Q&A: Aisha Tyler

(Credit: Comedy Central)

Before she hosted “Talk Soup,” dated Ross and Joey on “Friends” or chatted with dead dudes on “The Ghost Whisperer,” Aisha Tyler cut her pearly whites as a stand-up comedian. It’s a job, and a love, she’s never given up, just one that got pushed to the side while she did the whole "I'm a genuinely successful actor" thing.

Now Tyler is returning to her roots for “Aisha Tyler is Lit: Live at the Fillmore,” a Comedy Central special she filmed last year in her native San Francisco. We spoke to this funny lady about what went into her first comedy special.

How is it that this is your first comedy special? Do you think it’s because people think of you more as an actress?
That may be part of it. I wouldn’t say I’ve had incredible success, but I’ve had a good amount of success as an actress. But part of it was also that I didn’t have time to pursue [stand-up]. I’ve been so focused on acting that I wasn’t able to tour in a sustained way and really get an hour together that I was excited about doing on camera. Usually, if I’m doing a movie or a series, I can only go on the road for two or three weeks, which is not enough time. But last year, because of the writers' strike, I was able to go out for months.

For someone who only knows you from acting gigs like “Friends” and “The Ghost Whisperer,” how would you describe your stand-up act?
I think if people know me from “Talk Soup" [the E! show Aisha hosted for two years], then they’ll understand my sense of humor. We used to try to do a combination of thinky and juvenile. Kafka references and fart jokes, that was the line we straddled. But it’s also very, very raw and very edgy. I try not to play it safe. I try to be as honest as I can. Oh, also, I think my comedy is very guy-friendly, which I think makes me unique as a female comedian.

When you were starting out, did you ever have any problems getting jobs or being taken seriously because of how you look?
Oh, for sure. And it’s not that I think of myself as attractive, I definitely don’t, but when I was starting out, I was not taken seriously by club owners. Though this special is probably the nicest I’ve ever looked on stage. I’m usually up there in jeans and a t-shirt because I don’t want people to be thinking about how I look, I want people to hear what I was saying. That’s always been very important to me. So it’s definitely been a problem, but it’s also been a challenge I’ve enjoyed overcoming.

Besides being able to make Allman Brothers jokes, why else did you decide to do your special at the Fillmore?
Because I was dying to wreck a dressing room. I was like, “I’m gonna set this bitch on fire.” Part of it was because, growing up in San Francisco, the Fillmore is such an iconic landmark. But also, because it’s my first special, I wanted to do something that looked and felt different from anything people had seen before. We actually shot it like a live rock show.

Does that mean the next one will be shot at the Budokan?
I’m going to do it atop the sphinx in Egypt like Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute.

Nice. When you started planning your special, did you go back and watch anyone else’s for guidance?
Not really for guidance on material, but I did watch some recent specials to see how they were shot. Though over the years, I’ve seen them all, so I did think about such specials as “Bill Cosby: Himself,” “Richard Pryor on the Sunset Strip” and Chris Rock’s first one, “Bring the Pain,” and about how they were really personal statements about who they were, how much of themselves they put into their specials. That’s what I wanted, I wanted to do something that was an expression of who I am now.

Did its being shown on TV effect what jokes you did or did not include, or did you just go for it and let the machine that goes “beep” worry about it?
Luckily for us, Comedy Central likes it raw. You look at a show like “South Park” and Cartman says the word “balls” a hundred times in 30 minutes. So we weren’t told what we could and could not do. But we also knew the show was going to come out on DVD, and would be completely uncut. It has an extra 25 minutes of footage we didn’t show on Comedy Central. Though it’s not like I curse constantly, anyway.

Do you ever self-censor yourself because you don’t want to say things in front of people you know?
That’s very rare. As a comedian, you work for years to destroy the brain/mouth barrier that most people have. To be funny, you have to have a pure relationship between concept and execution with no censorship. But I also have cool parents. They were at the show, and a friend came up to me at the show and was like, “What do you parents think?” And I said, “Well, I’ve been married for 15 years. If they haven’t figured out that I’m having sex by now, maybe they need therapy.”

On the IMDb page for “Fillmore,” it has a section that says “If you enjoyed this title, our database also recommends” and it then lists George Carlin’s last HBO special, the Adam Sandler movie “Bedtime Stories” you were in, and three Gallagher videos (“The Bookkeeper,” “Stuck in the Sixties” and “Over Your Head”). How many watermelons do you smash in this thing?
Oh no! Why?! How did that happen? Is Gallagher from the Bay Area, maybe that’s how. I have no idea how that happened. I’m devastated by that, to be quite honest!

You've done funny movies and sitcoms, a book and now a comedy special that’s going to be a comedy video. As a comedian, what else is on your “to do” list?
Well, we did a music video for this special that just went up on MySpace, and that was really fun to direct. So I’d like to do more comedic shorts and more directing and things like that. But you know me, I want to do my action comedy. I want to make jokes while I blow stuff up.

“Aisha Tyler is Lit: Live at the Fillmore” airs Saturday, Feb. 21, at 11 p.m. ET/PT and will available on DVD on Feb. 24.