Abbiejean has certainly altered the show’s dynamic to some extent. How is she going to impact the rest of the season?
I think what’s interesting about A.J. coming into the show is she’s altered in a lot of ways the dynamic, not just between Archer and “Lana,” but between Lana and “Malory” and “Malory” is a pretty conniving self-involved person and now she has a new thing to connive over, so that, obviously, has changed the dynamic.
What I love about the fact that Lana had a kid is that she’s now dealing with the same things that all working women and, honestly, working parents deal with, which is trying to find reliable daycare, dealing with it when you don’t have a babysitter and you’ve got to go to work, trying to manage your personal life and your professional life, trying to find quality downtime. This is stuff that almost everybody who watches the show can relate to on some level.
What’s so fun about the show is finding the balance between the ordinary and the extreme because Archer is really just an office comedy. It’s just an office comedy. Barney Miller or Cheers or any of those kinds of comedies where you’re in this contained space and everybody is related and you become this kind of weird Frankenstein-y family.
Her problems are the problems of most Americans and I think that’s what’s so funny about it and the only difference between them and her is that her co-workers are all alcoholic sexual deviants who have had unprotected sex with almost everybody else they’ve worked with and occasionally fire weapons at each other. She’s just a working mom, but when she was pregnant she still had to go to work and then you get this great scene where she’s running through a field of live ordnance and active gunfire saying, “Sorry baby, sorry baby, sorry baby.”
I think that she’s added a new level or a new layer of comedy to the show, which feels both very relatable to most Americans and also very extreme because everybody is always on the verge of being shot to death. It’s always fun to have a baby around when you might be shot to death. This is a cartoon baby, so nobody worry about the baby. The baby is fine; the baby is made out of ink.
In seasons past you’ve always shown the stern and the somewhat sarcastic parts of “Lana’s” personality and with the baby you’ve definitely brought on way more of a motherly, softer personality and it’s interesting to see you kind of walk that thin line between the Lana that goes nuts over Sterling, but at the same time is a mother and is remembering that she has someone to care for. Was that a challenge for you to kind of figure that out for “Lana?”
This is a really nice question and a lovely compliment, so thank you. I actually think that the softening of Lana started to come at the end of Season, I want to say Season 4, but I might be wrong because I’m sitting in my car and my brain doesn’t work, when we did the Sealab episode and Archer sacrificed himself for “Lana.”
I think Adam [Reed] started to write more emotional material for “Lana.” She wasn’t always pissed at “Archer.” And because she wasn’t always angry at him or angry at the situation I just had more to play with and more to do. What’s been nice is as the relationships on the show have evolved and they’ve deepened and they’ve become more complex, we have more to do.
And I think in a first or a second season of any show you’re just trying to fire as many bullets as you can at a target as possible because we’re a comedy and we’re a half-hour comedy and we’re a cartoon, it’s just about dropping bombs, dropping 22 minutes of bombs. But as the show has evolved and people love the characters and they love the relationships we’ve been able to add more complexity to those characters.
So, I really feel like the moment where Lana got softened was when she realized that Archer was willing to die for her at the end of that Sealab two-parter and that would have been, that was in Season 3. And then in Season 4 she decides to have a baby and then in Season 5 she’s pregnant, so I just had more to do. I didn’t have to do any research. Luckily I’ve been acting for a very long time and the nice thing about Archer is that there’s nothing to do but the emotional work because there’s no props and no wardrobe and no make-up and no marks to hit, so it’s just about your interior life and trying to think and feel the things that your character thinks and feels.
Again, even though it’s a comedy and sometimes we’re working at peak intensity, I always try to really work on “Lana’s” interior life and how she truly feels about her job, how she truly feels about her co-workers and how she really feels about “Archer,” which is that this is someone who she ultimately loves and loathes and who I think she has a lot of compassion for, she’s the only one that probably sees his soft side and remember when he had cancer and she was really there for him. They’re bonded in a way that we don’t always give them credit for.
