Who Voice’s Charlie’s CB Friend "Good Buddy" in Poker Face Season 2?
A beloved actor lends their voice to Charlie's over-the-air pal in Season 2 of Poker Face.
In Season 2 of Rian Johnson's hit Peacock series Poker Face, Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) is fighting an uphill battle. She’s got some powerful people on her tail and she’s doing her best to stay one step ahead of them. It means keeping on the move, sleeping with one eye open, and never setting down roots. Still, Charlie has managed to make at least a few friends along the way. Friends like the apple-picking Delia, a massive alligator called Daisy, and a faceless trucker known only as Good Buddy.
In the season’s second episode, Charlie lends her car to a film shoot, and the crew installs a CB radio to ease communication between departments. When the shoot is over (and the associated murder mystery solved), Charlie keeps the radio and hits the road.
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Finding herself untethered, with no place to call home, Charlie uses the radio like a lifeline, speaking into the void. That’s when she hears a voice talking back, a faceless friend who Charlie calls Good Buddy.
Who plays Good Buddy on Season 2 of Poker Face?
While we never see Good Buddy’s face on Poker Face, sharp-eared viewers may recognize the characteristic voice of beloved character actor Steve Buscemi.
Good Buddy first sounds off in the season’s fourth episode, “The Taste of Human Blood.” It’s time for the annual Florida Panhandle Cop Awards and Gater Joe (Kumail Nanjiani) is set to take home his 7th straight win alongside Daisy, his reptilian partner. Charlie gets wrapped up with an activist group planning to sneak the alligator out of the awards show and set her free.
Along the way, Charlie encounters Good Buddy, who tells her that everyone has a highway, something they’re good at, something which defines them. And it's up to us to find our highway or be found by it. And Charlie and Good Buddy connect again at the end of the episode, too.
Who is Steve Buscemi, the voice of Good Buddy on Poker Face?
Buscemi is a performer who needs no introduction, having woven himself firmly in the fabric of modern pop culture. His first acting credit was in 1985’s The Way It Is, and since then he’s been in everything from action and drama to comedy and family films.
You can see him in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), as well as the Coen brothers’ Fargo (1996). He played Rockhound in the apocalyptic action film Armageddon (1998) and appears in the clone-based sci-fi film The Island (2005).
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Alongside those serious roles, Buscemi has lent his talents to comedies like Airheads (1994) and Billy Madison (1995). On television, Buscemi played detective Lenny Wosniak on six episodes of NBC's 30 Rock and portrayed various characters including the god of the Bible in the anthology series Miracle Workers. He’s done live action family fare, playing Romero in Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids films and he’s lent his voice to a growing list of iconic characters.
You can hear him as the voice of Randall in Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. (2001), Templeton the rat in the big screen adaptation of Charlotte’s Web (2006), and the curmudgeonly Nebbercracker in the criminally underrated animated family horror film Monster House (2006). And, of course, you can hear him as Good Buddy on Season 2 of Poker Face.
Over and out, Good Buddy.
Catch Season 2 of Poker Face streaming right now, only on Peacock.
