Irish Rican here -
Talking to Archer creator Adam Reed was like a nerd dream come to life. For years he's put the most incredible animated shows like Sealab 2021, The Xtacles, and the incredible Frisky Dingo. Archer, whose season finale airs tonight on FX, is truly on the funniest shows on television. With its painted animation and excellent voice cast, which includes Jessica Walter, Aisha Tyler, Chris Parnell, and Judy Greer, the show about a spy, the agency he works for, and the eccentric cast of characters is just perfect. It's my favorite show on television beating Lost, 30 Rock, Big Bang Theory, and...um...The Bad Girls Club (what? I love drunk girls getting in catfights!).
So sitting down with Adam Reed, who was busy finishing up the season finale when I talked to him, was enough to give me a geek-stiffie while he spilled the beans on Archer's finale, season two, and what would have happened in Frisky Dingo Season Three.
IRISH RICAN: Alright Adam I have three words for you: Archer Season Two! How excited are you?
ADAM REED: Super excited! The numbers for Archer weren't fantastic after the premiere. So we were getting a little nervous, but FX believes in the show. It was a nice feeling throughout Season One when they were saying, "It's a marathon, not a sprint. Don't freak out." Towards the later episodes they were saying that we found the floor on the ratings, but then they bounced up a little bit and we got picked up. So yeah, incredibly excited.
IR: I love the look of the show.
AR: Thank you!
IR: The first time I saw it when I was watching Frisky Dingo I thought, 'This show looks fucking amazing."
AR: There were alot of learning curves, with Archer I think we built on what we learned with Frisky Dingo.
IR: What can we expect in the season ender? What's up with the ISIS crew?
AR: Questions are raised about Archer's father and who he might be. Everything sort-of comes to a head with people's relationships: Cyril and Lana, Carol the choke-sex enthusiast, Pam and Lana...
IR: Anything more about Lana's big hands?
AR: They do come up in this episode.
IR: All I wanted to do when I started the interview was yell out, "TRUCKASAURUS!"
AR: I think it would have been a good way!
IR: Now you tell me.
AR: I didn't realize when I wrote that, that Truckasaurus was on The Simpsons. I thought Truckasaurus was the real monster truck. But I think the real name isn't as cool or funny as Truckasaurus.
IR: Is there anything in the show that fans haven't caught onto yet?
AR: We did this thing in Sealab that whenever there's a code we always used 9-3-4-Texas. I can't explain what it's for or I'll get in trouble. But that comes up in Archer as well. It's a very small and insidery thing. The Johnny Bench line was just an accidental ad-lib and then everyone's sort of doing it. Everyone talks about how Johnny Bench was famous for his huge hands, there's that great picture of him holding seven baseballs in one hand...it's stuff like that we really don't think about when we do it, but then viewers come up with their own theories on things.
IR: How's you snag your cast for Archer?
AR: We sent out a casting call for all the characters and one of the first that went out was for Mallory (ISIS head & Archer's mother). We described her as 'a Jessica Walter type.' The next day Jessica's agent called and said, "How about the real Jessica Walter?" Hyperventilation ensued, lots of fist pumps. Then when she agreed to do it we were thinking, "Maybe we can get Aisha Tyler. Tell her Jessica Walter is doing it." So we just name dropped her name shamelessly.
IR: It was great to hear Jeffrey Tambor (Walter's Arrested Development co-star) on the show!
AR: Yes, Jessica was a great selling point and we've had some great guest stars. Thomas Lennon from Reno 911. Ron Perlman from Sons of Anarchy. It's a huge change because on Frisky Dingo it was either me or guys in the house, we worked out of an old brick house, we had a VO booth in the bedrooms and we would just run into the booth and do the voices. So it really is fun to work with great, talented professionals.
IR: What are you guys cooking up for the second season?
AR: I'm working with FX now on it. Some of the things we've been talking about is introducing a recurring nemesis for Archer. All signs point to the world's sexiest Russian woman. Archer's just head over heels for her, but she thwarts him everytime. She is his Moriarty, but she's super hot. We'll be seeing more of the guys at ODIN - they are this gigantic agency, they have the world's coolest building, everyone there is better looking, and they're all sleek and modern. So we're playing with small business versus big business. Also we're trying to keep everybody getting slightly weirder and more dysfunctional with every episode. Of course we'll need to see how many times we can get Archer shot or blown up.
