“Your candour is wonderful,” Natasha Lyonne tells me in her raspy New Yorker accent, which is almost as iconic as her wild flaming red hair and acting accolades at this point.
We're talking about truth and lies, ahead of the release of series 2 of TV series Poker Face, which sees her play a amateur sleuth Charlie, who can identify on the spot when someone is lying. This takes her on a series of adventures across the US, and leads to her involvement in a surprisingly huge amount of murder mystery solves.
The second series of Poker Face is achingly smart and funny, just like it's star, who can barely vocalise a full sentence without cracking a joke. In the new episodes, expect to see Cynthia Erivo play quintuplets, Katie Holmes as a housewife longing for her freedom and many, many more A-list appearances, including a few from her fellow Orange Is The New Black alumni.
As we get to know Natasha's Charlie more intimately in season 2, she confides to various guest stars on her road trip journey that she is looking for her place in the world. When GLAMOUR asks Natasha if she's managed to find her place, she quips that it's “somewhere over the Kármán line”, the boundary that defines the edge of space.
“I think that's only far as they got the other day in that launch,” she says, referring to most recent Blue Origin space flight, which consisted of passengers such as Katy Perry and Gayle King. “I'd like to be returned home to my species one of these days. Looking forward [to it].”
Seemingly endless and surprisingly creative jokes aside, Natasha carved her place in the world of Hollywood from iconic roles in 1990s movies such as American Pie and But I'm A Cheerleader, where she played a closeted lesbian high school girl. This laid the foundation for her to become a very popular ally to the LGBTQIA+ community, even though she largely identifies as straight herself. She's joked about her sexual orientation in the past, describing it as “merry prankster”, and is quick to reject society's traditional expectations of a straight woman when she discusses the subject with GLAMOUR.
After years of battling addiction as a teen and young woman, and entering the industry as a child actor, Natasha went on to also carve a bit of herself into entertainment history by channelling her experience as a heroin addict into her portrayal of her Orange Is The New Black character Nicky, which earned huge fanfare and Natasha an Emmy nomination.
She went on to co-create Netflix's Russian Doll with Amy Poehler, which looks closely at the intertwining natures of life and death, as her character Nadia finds herself in a time loop – dying over and over on the night of her 36th birthday and returning to the party thrown in her honour each time. The second season looks at the generational trauma from the Holocaust, drawing on the ordeal that members of Natasha's family history went through.
So what of herself does Natasha bring to season 2 of Poker Face? When GLAMOUR asks her this, she initially responds with, you guessed it, a joke. “My prosthetic nose and ears,” she says, comparing the look to the prosthetics used to create alien characters in movie Total Recall. “It's a bold choice, you know what I mean?”
“They all have some of me,” she concedes of her roles. “I think it's okay to have something of your own in there. It's really just about being alive in the moment.”
Speaking of something of her own, Natasha is set to make her directorial debut with a script she co-wrote with fellow actor Brit Marling. Named Uncanny Valley, it will explore the life of a teenage girl who becomes enmeshed in a parallel universe created by a popular AR video game. Natasha will star, and the film will have both live-action and game elements. Most crucially, it will be made using a considerable amount of AI technology.
While navigating criticism for the choice to use the at-times controversial technology, Natasha has pointed out that it gave two women the scope to make a film on such a large scale, an opportunity that she argues wouldn't have been handed to them otherwise.
When I ask her about how she feels about the importance of AI being used ethically, in a world of deepfakes and women's voices being stolen (Scarlett Johansson's voice being deepfaked by AI, for example), Natasha is quick to point out that the problem is worldwide and gender wide.
“I think it's everybody's data and it's all been stolen… it's a bloodbath out there,” she says. “It's beyond ubiquitous and it's harrowing… We're just really in the wild west of futurism and there's nobody that seems to be able to put a lid on it." She assures that the technology herself and Brit used is “copyright clean”. “It's a weird time we're in and I guess I'm somebody that just has real eyes open around it and the existential threat of it… And I became curious about diving into this moment.”
Natasha also opened up to GLAMOUR about detecting lies in the real world, being a queer icon and what it means to her in a world where trans women are facing daily persecution and the ways in which humour empowers her.
GLAMOUR: What is the biggest lie you've ever told, to yourself or to someone else?
Natasha: Everything's fine. I do believe that everything's always okay and gosh, it's a relief to know that feelings aren't facts. I would say empirically, I'm seasoned enough to know that usually everything is okay, but it doesn't mean that everything's fine. I think it's a weird question that we ask each other, "How are you?" because nobody really wants to know the answer.
I think sometimes it's weird to even be doing great, looking at the world at large. I just feel like, "Rock and roll. Things are coming up roses for me". Even when I'm so grateful that so much is going so well personally, it doesn't make my eyes snap shut around the rest of the world, I guess…
GLAMOUR: It does feel like there's only one socially accepted answer to “how are you?”
Natasha: But what's crazy is, that everyone's ass always does look great in those pants.
GLAMOUR: Have you ever had to detect lies or wear a poker face as a woman navigating the entertainment industry?
Natasha: Never. That was a lie.
GLAMOUR: Bulls**t.
Natasha: “That's fascinating”, “you're taller than me”. A lot of that.
GLAMOUR: You’re an icon within the queer community after your amazing performance in But I’m A Cheerleader – what does that mean to you, particularly in the current climate with Trump in power and the Supreme Court challenging trans women’s very existence?
Natasha: Well, I'm so grateful for it, and I am not sure that I completely identify with this projected female dream that winning at life is finding that dude and putting on a crockpot or something. It's never really been my trip. So regardless of, well, I do love dudes, but I do think that everybody in this life is entitled to equal rights and the dignity of their experience. And I certainly think that it's absolutely insane to judge somebody's personal freedoms on the basis of… what are we even talking about? It's no one's business what somebody's privates are. What a weird head trip to get involved in.
I think it's important to also let people have their belief systems… People are attracted who they're attracted to. It's just none of your business, mind your own business. I loathe racism. I hate inequality in all forms. I think it's insane that somebody thinks that they have a right to tell a woman about her power to choose. To quote Sarah Silverman, "If men could get abortions, they'd be available at ATMs everywhere". So I don't know how they think the babies got in there, but the answer was firm. So it's a real case closed and I'm not a fan.
GLAMOUR: What is empowering to you?
Natasha: I think maybe my favourite thing is laughing. I think it's incredible that it creates a third space where you really get lost for a minute and nothing is as high stakes as it seems. And there's a great perspective that comes with that. And being doubled over laughing is just, well, it's the reason I'm so grateful for the John Mulaneys and the Amy Poehlers and surprisingly, the Method Mans, in my life.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
Poker Face season 2 is available to watch now on Sky and NOW.
