Aisha Tyler says fans still approach her and call her 'Black girl from Friends '

Aisha Tyler has had a prolific career in television for decades now. But despite her many accomplishments (including hosting Who's Line Is It Anyway? and The Talk, voicing super-spy Lana Kane on Archer, and starring as Dr. Tara Lewis on Criminal Minds), she says she's still recognized most often for one role in particular: playing Charlie Wheeler on the final two seasons of Friends.

"It was a massive show, a global hit," Tyler told Entertainment Tonight in a new interview. "To this day, people come up to me and go, 'Charlie, Charlie,' or they just go, 'Black girl from Friends.'"

NBCu Photo Bank David Schwimmer and Aisha Tyler on 'Friends'

The attention she gets for the performance doesn't come as a surprise to her. Tyler had seen every episode of the iconic '90s sitcom before taking on the part and knew it was going to have a major impact on her career.

"Sometimes you don't really know what a job is going to do, how it's going to change your life," Tyler told ET. "You don't know if it's going to be a hit. You don't even know if it's going to be good. You're just there to do your best work. But I knew when I got Friends that it was a big deal."

Knowing just how much was at stake left Tyler feeling very nervous. As she recalled in the new interview, "We walked out and we did a curtain call [where] everybody [does a] bow to the audience at the end of the show. As we're backstage, Matthew Perry just leans in and goes, 'Get ready for your life to change.' It was a really sweet, kind thing to say to someone who's just petrified and just trying not to pee on herself a little bit from fear."

Tyler's comments echo recent ones from Paul Rudd, who also joined Friends in its last few seasons, long after it had become a cultural phenomenon. But because Rudd's character Mike Hannigan ended up being the one true love interest of main character Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow), he had a significant role in the series finale, which he described as a "surreal" experience. Tyler's Charlie, on the other hand, had romantic entanglements with both Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Ross (David Schwimmer) before moving on.

The actress' latest TV gig is on Apple TV+'s The Last Thing He Told Me, in which she plays a journalist named Jules who helps Hannah (Jennifer Garner) uncover her husband's (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) secrets after he goes missing.

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