‘Archer’: Judy Greer On The Joys Of Animation And Talking Dirty

Judy Greer may not be the most recognizable face in Hollywood, but she’s become a regular on FX with guest roles on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and her series, Married. But you may not realize you know her voice as well — as Cheryl on the animated show Archer. Greer sat down for a media conference call this week to talk about Archer and what it’s like to work with animation, albeit a somewhat adult form of cartoon.

When asked about the rather racy and raunchy content at times on Archer, Greer said she finds the animation format a bit more liberating than live action filming when things get dirty.

“I mean, I don’t think I would do this stuff live action that my character does animated. I feel like that would make me really uncomfortable. It’s also like really freeing to be able to do it the way that we do, you know? It’s pretty amazing. It’s pretty cool to be able to be in something that’s so raunchy and so disgusting but be able to get away with it and not be raunchy and disgusting. Yes. It’s a really nice treat.”

Greer has no shortage of work right now not only on FX with Archer and Married, but also on the big screen, with two films coming out this summer. She’s in Marvel’s Ant-Man and the next Jurassic Park movie, in addition to her two series on FX. How does she juggle so much work?

“Well, the guys at Archer make it really easy for all of us. I can record it anywhere I am if there’s a recording studio and that’s pretty cool. Where ever I am on location I can usually, even in the weirdest little places, usually there’s probably a recording studio and so we just work it out like that. I think one of the things that they liked about casting all of us is that we all work a lot and we all are very busy. They just make it really easy for us. And those on TV animated shows record the cast all together which seems like it’d be really fun but I’m really glad Archer doesn’t do that. That would make it a lot harder.”

The cast of Archer does do live shows on the road, although Greer hasn’t been able to participate as much as she would like due to her busy schedule. But when she did, suffice it to say the experience was memorable.

“When we did it in Austin, Texas, we had someone signing two people doing sign language on the side which we were like, wait, what? Then we started [saying] like a ton of dirty words just to see what those words were in sign language and it turned into a whole different show where we were like, ‘How do you do this word in sign language?’ And the poor people doing the signing were like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ We were making them say the dirtiest of the dirty words. Those poor guys. There was a young guy and he was just laughing. But then there was a woman who was like, ‘I don’t want to sign this.'”

Archer has made it through six seasons and Greer, along with the rest of the cast, hopes it won’t end anytime soon, as she hasn’t grown tired of the series despite a busy schedule. And she seems to feel Archer has at least a few more seasons in it.

“It just feels, I don’t know, to me it still feels as fresh. I still laugh out loud every time I read a new script and that’s really rare… It feels just as fresh as the beginning to me, honestly.”

Archer airs Thursday nights on FX at 10 p.m. Be sure to put the kids to bed first.

[Art courtesy of FX]