Amber Nash – Archer

By: Kelly Kearney

Q) Pam is certainly a wild ride. Do you ever find yourself wondering, “What would Pam do,” in your everyday life?

Amber: Good question! In Season Two and Three, the executive producer approached myself and also Lucky Yates (who plays Dr. Krieger) and asked us if we wanted to write our character’s Twitter feeds. I was like, “Oh my God! I don’t know if I can write for her. I don’t know if I’m even capable of doing that.” He was like, “Ooh, you’ll be fine. Write us up some sample tweets and we will see how it goes.” So, I wrote him some tweets and I was trying to imagine what was going on in this character’s life when we’re not seeing them on the show. So, I got to get into what the apartment she lives in is like and what her side jobs are and all that kind of stuff. So, the first batch of tweets that I sent Matt Thompson [executive producer] he sent back that they were entirely too dirty. I was like, “What are you talking about? This is Pam we are talking about here!” I went back to the drawing board and wrote some more and he thought they were great so we’ve been writing them ever since. It’s been such a fun challenge to try and figure out what’s going on in this character’s life that’s not on the show. It’s been really fantastic.

Q) Can you tease what’s in store for your character in Season Eight?

Amber: I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you a little. The character of Pam is now called “Poovey” and Poovey is a cop who happens to be gender neutral. Now you know this show is set in dreamland in 1947 so it’s got this beautiful noir feeling to it, like all the stuff for Season Eight looks so incredible. Poovey and Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell) are partners and one of the bits of information I got at the very beginning about what was going to go on in Season Eight was that the character of Poovey was kind of based off of Russel Crowe’s character in L.A. Confidential. So, it was really cool to watch that and sort of think about it, but when I went into the booth to record the first episode I was like, “do you guys want me to do anything different, sound wise?” They said, “Nope, it’s the same,” and I thought, “Great. So, we will have to see how I do…maybe this will be the year I win an Emmy. [laughing]

Q) The fans really love this character. What’s the craziest fan experience you’ve had?

Amber: I have had a lot of them [pauses and laughs] I’ll give you two. One time I was at a little small Con in I think Ashville, North Carolina, which was an easy drive for me because I live in Atlanta. So, I went up there with Lucky and we were staying at the hotel the Con was in and so were a lot of the Con’s attendees. We were out late one night at the hotel bar and on the way back up to our rooms we walked by our signing table, just to make sure we knew where it was for the following day. This guy and his girlfriend stop us. She is in some costume that I don’t even know what it was…I don’t know what most of them are because I just don’t have a lot of nerd knowledge, to know what all these things are but she is in some sexy elf costume and her boyfriend is just like some regular dude. I don’t even think he was dressed up. They stopped us and were like, “Heyyyyyy could you sign something for us?” Lucky and I were like, “Yeah, sure, no problem.” So, they wanted Lucky to sign her butt and I was like, “I guess… but isn’t that kind of like sexist? What if I sign your butt sir?” So, I kind of turned it around on them, but then I had to sign this man’s hairy butt and man butts are pretty gross [laughing]. I’m not joking, you touch so many random people, sweaty people, and butts and it’s just really crazy. The other story was I was doing an AMA on Reddit and those are usually like floods of questions and it’s impossible to keep up. Like I can’t imagine when Obama did his because it’s like good God, there’s so many questions coming at you! So, I was trying to answer as many questions as I could so everyone would be happy because you do not want to piss off people on Reddit. This guy asks me if I can take a closeup picture of my closed arm, like the crook of my elbow. I guess it looks like a butt close up and I was like, “No sir, that is the grossest thing I have ever been asked and I’m not going to do that.”

Q) The casting on this show is perfect, but if you could play another character on “Archer” who would it be and why?

Amber: Oh, that’s a good one! I think the character I love most, outside of Pam or now Poovey, is Gillette (Adam Reed). I think Gillette is such a fun character that people tend to forget about, but he’s just like so sassy and fantastic. I just love Gillette and I think he would be the character that I would choose.

Q) What is your favorite “Pamism?”

Amber: Oh boy…well…gosh…so many, but I think I love “Holy shit-snacks” because it’s got this “Scooby-Doo,” 1970’s feel to it. I like that one. One of the ones I like that is used a lot is, “Shut your dick holster.” That’s a great one. There is just so many terrible ones that I love. Oh, my other favorite is, “You’re so hot for him that you heat this chili in your cooch.” At San Diego Comic-Con last year, or the year before, we were talking about this on a panel and I was talking about cooch chili. I said that we should have a Pam cookbook where she has all these ridiculous recipes for things like cooch chili because all the tweets I do on the Twitter feed (or at least a lot of them) end up being like weird recipes. So, fingers crossed that one day we’ll have an “Archer” cookbook.

