EXCLUSIVE: Guest Star Lauren Tom on Joining Poker Face: "It Was Jaw-Dropping!"
The actress takes us inside the making of Poker Face’s ninth episode, “A New Lease on Death."
**SPOILER WARNING! Spoilers below for Poker Face, Season 2, Episode 9, "A New Lease On Death"**
In this week’s episode of Peacock's Poker Face, "A New Lease on Death, star ”Natasha Lyonne and guest stars Awkwafina and Alia Shawkat got to work with a legend, as Lauren Tom stole the show playing Anne, a sapphic heroine who exacts some righteous vengeance with Charlie Cale’s help.
The episode starts a Brooklyn-based arc for Cale (Lyonne) as she sublets the apartment of Good Buddy (voiced by Steve Buscemi), her faceless CB radio pal introduced earlier this season. Settling into the building, Cale gets to know some of her neighbors including long-time residents Anne (Tom) and her granddaughter Maddy (Awkwafina), cranky building manager Otto (David Alan Grier) and Ricardo the librarian. She also comes to know Kate (Shawkat), Anne’s brand-new girlfriend, who turns out to be a pretty ruthless criminal preying on her new friends.
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If you’re not aware, Tom is a film and television pioneer. For Gen Xer’s, she was a familiar face on television, appearing in everything from The Facts of Life to Quantum Leap. She achieved her Millennial cred playing Ross’ infamous girlfriend Julie on Friends. She was also Lena in the award-winning The Joy Luck Club, and has voiced a dizzying array of iconic characters in video games and animated series, from Dana Tan in Batman Beyond to Amy Wong in Futurama (26 years and counting).
In an exclusive interview with NBC Insider, Tom explained that this Poker Face script landed on her desk like "a gift that dropped in from the Universe into my lap.” She also talked about her reunion with several members of the cast and crew, working with Awkwafina and Lyonne for the first time, and getting her career-first lesbian love scene.
Lauren Tom on reuniting with Adam Arkin and David Allen Greer on Poker Face
As a veteran character actor on television from the age of 21, Tom said she’s worked with so many talented actors, including current Poker Face executive producer/director Adam Arkin, who both starred in the 1998 film, With Friends Like These.
“He's the one who brought me on board,” she said of her former ‘90s co-star. "I just love that guy. He's so talented and so funny and such a kind, warm person."
On Poker Face, Tom was offered the part of Anne, Maddy’s Nana and a retired professor who lives in one of the last rent-controlled apartments in this particular Brooklyn building. The actress said she jumped at the chance to play Awkwafina's grandma and reunite with former DAG co-star, Grier.
"I just thought, 'Oh my gosh, I'm gonna have so much fun working with my friends!’” she laughed. “Also, meeting Awkwafina because I had never worked with her before, so I was super jazzed. And, I got to do my first lesbian sex scene!"
Lauren Tom’s adventures in Brooklyn with Awkwafina and Natasha Lyonne
"I just had the best time with everybody,” Tom said of her two-week adventure shooting the episode. “Just such wonderful actors. I also love they had so many women of color on the set. Our director, Adamma Ebo, is Black. Our cinematographer [Christine Ng] is Asian, and the set designer, Judy Rhee, was a freaking genius!"
Tom said before she left her home in Los Angeles that she worked with her acting coach to build the very lived in life we see alluded to in Anne’s apartment. “We went through all the backstory that we just made up, basically. I came prepared, knowing what it was inside me, without feeling like I needed to share that with the other actors."
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But Tom did help Rhee tailor the apartment to her own life. "I always like to see if I can spend a little time on the set before we shoot and they were gracious enough to let me do that,” she explained. "It was jaw dropping, the detail. The other beautiful thing for me was that Judy had asked me for photos of my family, so she used a couple of them. I don't know if they're in the shots, but they're my ancestors. My father passed 45 years ago and all his brothers and sisters, so they used one photo with everyone. It was on the fireplace mantle. And then there's another one, just of my dad in the bookcase. I'm getting the chills because I just felt all of my ancestors were with me."
Tom said she loved getting to know the cast of women, especially Awkwafina. "I've gotten to this age where I just look at everybody as if they're my kid,” she laughed about meeting the comedian from Queens, New York. "I don't know what it is but I just feel so proud of people that I don't even know, especially when they're Asian. I just feel like my heart swells up so I just got a chance to tell her that. She could not have been more respectful of her elders in acknowledging my generation that came before her, which kind of paved the way a little bit to make it easier for the younger generation. We really bonded.
"She was able to give me all the points about where to eat and everything,” she continued. “We shot it in Green Point, Brooklyn and I just want to give a shout out to that little [neighborhood]. I could envision myself living there because I loved it so much. It's artsy/hipster. It reminded me of Los Feliz, a little bit, in L.A."
Getting busy with the psychopath trying to steal Anne’s apartment
Despite a five-decade career, Tom said Poker Face afforded her the opportunity to play her first lesbian romance. In the storyline, Kate targets Anne over a pile of bodega plums, woos her into a torrid affair, and then orchestrates the murder of Maddy with the intent to eventually marry Anne and get her apartment deed.
Tom said she was very impressed with Shawkat's take on Kate: "Oh my God, she's evil!”
However, Tom affirmed that Shawkat was an amazing scene partner. "We did the 'meet-cute' scene first,” she said of how they were able to build out their hasty relationship. "Then, we didn't do the denouement — where I get to have my 'tell-her-off' moment — until the end, so that was really great to be able to build that."
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"And then the sex scene was also towards the end, which was great because I had to get ready,” Tom said with faux nerves.
"The sex scene was super fun for me because I had never done that before. I had a lot of trepidation leading up to it, but once I was there on set, it was absolutely fine. They had an intimacy coach for me."
She was even more impressed by the emotional arc she got to play through Anne, losing her grandchild and getting justice for such a terrible loss. "I got to express all the things as an actor, it was such a rich part,” Tom said with appreciation. "I had such a fondness for Nora, and I've lost so many people in my life, and I worry about my 92-year-old mom getting scammed, so all those things felt so real to me that I could tap into."
Solving the Poker Face case with Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale
While Tom said she got to work with Lyonne in a couple of scenes in the episode, their most potent scene came at the end when they play out a personal sting operation to expose Kate for the murderer she is.
Tom said the beautiful thing she discovered about Lyonne is her genuine authenticity. "She cannot express a false sentence or move,” she admired. "She was really very generous during our scenes when we were working together. She really handed the scenes to me. She's a director so I just noticed how she was working with how the whole scene was going to play. My scenes with her are more towards the end where it has more impact. I just love the way that we had that connection and then there was also a lightness to it because her character is so cool. She has a light touch, so you're not going to get too sentimental with her. I was actually a little nervous too, because I didn't know her before. But it all worked out so great."
In the end, Anne is also a survivor. She is able to sell her place and begin again. Tom said she thinks her character is out there traveling with other like-minded academics. "I could see her in a small community, maybe settling in a small community in Maine or something with really down-to-Earth people,” she imagined. "But then also taking little trips because she's so adventurous."
And maybe a far less murderous girlfriend? “Hopefully!” Tom laughed.
New episodes of Poker Face debut Thursdays on Peacock; head there now to catch “Sloppy Joseph" and the rest of the show's previously aired Season 1 and 2 episodes!
