For someone who loves to fuck up, comedian Aisha Tyler is insanely successful. Her current projects include voicing the badass and large-handed Lana on Archer, hosting the recently reborn Whose Line Is It Anyway?, co-hosting the weekday talk show The Talk — and beyond that, she has a podcast, her New York Times bestselling book Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation has just been optioned for TV, and she recently filmed the pilot for a new HBO show created by Ryan Murphy. Oh! And she still goes on comedy tours. She'll be performing at the Wild West Comedy Festival on Saturday, May 17, at Zanies.
"People who know Archer probably know what kind of a show they're gonna get from me," she says. "It's a grown-up show, it's dirty. Don't bring your 12-year-old daughter who loves me from The Ghost Whisperer."
With all that happening in her life, it was the ultimate compliment that Tyler would also take time out of her obviously busy schedule to talk to me about embracing life's endless parade of humiliation.
How many hours do you have in a day? Because I have 24 and I can barely keep my own shit together, while you have a podcast, host a daily talk show, voice a character in Archer, host Whose Line Is It Anyway?, you've written a book, you do comedy tours ... why do you do it all?
A punishing fear of inadequacy. [laughs] I feel like it's a couple things. I'm sure I'm a workaholic. I really only feel happy when I have that kind of penny taste of panic in my mouth. But I also feel like being super-busy makes me more effective. I feel like if I have 30 things to do I can get them done in a day, and if I have one thing to do I'll give it six or seven weeks. That urgency of being busy makes me effective. And this is a terrible platitude, like a shitty greeting card, but you know, I'll rest when I'm dead. I just don't want to look back and be like, "Man, I wish I had worked harder, I wish I had done more auditions, I wish I had tried that thing." I just try everything that I think I could possibly be good at, and I just do it. I worry about whether it's gonna work far, far after the fact.
Well — and you famously turned things that haven't worked into a success story — your book is about all the times you've fucked up and you visit that topic on your podcast as well. Do you think that's linked to it, too? Just to prove to yourself that despite this collection of humiliation, you can, in fact, do anything?
Maybe, but I feel like humiliation goes hand in hand because failure goes hand in hand with success. I use this quote all the time: "Success is not the absence of failure, success is persistence through failure." Anybody who is successful will tell you all the hundreds of times when they blew it. I talk a lot about the concept of risk as an inherent aspect of being successful. If you're not failing, you're not risking, and if you're not risking, you're not innovating — and I just always want to try to wake up the next day a little bit better than I was the day before. It's not that I don't relax or fuck around and sit on the couch and play video games — I do, I just hate the idea that I let opportunities slip by me.
So failures are an indivisible element of me trying to be a better person, to have adventures and try to experience life fully. And as a comic, and every comedian will tell you this, the answer to the old question, "Have you ever bombed?" So much! Innumerable times! And any comedian who tells you they haven't is a liar. And it's only bombing that makes you funny. Destroying makes you an arrogant douche. But when you've bombed, it makes you rethink every life choice you've ever made, so it's only losing that helps you win, period.
Because you're so open about your own fuck-ups, do you get fans coming up to you and wanting to tell you about times they've messed up?
Oh, all the time. People send me long, long emails with their own self-inflicted wound stories — sometimes they understand the concept, sometimes they don't. But you see these people, you see Chris Rock or Andy Richter, and they seem like they have these perfect lives. And then they tell these stories, and you go, "Oh, they're human." They didn't fall out of the sky perfectly formed, they're not superheroes. They're talented, sure, but they worked hard. And they made a lot of mistakes. And there really isn't that much daylight between me and them, and I think that was the whole point of me creating the self-inflicted wound segment on my podcast, was humanizing people who seem superhuman. Fans love that! The book was a way to say "Hey, you're not alone. You're not as much of a dumbass as you think, we're all pretty stupid."
Have you found that the more successful you are the less likely you are to humiliate yourself, or does it just never end?
