When Aisha Tyler returns to her native San Francisco to perform at Cobb’s Comedy Club on June 7 and 8, will it be her or a comedic clone?
The Bay Area’s Aisha hosts TV shows—“The Talk” and the upcoming return of “Whose Line?”—voice acts on the manic, animated “Archer,” hosts a podcast and is writing her second book. How could one of her possibly squeeze in a weekend to San Francisco to make us guffaw?
“I’m exhausted. I don’t even know who I’m talking to right now,” Aisha joked during a recent interview. “Right now, the world is just shadow and mist…Nothing great was ever done by just relaxing. It’s not like I’m Bill Gates or Julius Caesar! I just don’t like lying around, feeling like, ‘I wish I had done that.’”
Tyler also wears her nerd cred proudly. She loves “Game of Thrones,” Comic-Con, Zachary Quinto, “Star Trek” and “Star Wars,” though she probably won’t be campaigning to be in director J.J. Abrams’ upcoming “Star Wars” sequel.
“I don’t know, will there be a black person in the new ‘Star Wars?’ I guess you could make a female Lando Calrissian,” she said. “It would be neat if there was a Calrissian daughter, but I have no idea what they’re planning. After Lando, the closest thing to a black person is Chewbacca, and I definitely don’t want to play Chewbacca.
I’m tall enough to, though.”
Speaking of her height, Tyler said being tall enough and just masculine enough to be a drag queen are just a couple of the traits that help make her BFFs with the LGBT community. She recently hosted Logo TV’s “New Now Next Awards,” where “RuPaul’s Drag Race” season three champ, Raja, came out on stage dressed as Tyler.
“And said that he did me better than I do myself,” Tyler laughed.
It was the only time Tyler has seen a drag version of herself, but she wouldn’t be surprised now—especially during gay pride season—that some others might be popping up, with drag names like Alicia Taylor or Nyesha Twyler.
“There’s the other Tyra. So there could be the other Aisha. She’s in Atlanta right now doing a suicide drop; I’m sure of it,” she said.
Tyler did make one monumental mistake while surrounded by her drag sisters. She didn’t get any padding tips for her lack of booty. In fact, for her comedy special “Aisha Tyler is Lit: Live at The Fillmore,” she even had a music video about it called “Nowassitall.”
“The irony is—and I’ve really been thinking about this, especially when I was on the red carpet—is that women are always trying to make theirs smaller, and drag queens are always trying to make theirs bigger, and we would all kill for Raja’s body,” Tyler said. “Raja’s waist is so tiny, I want to eat a carrot stick and jump off the ledge. Meanwhile, Raja is like, ‘I’ve got to stuff my underpants with something.’ The grass is always hippier is the moral to that story.”
Aisha Tyler will perform at 8 and 10:15 p.m. on June 7, and at 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. on June 8, at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco. Visit cobbscomedyclub.com for more info and tickets.
Corey Andrew has been interviewing comedians and writing about comedy for the last decade and a half. He recently published the book, “Laugh Lines: Conversations with Comedians.” Corey was a writer and performer with Midwest sketch troupe, The NonProphets, before moving to the Bay Area with his family several years ago. If you have ideas for future columns about comedy, you can send them to coreywrites@yahoo.com or follow him at twitter.com/coreywrites.
