Criminal Minds: Evolution star Aisha Tyler has directed a horror-fueled upcoming episode of the series. Criminal Minds, which followed a crack team of criminal profilers in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, originally ran on CBS from 2005 through 2020. Although the series was canceled after season 15, it was quickly revived by Paramount+, who rebranded season 16 as Criminal Minds: Evolution and premiered the first episode on November 24 of this year, featuring the return of many members of the main cast, including Tyler as Tara Lewis, Joe Mantegna as David Rossi, Paget Brewster as Emily Prentiss, and A.J. Cook as Jennifer "JJ" Jareau.
Recently, TVLine ran a feature where they answered readers' questions about upcoming television. One of the most pertinent questions revolved around the wildly buzzy Criminal Minds: Evolution and they were able to share a quote from Tyler, who directed the upcoming seventh episode of the season, titled "Pieces of Me," which airs on January 19, 2023. She described the episode as "intense" and "high-horror," saying that "we've got some classic horror elements and motifs." Read her full quote below:
[It's] very intense, a very high-horror [episode.] We’ve got some classic horror elements and motifs that I tried to honor, but also some big emotion. We were sprinting because we had so much story to tell, but I loved directing my family on this one.
Aisha Tyler's History with the Horror Genre
Although she has had plenty of experience performing in a variety of different genres and mediums (including hosting the comedy commentary show Talk Soup between 2001 and 2002), Tyler didn't have too much experience as an actress in the horror genre until last year. In 2021, she broke her horror-less streak with a pair of projects, beginning with the meta-comedy Untitled Horror Film opposite Kal Penn and Darren Barnet. She also appeared on a season 7 episode of the high-profile zombie prequel, Fear the Walking Dead.
That appearance on Fear the Walking Dead, an episode she also directed, kicked off a string of horror efforts behind the camera that doubled her acting output. In addition to a 2022 episode of the CBS drama Evil, she stuck around in the Walking Dead Universe. After her stint on Fear the Walking Dead, she directed two episodes of the spin-off sequel series The Walking Dead: World Beyond, which follows the first generation of young adults born in the post-apocalypse, as well as one of the final episodes in the last season of The Walking Dead proper.
Her horror directing habit has come full circle with this upcoming episode of Criminal Minds: Evolution. Her first-ever non-short directorial credit was on an episode of Criminal Minds, kicking off her increasingly lucrative career as an episodic director. It only makes sense that her triumphant return to the director's chair on the series should bring her newfound experience back with her, paying homage to the time she spent crafting horrifying scenarios for the crew on The Walking Dead.
Source: TVLine