Glass Onion's Cast Got Into Character With Their Own Murder Mystery Game

They say don't bring your work home with you — but when you're a filmmaker, the line between work and play can get a bit muddled. It's often like that with ensemble casts that become a family on- and off-screen, and it was no different for the cast of "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery."

With all the twists and turns that are inherent in the murder mystery genre, you'd think the cast of the Rian Johnson film — which included (but was not limited to) Daniel Craig, Janelle Monae, Kate Hudson, Edward Norton and Leslie Odom Jr. — would be ready to drop the whole charade in their down-time. Principal photography took place on a glistening Greek isle, after all: surely the cast would prefer to take in the sights. Ironically though, the opposite was true.

With "Glass Onion" enjoying a brief run in theaters — and gearing up for its Netflix premiere in December — the cast have been fielding a lot of questions about the film. Naturally, we're all curious about how they built their rapidfire rapport, and how they got into the heads of their characters. Both questions share one delightful answer: Mafia.

Mafia is a tabletop game in the vein of a murder mystery — sort of like "Among Us" but, like, in real life. In Mafia, a group of players work to uncover the identity of the anonymous murderer, all while avoiding suspicion themselves. And according to Kate Hudson, it was a regular occasion on the "Glass Onion" set.

"You see a different side to people when you play games," Hudson told People at the "Glass Onion" premiere. "When it gets a little heated or you're in the moment, the veil comes down and you see someone's true nature. You see how engaged they are ... and in this particular group, we all had so much fun together and everyone played the games very differently."

Hudson's co-star Janelle Monáe was hilariously committed to the game: the actor and musician frequently showed up with different outfits and costumes in order to get into her Mafia character. But according to the rest of the cast — and even the director himself — Hudson herself was the most competitive. "Leslie [Odom Jr.] and Kate took it really seriously," Johnson told ET Canada.

"She's intuitive," Monae added. "She's looking at all the details." To Hudson though, the games weren't all that intense — at least not for very long.

"I have to say it was a little less serious than most Mafia games," she admitted, "because it turned into a drinking-dancing party very quickly. We were like, 'Okay, murder mystery is done. Let's just get to the music and have some more cocktails.' But we clearly fell in love with each other, all of us."

"Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" arrives on Netflix on December 23, 2022.