Amber Nash Reflects on the End of Archer and Her First Feature Film, How to Ruin the Holidays!

Amber’s acting credits include such beloved series as Frisky Dingo, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and, most notably, Archer — the bonkers FX spy sitcom, on which she portrayed fan favorite Pam Poovey for 14 seasons.

And as 2023 comes to a close, Amber is entering an exciting new phase in her career.

Archer is wrapping up its historic run on Sunday with a three-part series finale, and Nash recently starred in her first feature film, the hilariously risqué Christmas comedy How to Ruin the Holidays, currently streaming on Prime Video.

We caught up with Amber for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on her long involvement in the world of animated sitcoms, the portrayal of developmentally disabled adults on screen, and whether or not the band Toto deserves their reputation as a one-hit-wonder.

Check it out:

I watched How to Ruin the Holidays last night, and I absolutely loved it. I have a brother-in-law with a developmental disability, and my wife and I really appreciated seeing that relationship portrayed so thoughtfully and poignantly, so thank you for that.

Oh my gosh, that’s so wonderful. That’s what we love to hear. And thank you so much for watching the movie. That’s wonderful.

During filming, were you thinking a lot about how rare it is for families in that situation to see themselves on screen?

100%. I mean, that’s part of the reason why we made the movie, because it’s like, nobody else is going to make this movie, so we got to be the ones to do it.

It’s a situation that millions of people are dealing with, and it’s often complicated by concerns about what’s going to happen once the parents are no longer around.

So true. Yeah, we definitely felt that.

And when we hear from people that are like, “I can relate to this because I have a family member with developmental disabilities,” or anything like that, it’s like, oh yeah.

“Because also aging parents is a thing that lots of us have to deal with, and it’s like, “What do we do?” So thank you so much.

This film was written and produced by your husband, and you play a comedian. Obviously, there’s a lot of personal connection there. Did your ties to the project and the character present any challenges, or did they make your job easier?

It made my job easier. I mean, Kevin [Gillese] was definitely writing it for me, and so he kind of knew where to push and where to pull back and what I could do and what I couldn’t.

Because it was also my first time starring in a film, it was also a big learning curve for me and taking all that stuff on.

Also just starring in a film is a lot of work, and because it’s so personal and because it’s a family affair, we had no budget. So there was a lot of pressure. Everybody wanted to get it right. So it was quite an experience.

It’s a good movie to watch in the wake of the SAG-AFTRA strike because it reminds us of the unique challenges faced by actors.

And those career frustrations that your character experiences — the agent who won’t pick up the phone, the family who wants her to quit the business –  did you draw on any personal experience for that?

Yeah, totally. Kevin, writing it, he hadn’t gone through all the same kind of stuff. He had an agent for a short time when he lived in Canada. But for sure, hearing me complaining about stuff that is just part of the business.

And we laugh, too, because we’re in Atlanta. We screened the film before it came out on Amazon. We screened it in some different places. And one of those places was LA, and we were like, “Oh, no. Are they going to hate this?”

Because we really kind of skewer LA and the business a bit. And coming from Atlanta, we’re like, “Oh, yeah. Everybody in Atlanta feels this way.” Because it’s like being the little brother, but they got it in LA, too.

It’s an incredible cast, obviously. You, Colin [Mochrie], and Aisha [Tyler] all have backgrounds in improv. Do you feel more at ease sharing scenes with fellow improv vets?

Absolutely. And also Kevin, who wrote it, and Arlen [Konopaki], who directed it, are both improvisers also. And so they kind of know where I’m coming from.

They know the unique challenges of being an improviser and that sometimes that means you’re not as good at memorizing lines because you’re not used to doing it. But also having people like Colin, I mean, he knows improv better than anybody.

So that helped a lot because I knew that we could… If let’s say, we both kind of lost where we were going, we would improvise our way out of it until Arlen told us to cut because we were so off of it that it wasn’t going to be usable anymore.

But also just knowing those guys so well. I’d worked with Colin a bunch of times before, and he’s so gracious and wonderful. It helped being with people that I knew. Aisha too.

She was early on in the process when we shot her stuff. We’d only been shooting maybe a few days before we got to her. And so I was definitely nervous, and she put me at ease and was so wonderful to work with.

Yeah, I was going to say, as it was your first time starring in a film, it must’ve been helpful to have longtime friends like that on set.

Yeah. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to do it otherwise.

Yeah. Obviously, you’ve been working with Aisha for a long time. Was there any adjustment acting alongside her on-screen after so many years of voice acting together?

Yeah. Because even when we do Archer, we’re never in the booth together. We’re always doing it by ourselves. And so just sitting down and looking into her eyes and being like, we’re about to act together for real.

We’ve never done this before. And she’s got so much experience. I mean, she’s been in everything. And so it was definitely an adjustment. Because also we’re not just hamming it up and saying ridiculous things like we would for an animated show.

