In reality, Poker Face is nothing if not an opportunity for Lyonne to work with her own good friends. This season, she tapped a cadre of pals for supporting roles, including John Mulaney, Katie Holmes, Cynthia Erivo, Richard Kind, Gabby Hoffman, Carol Kane, and Melanie Lynskey. She also created opportunities for her friends to explore other passions. After playing her estranged sister in season one, Clea DuVall returned, at Lyonne’s invitation, to direct an episode in season two. “Something that is really special about Natasha is how she wants the people around her to succeed,” DuVall says. “I was nervous about it because I love the show so much, but I also love Natasha so much, and I want to do a good job for her. She was just so supportive and awesome.”

Lyonne tends to dig into the philosophical with her projects. Russian Doll sent the actor down rabbit holes concerning “futurism and quantum physics and spirituality and philosophy and theology and recovery and mental health and trauma and friendship, nightlife, addiction, good times, jokes, sex, rock and roll, all of that shit”—and Poker Face is no different. “They’re both characters that are ultimately based on Elliott Gould’s performance as Philip Marlowe in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye,” she says of Charlie and her Russian Doll character, Nadia.

It’s that impulse to go deeper that makes Poker Face so compelling. In it, she manages to capture both the isolation of the social media era and its antidotes. “I think it’s true that none of us quite know what to do in this new world. We’re lonely in the horror that we witness from a distance on a daily basis,” she says. “Here in this show, what’s interesting is that idea of small good deeds on a human level that nobody needs to know about.” As ever, she takes solace in the philosophy of goodness. “One plus one always equals two. Karma is a mathematical equation,” she says. “Charlie maybe can’t save the world, but she can help out one good guy who doesn’t have a voice.”