As Season Six of Archer gets into high gear, we had a chance to talk to Judy Greer, who voices Cheryl on the show. She shared with us six things about Archer, six seasons into its mission to make us laugh.
For someone like Greer, whose acting career takes her all over the place geographically, recording the voice of Cheryl is really a matter of finding a studio wherever she is. “Even in the weirdest little places, there’s probably a recording studio, so we just work it out.” So much for our fantasies that there’s a big Archer party every time they record an episode.
Lana has had her baby, Abbiejean, and the team is getting the little bundle of joy handed off to them quite a bit — which no one is happy about. “It’s a terrible, terrible idea to have any of us babysitting for this baby and Lana knows it. There’s definitely some last-minute babysitting that has to happen that no one’s happy about.” Poor baby.
Unlike other scripts she gets, Greer still looks forward to seeing what insanity writer Adam Reed is going to send her. “I still laugh out loud every time I read a new script and that’s really rare. I think that they’ve managed to keep the level — it stays as funny or it doesn’t seem like they’re losing energy or steam at all — when they’re writing. Yes, it feels just as fresh as the beginning to me, honestly.” Which hopefully means many more seasons for us!
As far as sharing any character traits with Cheryl, Greer says, “I kind of find that I want to; I don’t think I do.” In many ways it’s good to not be like Cheryl, but Judy does envy one thing about her character. “I don’t have the balls that she does. I wish I did. She doesn’t really have any kind of inner editor. She pretty much just says whatever she thinks. I don’t do that. I wish I was more like that.”
She does think her character has a few (okay, very few) admirable qualities: “She loves her job. I’m not going to say she’s a hard worker — I don’t think she really is — but she really loves her job. She’s very loyal to the Archer crew. She’s very loyal to them and I think she expects that in return. I think she’s weirdly generous with her wealth. Like letting everyone live in her mansion. She’s not stingy.”
Greer still gets a kick out of having a catch-phrase: “I’ve even done outgoing messages [for people], which is so funny, screaming, “You’re not my supervisor!” at a person’s cell phone. It’s really fun for me.”
Archer airs Thursday nights on FX at 10 p.m. Will you be watching?
