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.
She selected two from column A. For most of the fall and winter, the 34-year-old was shuttling between the sets of CBS's hit drama CSI, where she plays forensics analyst Mia Dickerson, and ABC's 24, where her duplicitous character Marianne Taylor was killed off in the February 21 episode.
Although her work schedule was exhausting, she says she had a blast playing two compelling characters while changing people's perceptions. "People like Jamie Foxx, Robin Williams and Tom Hanks came out of very broad comedy," she reminds. "You don't have to be limited by what people know you for. If you want to do good work as an actor, you have to spread your net as wide as you can."
Toward that end, she's not counting on other people's scripts to boost her career. She has already written one book, Swerve, a collection of comic anecdotes about being a single girl. She also writes screenplays, is developing her own show for CBS, still does standup on occasion and is thinking about a second book, even though while writing Swerve she swore she'd never do it again. "It was like the homework assignment that would never die. Remember when you were in college and you were always behind? I felt like that for a year," she laughs.
Native San Franciscan Tyler spent her own college years at Dartmouth after her father vetoed her choice of a California state university: "'You have the opportunity to go to an Ivy League school, and you want to stay here for a boy who's cute?' He wasn't having it," she says. She got her degree, in government, to please her parents, and then promptly refocused on the acting career she's wanted since she was 14. The political interest remains, however ‑- she'd love a part on The West Wing.
Since her Nip/Tuck appearance, Tyler has also endeavored to increase awareness of the female circumcision issue. "There are immigrant communities in the United States that do this, and they'll fly somebody in from out of the country and have all the daughters done at once. Parents have even done it themselves and girls have died," she shudders.
Tyler found another cute boy back East, by the way. She's married to college sweetheart Jeff Tietjens, a lawyer who stands even taller than her six feet. She proudly wears heels and says her height hasn't limited her opportunities in Hollywood. They have props for that, she says.
See Tyler emerge from our Revolving Door, and find out who she's replacing in the hierarchy of Hollywood. 