Q) You’re on social media like most people in your business. What’s it like getting that instant fan feedback?

Amber: You know, there can be some drawbacks to social media, but I’ve gotten lucky. I’ve been very fortunate online. I spend most of my time of Twitter. I don’t really love Facebook, but Twitter is where I really like to do my thing. The most fun has been the last three seasons, I have been live tweeting the episodes and it’s so much fun. The episodes go by so fast. I always have to re-watch them so I can remember what happened in the episode, but during the commercial breaks I can go look and see what the people are saying and interact with them and it’s all in real time and its super fun. So, that’s always my favorite. But also a couple years ago I did a Pam cosplay contest and because I get a lot of swag like dolphin puppets and things that people have sent me from FX, I had a lot of stuff that I could give away.  I did the contest and had people dress up as Pam and send me their pictures and gave them a week to do it. I got so many incredible pictures of people doing crazy stuff dressed in Pam cosplay. It was really hard to pick a winner and I think that was probably the most fun. I think I should do that again. I mean, there was men Pam’s and it was so much fun. The downs side is I guess it can be rough out there on social media. I know a lot of celebrities get a lot of bullshit from people, but I have been really lucky. There’s just been a handful of people that have little things to say, but like I said I’ve been fortunate it’s just been a small group of people.

Q) Speaking of fan participation, you use to do an “Archer” live, is there any chance you might do that again?

Amber: Oh God, I wish! I hope so. We talked about it a little last year and it’s been maybe two or three years since we’ve done one. We did one as San Diego Comic-Con last year, on this yacht, and it was so crazy and a lot of fun. We really like performing, we don’t get to work together because we record separately so it’s a rare opportunity to get together and have fun with each other. So, we talked about it and I think maybe they were waiting to see if they could try and find a sponsor for it. I would really love to do it again and I think, overall, the cast would be down with it too. You know, the fans are so great and they get so into it you would be a monster if you had a bad time doing that show.

Q) What is it about this show that continues to draw the viewers in?

Amber: I think, honestly, what really does it is the writing is smart. It expects the audience to be smart and while it is dirty at times, it is always earned through the intelligence of the episode. It’s never out of nowhere meaning it’s never just gratuitous just for the sake of gratuity. It’s very smart and well written and doesn’t pander to the audience. It’s also realistic and not made like a cartoon. It’s made like a real show and you kind of have to watch the whole season to know what’s going on and to keep up. So, it’s made like a lot of T.V. that’s popular today and I think because it is animated it gives us a license to get away with things we probably couldn’t get away with in live action. Overall though, I really think it’s the intelligence that draws the viewers in.

Q) Following up on that last question, were you surprised by the cult like following of the show and the popularity of Pam?

Amber: I was surprised in the beginning because I had never been on a T.V. show before. I mean, I did “Frisky Dingo,” which was an Adult Swim show on Cartoon Network, but I have never been on a big time show before and I don’t think I realized what I was getting into. By Season Two I was like okay, people are really responding to it and I was blown away by how popular it became. It’s eight years later and I’m still like, “What? Is this still going on? How am I so lucky that this happened?” With Pam, I think what people responded to with her is that she doesn’t give a shit. She’s totally unapologetic and super confident. She’s body positive, she’s sex positive, she can do anything. I think that’s what started to happen with Adam [Reed] and writing the episodes, he’d be like, “Huh…we need somebody to do this…Well, let’s just have Pam do it.” Then, after doing that a few times she just became such a bad ass. I mean she can do graffiti, she can race cars, she’s extremely strong. I mean what cant Pam do? It’s incredible and I’m so happy people responded to the character and I feel so grateful that I have such an incredible character that I get to play all the time.

Q) Besides the 8^th season coming out April 5^th, are you working on any other projects the fans can look out for?

Amber: Yeah, there’s something online now that people can go see. I work at a theater called Dad’s Garage Theater and Lucky Yates is also a part of that theater. We have a web series out called “Hart of America” and you can watch the whole series at www.hartofamerica.com. So, I have had a really good time promoting that and taking it to festivals and stuff like that. In April, we are shooting a short film with a group of adults with special needs. They play on a hockey team, a rec floor hockey team, and I’m their coach. It’s like a day in the life of this team so we are really excited about that and since we are shooting in April. Look for it probably around mid-summer. The fans can go to www.dadsgarage.com and they can find all this stuff there. We are really excited for that.