it's revealed that the unassuming Alex was a bored assassin, who not only killed mob boss Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman), revealed to be under witness protection by the FBI, but her big fish was Charlie all along, lying to her from the very beginning since they met. "I feel so blown away and lucky to get to play what is really a dream role, not even just—I was about to say my whole life, as soon as I could imagine what it would be like to act, I wanted to play an assassin or a ninja or something. But as a kid, I actually wanted to be an assassin or a ninja, so it's kind of better for everyone if I just do it on screen. And I'm still not sure on that," Harrison said. "I'm taking a Muay Thai, self-defense, jiu-jitsu, Krav Maga class, and I found that my ability to overpower someone else is very far away in the future, and maybe not even. Maybe the opportunity for that was in the past. And now I'm best used, just kind of pretending I can beat people up when, actually, in real life, everyone on earth would whoop my ass."

Harrison broke down becoming Alex. "The actual process of building the character and stuff was really fun. It was really daunting. I appreciated how much space I had with fleshing out the character, but I do think they also wanted something specifically with the tone, and I think a lot of times, that's challenging if you're in a in a dramedy or a show that tonally needs to be able to get back to the emotional stakes without being too hammy or weird, and so, Natasha really had a vision for the character, but she really gave me space to throw … spaghetti at the wall, that's what it felt like. And Tony Tost, who's [the showrunner] was incredible, truly such a rock, and what I will say is his humor, but also his understanding of where the core pain and sort of darkness of these people and what the stakes would be if they lost something, it's just the way that he explains the story."

"I'm not doing a good job of articulating it. But it was just a really gentle guiding hand when the work for the character was actually kind of intense, cause I was doing stunts for the first time, which was awesome, which I think was my favorite part of the whole show," Harrison continued. "And just kind of having to play two characters and not shooting completely chronologically, so it was kind of figuring it out as we go along with what felt right for when we finally were starting to do the scenes and what would feel kind of like ultimately the most surprising shift in tone, but also would still make sense for the world to make it not feel so goofy, I guess, cause the odds of feeling too goofy, they're there, they exist."

When it came time for Alex to reveal her hand, we see a flashback to the boathouse during the events of "Day of the Iguana," where the Iguana catches Alex, who spots Kirby's corpse sitting up on the boat. As the Iguana is looking to pounce on his victim, Alex emerges from all fours and brandishes a knife (as it's revealed blades are her specialty) to slit his throat. As he dies, Alex pushes his body into the water by the boat before setting off with Kirby with murder weapon in hand as it was the Iguana's pocketknife lodged into Kirby's left eye. At the end of the episode, we see Alex "coming to" and revealing the knife as the boat is floating in the lake to Charlie's surprise."Wait, Justin Theroux was in it? … Oh, that other bum-ass, show-off actor. I'm kidding. I adore him," Harrison said. "I adore Justin Theroux. I would—and who knows if I'll regret saying this in print later—but, I would actually, if he was like, 'I'll pay you $300 to go beat up that person,' any random person on the street, any random person online, I would go do that. I know I would lose, and they would whip my ass instead, but I just feel like I'm in debt to him for just all the goofing around and silly fun times we've had on set."

You can check out the entire interview for more, including Harrison comparing Charlie and Alex's relationship going from potentially being Watson to Charlie's Sherlock to being her Moriarty instead, casting, breaking down the final two episodes, and Clea Duvall. Both seasons of Poker Face are available on Peacock.

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