IR: I just rewatched Frisky Dingo and the two episodes of The Xtacles not too long ago and it made me sad how everything just ended abruptly. Where were you going with the shows? You had the aliens coming down and...
AR: Yeah. The plan was the whole gang was going to go back to Killface's planet and hang out there for at least half the season. Killface was going to be this spoiled prince character. His mother was queen of the planet and he was one of the screwups. So they sent him to Earth (to take over the planet) and he screwed that up. So seeing Killface in his world as the spoiled prince.
I really miss the Frisky Dingo characters. I spent so much time with them rolling around in my head that all of a sudden not to be writing for them anymore was kind-of depressing. I would come up with lines or scenes and realize, 'Oh. There's nowhere to put this.'
IR: I was very sad that it was gone. At least Archer popped up to fill the void. We got a longer format out of it, instead of these 10 minutes shows we got the full half hour.
AR: That was a real challenge at first. Usually it was just here's eleven minutes of crazy shit so Archer taught me how to adhere better dramatic forms. Which I think is good, my English professor would be proud of me. Actually no, he probably wouldn't.
IR: No?
AR: Actually my favorite professor from college is who Sterling Archer is named after. They are the only two people named Sterling that I know. I always thought it was such a cool name.
IR: For anyone who hasn't watched Archer, what would you say to them to watch the season finale?
AR: There's plenty of male nudity, there's sex with a robot, and gunplay!
Of course one of the biggest draws to Archer is the sexy Aisha Tyler. I found that getting the chance to kick back and talk to Aisha Tyler was actually a bit intimidating. Aisha is one of those great talents who is smart, great looking, and too damn funny. On FX's Archer Aisha brings those elements to voicing Lana Kane, super hottie secret agent of ISIS - a flawless voice casting which can have fanboys wagging their tongues at a cartoon character. At least I could out-nerd Aisha, right? I started off the conversation by saying to her my favorite line from Archer, "TRUCKASAURUS!" and went in expecting to school Aisha in all things nerdy. I was about to find out that Aisha, whether a real person or cartoon person, could pretty much beat me at everything.
IRISH RICAN: As a beautiful, sexy black woman what do you do to prepare for your role as Lana...a beautiful, sexy black woman?
AISHA TYLER: Very little. Some days I shower, some days I don't. That's the great thing about playing Lana, she's animated, so I can show up to work in the clothes I slept in the night before. And I generally do which is probably disappointing to the sound engineer who expects Lana to walk in and instead gets a dumpy hobo. I've been playing Lana long enough now that I just go in with an open mind and Adam & I are pretty in-sync comedically. We just screw around until we find the funniest way to say a line. We do a fair amount of improving and playing around, I just go in ready to have a good time. That's about all the preperation that I do. I wish I had some grand Brandoesque method for you but I usually just get up, drink caffenated beverage, try not to spit in microphone is generally my method.
IR: How'd you come to be cast in Archer?
AT: My agent called and said "They want to offer you this show." It's the best way to get a show, someone calling and asking if you want to do it. I'm a huge fan of Adam (Reed - Archer's creator) from Sealab 2021. Loved the show, didn't know him, but LOVED that show. We clipped it a couple of time on Talk Soup, I just loved it so much. So they sent the script and I didn't know who Adam was so I IMDB'd him, saw Sealab, and said, "DONE! I'm doing it!" So I didn't know Frisky Dingo, I never had seen it, so it was really (a) on the strength of Sealab 2021 and (b) the most kickass pilot script in the whole world. I laughed out loud many times reading it. It's really rare when you read like 100 scripts that you actually laugh at something on the page but I thought it was the most stupendous piece of writing ever.
IR: You have alot of great lines on the show.
AT: Yeah I get very lucky.
IR: Everytime you say, "Yuuuuuuup" it just breaks me LAUGH.
AT: Thanks. A fan actually just made like a call-out page for it which is audio samples of everytime Lana says "Yup" on the show. It's definetly turning into a catch phrase. I've never had a catch phrase so it makes me feel special.
IR: What is happening with Lana in the season finale?
AT: I don't know if I'm supposed to even tell you.
IR: Oh it's okay. You can tell me everything.
