“Poker Face” Season 2 kicks off with “The Game Is a Foot” (a double-entendre, of course), guest starring Cynthia Erivo as the Kazinsky quintuplets. This tour de force not only demanded a wardrobe merry-go-round from costume designer Leah Katznelson (“Feud: Capote vs. the Swans”), but also pushed detective Charlie Cale’s (Nathasha Lyonne) reliable BS detector into overdrive when solving two murders.
Erivo, who shot the episode (written and directed by creator Rian Johnson) in 10 hectic days during her “Wicked” New York press tour, plays four sisters who starred as teenagers in the hit action TV series, “Kid Cop Nights,” but have turned into wildly different people. Amber, who sculpts portraitures and takes care of their sick mom; Delia, who manages an apple farm where Charlie hides out; Bebe, who’s a free spirited DJ; and Cece, who’s a comparative lit professor. Erivo additionally portrays secret fifth sister, Felicity, a respected mixed-media artist, who now quietly lives off the grid in artistic solitude.
For Katznelson, the process began with putting together concept boards with Johnson based on notes that he embedded in his script. “[The boards] delineated the differences of how we wanted to articulate these characters based on his blueprint,” she told IndieWire. “ It was really important that we differentiated each of the women in their silhouettes. And then I was able to share those with Cynthia as a way of short-cutting our very truncated fitting time. We only had three hours together to craft all five characters, which is not a lot of time.” That crafting was largely dictated by everyone’s employment, a bit like a sociology experiment where the designer and the actor picked apart the characters for signature cues (or perhaps clues) from their backgrounds that would create a defined look.
“I spoke to Cynthia before she arrived, and I shared my boards with her so she knew conceptually what the blueprint was for each of the characters,” Katznelson continued. “And we were in agreement about the direction. She’s really good at digesting creative information very quickly, and she certainly helped me to give a foundation. But, in terms of churning out five very different, complex characters in literally three hours, I could not ask for a better partner. She’s creative, open-minded, accessible, organized, everything you want from an artist.”
While the main vibe of the show is ’70s-inspired Western noir, only Amber fully embodies the period through her interest in arts and crafts. Her clothes combine earth tones with lots of purple, accentuated by a bead necklace.
Felicity, though, has two personas. When we first meet her, she’s dressed as a welder with an overdyed denim jumpsuit altered to look vintage, with a yellow shirt underneath. Felicity’s more flamboyant persona, meanwhile, is very glam black leather with silver trim. “We wanted her to have a downtown, punk toughness,” Katznelson added.
Cece wears a brown tweed suit with a high-collared Victorian blouse, cameo, jewelry, and pearls. The hardest to outfit was the rebellious Bebe, because Katznelson wanted a contemporary look for the DJ. “She has a vaguely leopard animal print overlay that she wears like a mesh piece,” she said. “And jeans with chains. They were cotton, like parachute kind of cargo pants that had pocket details. Her character was all silver jewelry and silver hardware, leaning into a toughness. But she also had worldly jewelry kind of layered into it as well.”
Delia has the simplest, most practical wardrobe, given that she works at an apple farm. “Things need to be layered,” said Katznelson. “There’s comfort. A vintage brown workwear jacket. Her footwear is Blundstone, something she could scale a ladder in and have tread. And her beanie is a story point. So we had to make sure that we picked a color [green] that was specific enough for Charlie to note.”
However, the costume department needed to make identical sets of every outfit for the photo or stunt doubles to wear as the other sisters when shooting with Erivo, so she had someone to play with. “We didn’t shoot this in continuity, so Cynthia was constantly having to go back and forth,” added Katznelson. “Her ability to do that seamlessly was admirable.”
But then the conceit of casting Enrivo in multiple roles makes this the most Johnson-esque episode of the entire season.
“I think Rian has a very specific point of view and his visual storytelling is very detailed and stylized,” Katznelson said. “And he has a real vision when he’s putting these tableaus together. And I do think that each of these [sisters] embodies a specific personality. He really does think about the finer points. Like what’s the story behind the story, even as you’re making clothing choices, too?”
“Poker Face” is streaming on Peacock.
