Adam Reed – Archer – Comic Con 2014

Interview By: Lynsey Tamborello

Q) What’s your favorite obscure reference that’s been on the show or just last season?

REED: I really liked that Bartleby the Scrivener joke from way back, that was pretty obscure. And I’m sure I’ve done, like – one of our sort of running gags is somebody will say something about something and somebody else will say, “Who am I, person blank?” And whatever the thing is- we just did one about watermelons, and then I go look up watermelon on Wikipedia and spent the next hour learning there’s basically a guy who invented watermelons. Like, they weren’t a thing and then some person just made that happen. Dave Frishberg, he’s great! A lot of people don’t know who he is. He’s amazing. And he invented watermelons! In addition to “Schoolhouse Rock,” he invented watermelons.

Q) When did you decide you wanted to do Archer Vice and what made you decide to go back to something similar to what you were doing before?

REED: I think it was a vacation and vacations end and you’re ready to get back home and sleep in your own bed. So, I think that was a lot of it. It’s like, let’s go do something fun, but then you’re tired of sleeping in hotels and you want to just go home.

Q) How do you make these pretty terrible people so lovable?

REED: I think it’s a combination of the voice cast being so great and then our artists and animators have a way of (in concert with the voices) making the worst things that you can imagine sound sympathetic coming out of these folks. So, I think it’s really a combination of the actors and the artists.

Q) Can you talk about some of the guest stars you’ve gotten on the show? They’ve been so great.

REED: We just recorded this past week Allison Tolman from “Fargo” who plays Pam’s sister. They go home for Pam’s sister’s wedding and she takes Archer as her date. And then things go…horribly wrong. And Christian Slater’s coming back a lot this season. We also haven’t recorded that many episodes. We’ve only recorded four so far so we still have a lot of time to bother guest stars and ask them to come be on “Archer.”

Q) Do you have any dream guest stars you haven’t yet gotten?

REED: A ton, like everybody, you know? I would love to have Zach Galifianakis on, that would be huge! So, he’s probably my, like, voiceover crush.

Q) What character would you have him play?

REED: I don’t know yet. Maybe an insane version of himself. Yeah, I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about what that character would be because…we probably won’t get Zach Galifianakis. But I would love that!

Q) In one of the past episodes, you guys got the trailer, and I know many fans were excited about maybe seeing a Top Gun episode.

REED: Oh, well, it was never going to be an episode. That was just like a one-off thing. But we should’ve made an episode because we’d done all the drawings and then we could’ve just patted that out. We’ve been talking about an episode for a long time where since Archer is sort of set we-don’t-know-when, in the Archer universe there would still be a draft. And Archer has just never, never did it, he just blew it off. And then he gets caught and has to go be in the army for like at least a week until he could get himself kicked out of the army. But they probably wouldn’t let him fly a jet.

Q) Can you tell us anything about Barry and his return?

REED: Barry comes back in a big way. And he’s gonna be, I think, probably the key villain of the season. But things pretty quickly go really badly also for Barry…physically.