I think they really love each other. I’m always trying to play that truth even if the comedy is extreme, so it was just a joy. I do remember when we did the stuff where Lana got to tell Archer about “A.J.,” that was at the end of Season 5, that was really fun to play and we did it a few times because the guys wanted it to be really, really tender and I think I did have to do a little bit of work to get to that really, really tender place. She had never been quite that soft and lovely towards “Archer.”
It’s fun; it’s just fun to have a variety instead of just always screaming “Archer.” If somebody did a mash-up or remix of me saying “Archer,” it would probably be 97 minutes long. I’ve yelled at the guy so many times, so it’s nice to have the diversity of emotional range now.
You also host the new incarnation of Whose Line Is It Anyway. Has it been a struggle to find a new or returning audience?Â
It’s on a different network, obviously. It was on ABC and now it’s on CW and also between when it was on ABC and now the viewing landscape has become much more fragmented. There are more networks and more shows. That being said, it was the highest rated show that CW had debuted in three years when it premiered and it’s a huge hit for them.
So, it hasn’t been hard to promote it at all because it’s doing really well and every season they’ve ordered more episodes. I think they ordered like 18 or 19 the first season and 22 the second season and this season we’re at 26. So, it’s doing very well for them. We’re all really proud of it and it wins its time slot, so for them it’s a very big hit. I don’t kind of lament, I don’t really think about it that way because it’s been a hit for CW and it’s been working great.
Of course, it would be great to have more fans of the show find it, but I think they will as time goes by and the show is working very well for CW so in that way I’m just super, super happy because it’s getting great numbers for them, so I think it’s only going to grow from here.
Friends just celebrated its 20th anniversary last year and you had a very memorable arc towards the end of the show. Do you have a favorite moment from your time on the series?
Oh yes, let’s see. It was an amazing experience. It’s rare to be a guest on a show that’s that big. I mean it was the biggest show on TV when I got to be on it and I was a fan before I got the job, so I knew exactly how special it was and how lucky I was. This might be in the bloopers, but there were a lot of really great moments, but I think the one that I love is when I’m actually breaking up with “Ross” and I’m about to kiss Greg Kinnear and there’s just this moment when David Schwimmer is standing between us and he says, “This is making me a little uncomfortable.”
And the way he said that is so funny that we did that probably 30 times before we were able to not laugh. It was just the funniest, weirdest. They were all so incredible on that show and I learned so much from all of them, but David Schwimmer had this thing with these line readings that was just, he could just tweak a line and make it so funny just with inflection and tone and he’s standing right between us and we’re staring at each other’s eyes and he’s saying, “This is making me a little uncomfortable.”
We just could barely, we never really made it through the scene properly and you can probably see us laugh a little bit even in the scene that made it into the show. But the whole thing was incredible. The cast was incredibly kind to me. Guest stars had had a history of cracking up on that show because it was the biggest show on TV and everybody on it was so good at what they did that a lot of people would come on and get intimidated and kind of fall apart.
They were really, really kind about making me feel welcome and just letting me know that I could ask any question or ask for help if I needed it and it was just an extraordinary time and I’m still really good friends with a couple of the cast members and really great to say it.
Would you be interested in taking over The Daily Show?
Jon is, we’re friendly and I think he’s an incredible guy and has left some massive, like honking shoes to fill for whoever takes that seat over. Even though, actually Craig Kilborn hosted that show for a little bit, really Jon elevated it to such an extraordinary level and whoever follows him I think has got their work cut out for them.
There’s been a lot of buzz online about me taking over that and it’s insanely flattering and very gratifying. I have three series on the air right now, so there’s a logistical barrier to me taking that job in that I am contractually obligated to three other series, Archer, The Talk and Whose Line Is It Anyway?
So, that said, it’s really flattering to be thought of in that way and if I was ever in a position to take that job, I would, of course, entertain it because it’s such an influential, just a seminal show. It’s been so instrumental in helping people develop a deeper and, what’s the right word, a deeper and more robust sense of skepticism about American politics.
So, that show would both be an honor to host and, obviously, a big responsibility. At this point in my life I don’t even have time to pee. I literally just save up all my pee and go on Saturday afternoons, which is, by the way, incredibly satisfying.
Catch Aisha Tyler as Lana every Thursday night of Archer.
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