Switching gears because you mentioned Archer, which premiered way back in 2010! It’s one of my favorite shows of all time. Over the years, it evolved so much more than most animated series. Do you play Pam differently now than when you first started?

For sure. And even if you go back to Season 1, I think I sound a bit different — part of that’s age and quitting smoking. But I think in the beginning, Pam sounded more like me, and the longer the show went on, the more Pam sounded like me.

In the beginning, they didn’t want any of the characters to have character voices. They wanted all the characters to sound like regular people, and they were like, character voices are hard to maintain over time, and so it’s funny to think about that.

But yeah, it was just playing that character for so long. And she evolved into such a cool character. She was just kind of in the pilot the butt of some jokes, and I think that’s what they imagined her role would be, and then she became so much more.

I think once Adam got to know all of us, he started writing more for each of us individually and our voices, and that’s part of how the characters became who they were eventually.

We’re coming up on the final episodes of Archer. Can you tell us a bit about how you guys are planning to wrap things up?

Oh, yeah. So we’ve got the big finale that’s coming out on Sunday, and also tonight, in Glendale, California, in LA here, we’re doing a live event. Back in Archer Season 3 or 4, we did some Archer lives where we toured around and did live shows for people, and they were insane.

Being on stage with John Benjamin, Chris Parnell, and Aisha is just like, what a dream come true. Because like you said, we never got to really actually work together.

And so we quickly put together this Archer Live in LA to just be able to say goodbye.

Because we didn’t get to do Comic-Con this year, which we were thinking would be our last hurrah in San Diego, but because of the strike, we couldn’t promote the show. And so we’ll see how tonight goes. There’s always a bottle of whiskey on stage, and things get crazy.

You have this long history in the world of adult animation, going back to the early days of Adult Swim, Frisky Dingo. Do you see yourself doing more of that kind of work in the future, or do you think you’ll focus more on live-action projects?

Honestly, it’s always been I’ll do anything somebody wants me to do. So, if I get hired to do more animation, I am up for it. I mean, it is the best work in the world. It’s not nearly as time-consuming. You don’t have to memorize your lines. It really is fantastic work.

But I’ll always be a stage performer. I absolutely love performing in front of a live audience, so I’ll be doing that probably till I’m dead.

And I hope to start doing more on-camera stuff. That’s part of the reason why we made the movie was to be like, “Hey, look. We can do all kinds of different things.” So, hopefully, I’ll get some more opportunities in that area, too.

Absolutely. Speaking of the end of Archer, do you have a favorite episode or a favorite Pam moment that you can share with us?

Oh, man. A lot of times, what I always go back to is Southbound and Down, which is the episode where Pam and Archer are for the first time, teamed up as agents. And this is when Cherlene was a country music star.

And it was a fun season because everybody was like… Was that season five? I think it was. It was in the cocaine season.

And so it was just fun. It was fun, and I’m a child of the ’80s, so I definitely got all the references. And Cherlene’s album was always so funny to me. So that’s definitely one of my favorite episodes.

I loved the cocaine season.

It’s so funny. And one of the things too that I loved is, it’s not as much this way as it was in the beginning, but everybody talked about how the show was like, what time period is this show set in?

And the thing that I think is the best part about it is that Adam Reed, the creator, was like, it’s just going to be set in no time, and we’re just going to have the coolest things, like the muscle cars from the ’70s, and we’ll have computers from whenever they looked cool.

It was always just about the coolest stuff you could imagine, which I also think is such an ’80s kid thing.

It’s true. And I think that you guys did some of your strongest work in these most recent seasons where it was like, “Anything goes.”

I mean, you moved away from the spy premise a little bit and just kind of opened it up to whatever. There were some really some amazing episodes during those years.

Totally. Yeah. After the coma seasons, everybody was like, “Do whatever you want. Just whatever you guys want to do.” Because the fun thing is you can put these idiots in any situation, and they’re all going to be the same idiots, but they’re just going to be doing it in a different location.

I’m sure making that show was an absolute blast, but It must’ve been cool to kind of change gears for this latest project.

My favorite scene in How to Ruin the Holidays was when you guys were all sitting around in the fire singing a Toto song. I’m a big believer that Toto is not a one-hit wonder, so I loved that.

Thank you. I actually learned how to play the guitar for that. I no longer remember how to play the guitar, but I took some guitar lessons, so it didn’t look like it was the first time I’d ever played the guitar before.

Well, kudos to not switching off with Colin and just taking the easy route with the drums. And again, thank you so much for that movie. It was really hilarious, but also an important film in many ways. I was really caught off guard by the emotional impact.

Awesome. That’s exactly what we hope for when people watch the movie, so thank you so much. It means a lot to hear that.

How to Ruin the Holidays is currently streaming on Prime Video.

The three-part series finale of Archer will debut on Hulu on December 17.

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Tyler Johnson is an Associate Editor for TV Fanatic and the other Mediavine O&O sites. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, cooking, and, of course, watching TV. You can Follow him on X and email him here at TV Fanatic.