Poker Face stars Russell Crowe as a tech billionaire and gambler Jake Foley, who invites his childhood friends for a night out for a high-stakes poker game and offers them a chance to win more money than they could ever imagine. But to play the game, they’ll have to reveal the one thing they spend their lives trying to keep: their longtime secrets… As the game unfolds, the friends will soon uncover what is really at stake. The New Zealand actor and Oscar winner (Gladiator) put himself for a second time in the director’s chair, following his 2014s The Water Diviner. Crowe co-wrote the screenplay with Stephen M. Coates. The drama thriller also stars Liam Hemsworth, Elsa Pataky and Jacqueline McKenzie. The excerpts from this interview were taken during a press conference at the Rome Film Festival 2022.

What inspired you to write and direct Poker Face?

Russell Crowe: Poker Face came to me as a fully financed production. The person who was originally going to direct the film, dropped out five weeks before the shooting date. Within 10 days of my father’s passing, I received a call from the producer of the film: the script had become a complete mess, he no longer had a director on board, and he asked if I would consider taking over the production? We were in the middle of a pandemic and Sydney was about to go into a hard lockdown, so the first thing that came into my mind was the type of consideration my father would’ve applied: “There’s 280 crew members here who are in a situation where if I say yes, they get to work during a pandemic, they get to feed their families.” It may seem irrelevant from a pure filmmaking perspective, but in truth, I’ve been working in films since I was six years old, and I work with crew people all the time. A goodly percentage of my entire base of friends come out of my work: actors, directors or cameramen. So, I couldn’t let 280 people fall into a financial hole when all I had to do was say yes. Now, in retrospect, it gave me the most ridiculous challenge I’ve ever faced. I had no script, no cast and only five weeks before the first day of shooting. So, I simply went to work, I cast the film in the middle of the night, calling people overseas, people like Liam Hemsworth and RZA, trying to get them engaged in a project I did not yet have a script for. I rewrote the script in nine days and after everybody criticized it, I finished the second draft in four days. I did all of the simple practical things, to do the type of thing my father would’ve done, to keep the village healthy and keep people going forward. It was extremely challenging, but film is part of my DNA. It was an impossible task, but it got done.

The main character is not your typical gambler in the way we have seen gamblers in other movies, but I was wondering why do you think people in real life have the need to gamble nowadays?

My particular opinion on gambling is very unpopular. I think it’s one of the worst things that we’ve allowed to creep into our global culture, giving people access to gambling 24 hours a day online. I think it’s perverse. I own a football team in Australia, the South Sydney Rabbitohs, and a gambling company is one of our sponsors. It’s a standard part of the sport, but still it bothers me deeply. Also, I personally know that I would be a problem gambler. I have always taken risks in my work, so if you put that across games of chance, you’d know I’d be a terrible, terrible gambler, I’d probably bet everything I have, but I’m lucky to know that about myself, so I don’t do it. Once a year, I bet on a horse race called the Melbourne Cup, once a year, that’s it. I can’t tell you how much, deep in my heart, I hate it because I see what it does to people, I see how it twists how they view life, how everything can change if you win one bet, and that’s not the way to approach life at all.

Poker Face got its world premiere at the at the 17th Rome Film Festival on October 16, 2022 and will be followed by a theatrical release on November 16, 2022. The drama thriller film is also set to arrive on VOD within a week of its theatrical release, on November 22, 2022.