Skip to playerSkip to main contentSkip to footer
  • yesterday
"Poker Face" Season 2 has finally hit Peacock, and while we’ve thus far only been treated to the first three episodes, they feature some A+ guest stars. Right off the bat, we have Cynthia Erivo playing a whopping five different characters, and that story is followed by Giancarlo Esposito and Katie Holmes sharing the stage. This is Holmes’ first live-action TV show appearance since 2017, and oh boy, it's a bonkers one. According to the showrunner, this was the intention, as he wanted to show a side of Katie Holmes we’ve “never seen from her before.”

The episode stars Katie Holmes as the wife of a funeral home owner/director who is fed up with her sheltered, conservative life of applying makeup to the deceased. Taken by the glitz and glamour of filmmaking as a movie is filmed on the mortuary's property, she starts to catch up on the social life she’s been deprived of with a childlike enthusiasm – and the odd contrast makes for a performance unlike anything we’ve ever seen from Holmes. I recently caught up with Season 2 showrunner Tony Tost to talk all things "Poker Face", and when the subject of Katie Holmes came up, he told us that this was exactly the intention.
Transcript
00:00i was wondering if you learned anything about her you didn't know before her coming in
00:03i think i think we all got excited about the ideas like yeah we haven't seen katie holmes
00:08in this type of role and i really think katie and you know natasha directed that episode i think
00:16natasha very much um encouraged katie to just to go for it to try things like it was very much like
00:25we're not we didn't cast you to you know replicate some previous performance you've done
00:32like what we we want because we think you could bring something really interesting and and do
00:36something maybe you haven't done before and that was i think very much the informing attitude so i'm
00:40really excited to hear that you had that response because i felt the same way on says just like oh
00:44i haven't seen this from her before and it's it's interesting and it's and it's unexpected it's
00:49grounded but it's it's in the best way an oddness to to her character or performance or an
00:54unexpectedness that you don't necessarily she she wouldn't necessarily come first in in mind for
00:59that type of performance yeah it almost reminded me of like a jennifer coolidge and parker posey
01:03and white lotus type thing where it's yeah yeah no no totally i mean yeah the yeah that that um
01:09the parker posey is a in particular an interesting yeah that kind of energy that kind of like she could
01:16do anything at any time it's in the character but like yeah that um unpredictability that she brought

Recommended