Aisha Tyler
Aisha Tyler is an actor, born 1970.
Aisha Tyler runs three careers at once and the least visible one is the most durable. Since 2009 she has voiced Lana Kane in Archer, a role that asks for a very particular thing: comic delivery at speed, with no face to help, opposite a cast of people all talking over each other. Fifteen years and more of that is a technical achievement whatever you think of the show.
On camera she has mostly been the competent professional in the corner of an ensemble. Charlie Wheeler on Friends, Mia Dickerson on CSI, Andrea Marino in the first season of Ghost Whisperer, then Dr. Tara Lewis on Criminal Minds, which she has played since 2015. She was also Mother Nature in the last two Santa Clause films, a better joke than those films deserve.
Hosting is where the awards are. She has two Daytime Emmys for Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host, and she has fronted The Talk, Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys, on top of a long run of self-appearances going back to Talk Soup.
The voice work keeps growing: Lena Luthor on Harley Quinn, Nubia in The Boys Presents: Diabolical, Millie in Monsters at Work. If you have watched adult animation in the last fifteen years you have heard her more often than you have seen her, and she is better at it than at almost anything the live-action work has given her to do.
Movies (13)
TV (19)
- Criminal Minds (2005)
- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000)
- Friends (1994)
- Archer (2009)
- Ghost Whisperer (2005)
- Harley Quinn (2019)
- The Talk (2010)
- The Last Thing He Told Me (2023)
- Monsters at Work (2021)
- Whose Line Is It Anyway? (2013)
- The Boys Presents: Diabolical (2022)
- The Comeback (2005)
- The Forgotten (2009)
- The New Tom Green Show (2003)
- XIII: The Series (2011)
- Diary of a Future President (2020)
- Prime Rewind: Inside The Boys (2020)
- Kocktails With Khloé (2016)
- The Burn with Jeff Ross (2012)
Where to start with Aisha Tyler
If you know the voice and not the face, Archer explains it. Lana is the straight character in a show with no straight characters, which is much harder than playing one of the idiots, and Tyler makes it sound like nothing.
For the on-camera work, Criminal Minds is the substantial one, since Tara Lewis gets years of accumulated history rather than a guest spot. Friends is the famous cameo run, and Ghost Whisperer is where the network drama work began.
Animation is the real seam. Harley Quinn gives her a gleefully unpleasant Lena Luthor, and The Boys Presents: Diabolical is a single sharp short. If you want the hosting, Whose Line Is It Anyway? suits her fastest instincts. The Santa Clause 2 is a family-viewing footnote, and Death Sentence one of her few straight thrillers.
Archer
Fourteen seasons as Lana Kane, a field agent who is competent, exasperated and surrounded by people who are neither. It is the longest and best thing on her record.
The dramatic television
Criminal Minds gave her nearly a decade as a forensic psychologist, which is the longest straight dramatic run on her record. Ghost Whisperer and CSI are the earlier network jobs.
The hosting and comedy
She was a stand-up first and it shows. Whose Line requires improvising while running a show, which is a harder job than it looks, and she has two Daytime Emmys for The Talk.