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“We’re casting week to week, which is almost laying down track as the train is moving forward,” he explains.

The benefit? “It ends up letting us get people we wouldn’t be able to get if we booked them eight months (earlier). Because of that, we don’t know who we’re going to get.”

Fred Armison, Nick Kroll and John Mulaney, for example, might have said no if they hadn’t been asked at the last minute. Touring gigs, family obligations and other work often put a wrench in long-range plans.

“When we finally get the final sort of thing that’s going to lock, we’re doing these high fives and backflips that we just can’t believe we’ve pulled off,” says star and Executive Producer Natasha Lyonne. “I just feel very moved and grateful that people show up.”

That “let’s call friends” philosophy harkens back to “Columbo,” a show that inspired “Poker Face.”

Star Peter Falk, for example, would bring friends like Ben Gazzara, Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes on his show. That upped the quality and allowed him toy with the conventions of television. So, too, “Poker Face.”

Growing up, Johnson says, he used to watch reruns of “Quantum Leap,” “The A-Team” and “Magnum, P.I.” Even though the episodes weren’t connected, “I didn’t feel like the characters were static or repeating themselves. The characters were constantly growing.”

In “Poker Face,” Lyonne’s Charlie Cale is on the run, finding herself entangled in a series of murders that just happen to occur wherever she goes. Lyonne says she crafts a backstory that doesn’t necessarily figure into the plot but it helps her square what transpires. Both Lyonne and Johnson see Elliott Gould’s performance in “The Long Goodbye” as a reference point. Similarly, Jeff Bridges in “The Big Lebowski.”

“It’s somebody who has lost interest in themselves and gained interest in their fellows — they moved from being on their own case into being interested in other people’s cases,” Lyonne says. “That’s a real gift.”

Simple situations — a car repair, a barbecue, a job selling merchandise at a concert — get Lyonne’s character involved in other people’s lives and, ultimately, their not-so-legal situations.

In the second season, the goal has been to avoid repetition, Johnson says. “Because each episode is so much its own tone, I want each director to come in, look at the script as their own little movie and shoot it however it’s appropriate, style-wise. A style does kind of emerge.”

In the early days of “Columbo,” Johnson adds, Steven Spielberg directed an episode. “He was incredibly young, but the shooting style, you can see ‘Duel’ in it. You can see ‘Sugarland Express.’ But you can also see ‘Jaws.’ You can see his early style.”

That kind of signature approach is what Lyonne and Johnson want “Poker Face” to have.

“I do kind of subscribe to Hitchcock’s view of suspense being a stronger engine to build something around than surprise,” Johnson says. “And a whodunit is surprise. It’s ‘Oh, that person did it.’ You need a stronger engine in the car if you’re going to keep an audience interested for a whole episode or a whole movie.

“It’s like the bumblebee that, according to physics, shouldn’t be able to fly but does. I find it endlessly interesting. Working with it and feeling it work every episode is like doing a little magic trick every time.”

“Poker Face” begins its second season this week on Peacock.