Aisha Tyler (born September 18, 1970) is an American actress and talk show host. She is known for playing Andrea Marino in the first season of Ghost Whisperer, Dr. Tara Lewis in Criminal Minds since 2015, Mother Nature in the final two The Santa Clause films, and voicing Lana Kane in Archer. She also had recurring roles on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Talk Soup, and Friends.
She co-hosted seasons two through seven of CBS's The Talk, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host. She has hosted Whose Line Is It Anyway? since 2013. She also hosted Ubisoft's E3 press conferences and has lent her voice to the video games Halo: Reach, Gears of War 3, and Watch Dogs.
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Early life
Tyler was born on September 18, 1970, in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Robin Gregory, a teacher, and James Tyler, a photographer. The family spent one year in Ethiopia and later spent time living in an ashram in Oakland, California. Her parents separated when she was ten years old, after which her father raised her. Her maternal great-grandfather was Thomas Montgomery Gregory, a dramatist and educator, and her great-great-grandfather was Howard University professor James Monroe Gregory. She explained on The Howard Stern Show that she was raised in a black neighborhood but went to a predominantly white private school which led to being teased by kids in her neighborhood with names like 'whitey'.
She pursued an early interest in comedy at McAteer High School in San Francisco, which had a special program called School of the Arts, now named Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. Tyler attended high school with Sam Rockwell and Margaret Cho. She had a crush on Rockwell and followed him into acting class one day, leading to her interest in improv and sketch.
Tyler graduated from Dartmouth College in 1992. She was a member of The Tabard, a co-ed fraternity. At Dartmouth, she co-founded and sang in the Dartmouth Rockapellas, an all-female a cappella group devoted to spreading social awareness through song.
After briefly working for a San Francisco advertising firm, she toured the country pursuing a comedy career then moved to Los Angeles in 1996.
Career
Tyler's career in television took off in 2001 with jobs as the host of Talk Soup and the reality-dating series The 5th Wheel, although Talk Soup was canceled the following year and Tyler left The 5th Wheel in 2002 to pursue other interests. Tyler has devoted a significant amount of her time to independent projects, including a role in the play Moose Mating, for which she received an NAACP Image Award. She also wrote, directed, and starred in the independent short film The Whipper. Moving into acting, Tyler featured in Friends as Dr. Charlie Wheeler where she was Joey's and then Ross's girlfriend in the ninth and tenth seasons. She followed this up with guest spots on CSI: Miami and Nip/Tuck, as well as balancing season-long recurring roles on both CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and 24 during the 2004–2005 television season. She also filmed her own talk show pilot for ABC and a sitcom pilot for CBS, neither of which was picked up. She has guest-starred on MADtv.
Following her regular role on the CBS series Ghost Whisperer during its first season, Tyler appeared in several films, including The Santa Clause 2, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, .45, the comedy Balls of Fury and the Lifetime drama film For One Night alongside Raven-Symoné. In 2007, she filmed the thriller Death Sentence and the crime drama Black Water Transit. She also continues to appear on television, with appearances on Boston Legal, Reno 911!, The Boondocks, and as a guest film critic on several episodes of At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper, filling in for the absent Roger Ebert while he recuperated from surgery.
Tyler has moved into print media as a regular contributor to Glamour, Jane, and Entertainment Weekly magazines. Her first book, Swerve: A Guide to the Sweet Life for Postmodern Girls, was released in January 2004. Tyler plays on the World Poker Tour in the Hollywood Home games for the Futures Without Violence charity. She also made a guest appearance on Kanye West's single "Slow Jamz", which featured Twista and Jamie Foxx. Philanthropy and charity work are very important to Tyler, and she regularly does volunteer work for the American Red Cross, The Trust for Public Land, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the International Rescue Committee.
Tyler appeared in a nude pictorial, along with other celebrities, in the May 2006 issue of Allure. The annual Nude Issue raises money to combat skin cancer.
Personal life
Tyler married attorney Jeff Tietjens in 1992 or 1994 (sources differ). The pair separated in January 2015 and Tietjens filed for divorce in April 2016. The divorce was finalized in May 2017.
Filmography
Published works
Tyler, Aisha (2005). Swerve. Plume. ISBN 978-0452286320.
Tyler, Aisha (2013). Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation. It Books. ISBN 978-0062223777.