Oh my God. I mean, I'm older, so I'm maybe a little wiser. One of the things you always hear people say as they get older is that they like themselves more, but I think you are easier on yourself. So maybe as I've gotten older I'm less traumatized by humiliation.
That book was not comprehensive, by any means. I still do dumb things all the time. And I hope I never stop doing dumb things, because that makes me feel alive.
It'd be boring to get everything right all the time.
It would be. Nobody wants to be around that guy. No one wants to have drinks with the guy who walks into a bar and goes like, "Hey guys, got a new $2,000 suit, I got a promotion, I'm fucking a model, who wants to hear about it?" Nobody likes that guy. No, everybody wants to be around the guy who comes running in like, one shoe, one bare foot, he's damp, his pockets are turned out, and he's like, "Oh my God, you guys, I think I just set my car on fire." Come sit by me and tell me about it! We love that guy! No one wants to be around the guy with all the answers. Screw that guy.
I hear you recently filmed a pilot for HBO with Ryan Murphy, Open.
Yeah, that was pretty exciting. I love him — this is the third project he's put me in. He's an incredible mind.
It's a bit sexy, yeah?
It's a lot bit sexy, yeah — it's a show about monogamy. It's about monogamy and fidelity. I think it's a really interesting topic. And he deals with things in such an elegant, elevated way — like, thoughtful and provocative. I'm looking forward to seeing the pilot — I haven't seen it yet.
So if you're still waiting to see it, we'll have to wait even longer!
Yeah, exactly. Everybody in the business gets very accustomed to the idea of just waiting around to hear what happens. As an actor, a big part of what you do is you just do the work, and you don't really think about the result too much.
That's interesting — that would drive me crazy. I'm not a patient person.
I always tell people that being an actor is like a Buddhist exercise, because you have to get very passionate about what you do and then be completely detached at the same time. Everything is like a Buddhist sand painting, right? You work really, really hard to make something extraordinary, unique, specific, beautiful and transcendent — and then you, like, kick it to the street. It's been a good exercise for me because I am a perfectionist and I am super-anal, and people go, "How can you do it?" And I go, "Oh, I died inside years ago."
I'm super excited about the comedy festival, but I couldn't help notice that there's only three female performers over the five days — Kathleen Madigan, Chelsea Handler and yourself. And that's not just specific to this festival, either. I think it's fair to say comedy is still considered a dude's club. Is it starting to get better?
Oh, obviously. Obviously some of the most dominant voices in comedy are female right now — Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling and Lena Dunham. I feel like that is changing right now in a really extraordinary way. But it's hard because I don't sit around being like, "Oh, you should let more girls in." I don't think that's happening. I think that historically women have been socialized, and still are to a great extent, to be precious and cute and adorable, and comedy is none of those things. Comedy's ugly, and you look stupid and you look silly and you're a clown and you're gonna talk about your worst moments. A big part of comedy is divulging your secrets and talking about yourself at your worst possible times in your life.
I think there are incredibly funny women out there, and we need to do a good job of supporting them and enabling them. But when I was a baby comic a lot of male comics supported me and helped me, and not in a creepy way. They gave me great advice, they put me on their shows — we just need to bring more women along.
I feel like it's starting to get better, too, as far as female comics not always being marketed just to other females.
There was a period when club owners didn't think women were funny and wouldn't book them. And then they started booking them on these women-only nights — and so all of a sudden you have these shows that were built around this concept, and so it kind of forced women to cater to a female audience. Like we spoke a different language, and when we talked guys would be like, "I don't hear anything but birds chirping and flower petals."
I think comedy is about connecting with your audience. For me, even though I'm a woman, it's not everything I'm about. So I don't get up and think "I'm only gonna reach the girls, so let me just try to get the girls." I get up there and think I'm gonna make everybody in this room laugh. That's how I approach comedy. And honestly, my fanbase is, like, 70 percent guys. My comedy is very guy-friendly, so my goal has always been to make everybody laugh.
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