Aisha Tyler Makes New Friends

Landing a prime guest spot on Friends used to be the dream of every young actress who decamped to Hollywood to make it as a star. You get right off the bus at NBC Studios and date Ross, and your future is all set. Aisha Tyler had just that luck, even though she had been in L.A. for more than a minute by that point and had hosted E!'s Talk Soup when she finally got her chance. She had the best of those guest spots in the 10 years of Friends, playing Ross's paleontologist pal Charlie over the course of nine episodes in two seasons and getting lots of mileage out of being the only African-American "friend." But the show didn't work its magic.

So forget conventional career wisdom. Forget network TV, even. Here's the new route to stardom: Play the victim of female circumcision on a spicy new cable show.

Playing Manya Mabika, a genitally mutilated Somali model, in an October 2004 episode of the FX drama Nip/Tuck finally launched Tyler into the TV stratosphere.

"I got calls from five dramas in eight days," says Tyler, who'd hitherto been known primarily as a comedian.