AT: Oh I can? Just like my college boyfriend, "Please do! Please tell me everything!" Well in the last episode Archer and I were in Paris and I was hopefully going to get a job with ODIN (a rival spy agency) and found my boyfriend Cyril "balls-deep" in a French chick. So Lana is going to be full of her customary boiling rage which is simmering right below the surface. There's going to be some fall out from Cyril's crazy compulsive cheating and also pointing out Cyril's disgusting sloppy seconds. Archer's also dealing with some of his mommy issues.
What's great is now ISIS has this competitive agency, we finally have our nemesis. The best part of a nemesis is that you alternately love them and hate them. I think it's going to be both competitve, murderess, and we'll all clearly sleep with each other which what we international spies do when we aren't out killing people with a kung-fu grip...we're sleeping with random slutty secretaries. The season finale is going to be awesome and it's going to set up all the killer dynamics for next season.
IR: Are you excited about getting picked up for next season?
AT: I was actually on a business call. We had been waiting for awhile - there's been alot of great reviews, more and more people are coming to it, we're so proud of it, but we just hadn't heard yet. So I was on this call and Adam tweets me that the show got picked up and I just hung up on the person I was talking with to call Adam. I was like, "I gotta go...CLICK." And then we gloated how about how the show got picked up and how happy we were. And then we gloated because we are going to Comic-Con. I danced all around my office like a leprechaun around a tiny Stonehenge because I've been waiting my whole life to go to Comic-Con. I can not fucking wait!
IR: Comic-Con is something. MAD HOUSE!
AT: I'm so excited. Other girls dream when they are little of being ballerinas or astronauts. I dreamed about being around surrounded by thousands of sweaty nerds. I cannot wait to go. There is a tiny, sweaty nerd trapped inside my body and he cannot wait to go to Comic-Con.
IR: You just said you have a tiny, sweaty nerd inside you.
AT: He's a happy guy! I keep him fed and he gets to play XBox.
IR: So where would you like to see Lana go in the second season? Will she find a guy after being cheated on by Cyril?
AT: I don't think that Lana needs a guy. I think Lana is going to play the field. There is some awesome stuff, now that I'm thinking about it, in the season finale. Lana is really going to pull out the guns. Even though Archer is a super-douche he's much more Lana's equal then Cyril is. The reason she was dating Cyril, despite the fact that he is supposed to be well hung, is because he was a guy she thought wasn't going to bother her. He's a nice guy, he's going to shut up when I tell him to shut up, he'll make me dinner when I get home, and he's not going to get in my way. He really did turn out to be a burden. You're going to see that Lana is going to go commando, focusing on spying and sleeping with other hot spies. She's going to drop the zero and get with the hero.
IR: What's coming up for you? Any Balls of Fury comedies coming out?
AT: Got lots coming out. I'm on tour right now, I did a Comedy Central special which is out on DVD right now which is on sale at Amazon, my website, digial download.
IR: Got to get the site plugs in.
AT: Course! I'm working on a new comedy special right now which is written and killing. So I'm touring with that getting that material ready to tape the new special hopefully this fall. I'm working on a new book on gaming, because I love it so much. AND I'm working on two new television projects which hopefully I'll be able to talk more about soon.
IR: Feel free to add me on XBox anytime so I can SCHOOL YOU.
AT: HAH! Bring it! I don't play as much as I like because there is like this mass of fans waiting to curse at me everytime I get online. I also don't look forward to getting teabagged by a 7-year-old, that's not my idea of a good time.
IR: Yeah...that happens to me alot.
AT: (laughs ALOT at Irish Rican).
IR: I login and they kill me and yell, "What's wrong with you, asshole?"
AT: Exactly! "Take that fucker!" Does your mother know that you talk like that? OH! And I forgot to mention that I did a voice for Halo Reach which is coming out this fall.
IR: You are?
AT: Yeah. Pretty much the greatest day of my life after I got married. After my wedding day. Um, sometimes it may be equal to my wedding day. Although my husband will kill me if I say that.
IR: Is he reading Ain't It Cool News?
AT: Yeah. He's almost as nerdy as I am.
IR: Well then, you're screwed.
AT: So I recorded a couple week ago and I can't wait for it to come out so I can shoot myself in the face.
IR: Are you a soldier? What did you do the voice for?
AT: I can't tell you! I am playing a good character, I'm a good guy. I'm a Marine of some kind.
IR: Well now I'm looking forward to shooting you in the face too.
You can follow Aisha on Twitter, Facebook, and she says she's still on something called 'MySpace'. Archer's season finale airs on FX March 18th at 10PM.
