Peter Dinklage swears he really does want to have the new Poker Face

Dinklage has doubled down on his commitment to taking over the series—if Rian Johnson can find the show a new home.

Peter Dinklage swears he really does want to have the new Poker Face

Rian Johnson’s plans to revive his recently cancelled, also recently-lost-its-star Columbo throwback Poker Face, by swapping in Peter Dinklage for the outgoing Natasha Lyonne, has always felt a bit Quixotic. Partly it’s just that streamer swaps—which the show would have to pull off, given that Peacock has announced it doesn’t want a third season of Charlie Cale’s crime-solving misadventures—are tricky prospects in any case. But also, the “Well, why not Peter Dinklage of it all?” has always felt like a bit of an intentional swerve. It’s not that Dinklage couldn’t be amazing as a drifting lie-detecting detective—we’d watch that show in a heartbeat—but that Lyonne’s weathered vibes were such an integral part of the show’s texture. It’s not “Poker Face with Peter Dinklage” that throws us, so much as “Poker Face without Lyonne.”

Nevertheless: Dinklage is inDeadline reports today that the Game Of Thrones veteran has no reservations about stepping into the series—if Johnson can make it happen. “It’s in the works,” Dinklage confirmed, joking that the new version of the series could change its name to Roulette Face. (And, again, it feels like turning the series into an anthology of different gravelly-voiced performers saying “Bullshit!” misses part of what made Lyonne so good in the part, but we digress.) “What I hear,” Dinklage added, “Is that it’s just hard to take it from one home to put it in another. It’s the complicated nature of that, I believe. But Rian is a creative genius and whatever he wants to write, I would love to be a part of that.”

There are no clear indications about where Johnson might take Poker Face, which he’s reportedly hoping to bring back with another two-season commitment. Deadline notes that HBO’s Casey Bloys has admitted he’s had talks with Johnson about bringing the show over—and the writer/director has a long-standing relationship with Netflix—but if not’s clear who, if anybody, is looking to pick up a lightly-used mystery show at the moment.

 
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