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Interview with Archer’s Aisha Tyler

We join Aisha Tyler at New York Comic Con to discuss who the father might be for Lana's baby, why Lana made that decision, and what a Who's Line is It Anyway?/Archer crossover may look like.

By David Crow | October 14, 2013 | | 0

Aisha Tyler is a very, very busy woman. On top of her frequent castings in movies and television shows that range from Ghost Whisperer to Talk Soup, she can currently just now be seen hosting improv sketch comedy series Who’s Line is It Anyway?, co-hosting CBS daytime chatter The Talk, and starring as everyone’s from political activist-turned corporate spy on FX’s Archer. It was in promotion of that last gig that she was kind enough to find time to sit down with us at New York Comic Con over the weekend, and to briefly talk about her experiences as Lana, aka the solely competent member of Isis’ entire staff. I go over with her Lana’s choice to become a mother last season, what her favorite lines have been, and desperately avoid saying Lana…Lana…LANA! So can I get this one out of the way: Who’s the father on the show? Aisha Tyler: I can’t tell you. Of course I can’t tell you! [Laughs] You’re delusional, man! Yeah, I think that is going to be a big reveal for this season. I know who it is, but if I told you, it would ruin all of the fun. Were you surprised by who it was? No. Could I ask then why do you think Lana made the decision she made and how close was she to picking Archer or Cyril in that one episode? I think part of the reason that she decided to get pregnant was that she realized that this life at Isis wasn’t necessarily that fulfilling. I think she had a lot of designs on taking over Mallory’s job and then I felt like that wasn’t going to happen. I think she just wanted to have something in her life that gave her some direction and some meaning. The whole crisis that she had in the desert with thinking “Why am I doing this stupid job with people who don’t give a shit and for a company that is run by an alcoholic maniac who keeps sending us after her sex tapes?!” I think everyone has that crisis at some point. And most people have children because they want someone to wipe their ass when they’re on their deathbed. I think that’s a big aspect of Lana’s motivation. “I’m going to die alone and I seem to hold an abiding amount of affection for a guy who is probably going to die of massive crystal and gallstones at 45.” [Laughs] I think her decision to—we don’t know [who the father is]. I know there’s a line at the end of last season where she said that there was a donor. Whether that’s true or not, I can’t tell you. I know that is what she said. I think the thought process behind it—When we finally find out who the father is, I think we’ll be surprised, and her reasoning may not be entirely clear. She may have made a crazy choice. Who knows? I’m hoping it’s Burt Reynolds! That would be fucking awesome, right? What has been your favorite crazy line to yell on this show? I don’t get the craziest lines. Pam gets the best lines. Pam Poovey has all the best lines on the show by far. I wish I had more memorized, but I tend to be blackout drunk when I do the show, so I don’t really know what happens [Laughs]. The one that I always say, which unfortunately I’ve said before, is in the first season when Cyril had put a dead hooker in the trunk of the car, and then [Lana] made him go buy porn. That is when I knew I was home, that I had finally found a show that was my comedic home. Because Adam and I, when recording it, had a very long conversation about whether “ball-slappyest” or “ball-slappingest” was a funnier word. Anytime someone is willing to get into a semantic argument, an etymological argument, about nuts, you know you’ve found your tribe. So that’s when I told him he had to get the “bare-backinest, ball-slappyiest, hard-dickingest interracial porn in the store” and he said, “From the nice old Asian lady?!” So, that’s probably my favorite line in the show. Is there anyone on Who’s Line Is It Anyway? that you would like to see on the show or vice versa? Interesting. Well Amber [Nash] and Lucky [Yates] specifically are big improv people. They do a lot of improv! They would be amazing on Who’s Line. Jon would probably just kick his chair over and walk off set. That would be very funny and very short. Explicitly short. Chris Parnell’s a genius, so he’d be amazing on Who’s Line. And then from Who’s Line? God, those guys are all brilliant. They’d be amazing; Wayne [Brady] would be amazing. Any of them would be amazing. I’m surrounded by geniuses, which is really not good for my own personal self-esteem! But yeah, it would be great to have some kind of crossover. We did the Bob’s crossover, it would be cool to do the Who’s Line crossover. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!