The Best Time Dr. Tara Lewis Broke Character On Criminal Minds
"Criminal Minds" was a hit CBS crime drama that ran from 2005 to 2020. The show was wildly popular and still has an 8.2/10 rating on IMDb, more than two years after the series finale aired. That episode aired in late February of 2020, with more than 5.3 million U.S. viewers tuning in to say goodbye. While getting more than 5 million people to sit down and watch a show at the same time is nothing to sneeze at, the network considered those ratings to be lackluster. Still, that was only one of many reasons why the show was canceled.
While things were still going strong, though, Aisha Tyler joined the series in 2015. She played Dr. Tara Lewis, a forensic pathologist with an intense interest in interviewing serial killers to see what makes them tick. If she looks or sounds familiar, it's probably because she's the same actor who voices Lana on "Archer," played Ross' love interest on "Friends" back in the day, had a regular spot on "Whose Line Is It Anyway," and is a talented stand-up comedian in her own right. So it should come as no surprise that she's just as funny behind the scenes on set as she is in all of her other endeavors, as evidenced by her character-breaking moments on "Criminal Minds."
Aisha Tyler can do hilarious impersonations of her co-workers
As good as Tyler is at making people laugh, she is very professional on set — so much so that combing through hours of behind-the-scenes blooper footage yields surprisingly few results in regard to her breaking character while playing Dr. Lewis. She's such a tough nut to crack that she basically had to be asked to get a little goofy while filming for the show. Thankfully, OSSA Movies did exactly that, and she delivered a chuckle-worthy impression of one of her fellow actors.
At one point near the end of the clip, Tyler is asked to do an impression of David Rossi (Joe Mantegna) rocking out at a concert. Without skipping a beat, she starts snapping her fingers with gusto as she flails her arms arrhythmically, finishing the impression with a wink and a fierce firing of finger guns directly into the camera. The video has over 289,000 views and several thousand thumbs-up votes, so it's obviously resonating with fans.