If Aisha Tyler is bored, we’re all in trouble.

Call Aisha Tyler a renaissance woman. Call her a restless well of creativity overflowing with ideas. Just don’t limit her to a single description.

“To me they’re all the same job,” said the comedian, author, actress, producer and director. “But stand-up is the first. It’s how I got started in the entertainment business, and my skill set grows out of there.”

Whether you recognize her from “Friends” or “Ghost Whisperer,” “CSI” or “24,” the 38-year-old San Francisco native is best known for her TV roles. But with a daytime talk show on tap for ABC next year and a growing profile in the stand-up world — thanks to her recent top-rated Comedy Central special — Tyler is poised to show us all sides of her talent.

We spoke to her in advance of her Comedy Works South shows Friday and Saturday.

Note: video contains mature subject matter and language.

Q: You’ve done a lot of writing and behind-the-scenes work and certainly don’t need to be on stage. What about stand-up appeals to you?

A: It’s a very specifically challenging and creatively grueling performance style. You have to write everything; you have to perform it; and you’re up there alone. There’s nobody to blame. There’s no delay between when you put something out there and when people throw it back in your face. It makes me very strong.

The range of what you’ve done over the years is pretty impressive.

It’s all a family of work to me. The producing thing, which I really love, just comes out of the fact that I’m super work-obsessive and love to be busy and involved in everything. I’m not the kind of celebrity that sleeps in late and throws stuff at my assistant. I’m the person who’s there in the morning before everybody else. I have a lot of people who Tweet me and they’re, like, “When are you going to have a diva fit?”

What’s your stand-up like?

It’s really hard to describe myself, but I’ll say it’s all new material from my special. If you know me from when I hosted “Talk Soup,” you know my sense of humor, that combination of high and low, thinky-stupid. We’d use an SAT word to craft a fart joke. It’s super physical, super high-energy and a combination of intelligent social and political commentary, but also a lot of stuff about being married and sex. It’s definitely a guy-friendly show. I have as many male fans as I have female fans. I mean, I have bachelor parties that come to my shows, and they could clearly be going and seeing boobs at that point. But it’s because they know they’re going to have a great time. I make sure everyone in the room laughs.

Yeah, it’s depressing and annoying that there’s still this misconception about female stand-ups — that all they do is talk about female subjects.

A girl came up to me once after a show and was like, “I knew you from ‘Ghost Whisperer’ and I was expecting you were going to be worried about your hair the whole time. But you weren’t.” There’s nothing precious about me on stage. Sometimes people compare me to Chris Rock, but I’m really not like Chris… maybe we have similar intensity.

How did you get into stand-up?

I definitely was not one of those people who had like the sweaty, dog-earned vinyl of Red Foxx and Bill Cosby. I was just not that kid. I do remember my parents taking me to see (Richard Pryor’s) “Live at the Sunset Strip” as a kid, probably at a totally inappropriate age. I just had no sense that comedy was a business or a career until I was an adult.

Did your parents encourage you at all along that path?

My parents are both artists, so they encouraged artistic expression but definitely steered me away from art. Improv was an awesome way to go be more nerdy. Even theater people are very nerdy… so improv was an extension of my intense, overarching nerdiness. It wasn’t until I was in college at Darmouth, where they had this manufactured “comedy club” with guys you’ve never heard of, that I got religious about going to these crappy student union comedy shows every month. But one day Steven Wright came to the school and I forked over the like the $20 or $25 and that was it. I was just like, “This is awesome,” and that was when I grasped that you could make a career out of making people laugh.

What were you originally angling for, career-wise?

I was originally going to be an attorney and I was taking a break between undergrad and grad when I decided to try stand-up. And of course it was impossibly hard. I got a couple of laughs and I knew that was what I wanted to do.

I’ve heard the first time is, surprisingly, usually pretty smooth, and then you just bomb a ton after that.

The first time’s great and then it takes two years to get even moderately funny. It’s the freest and most open you’re going to be as a comedian. You don’t’ really know what the rules are yet so you just get up there and act like an idiot. The thing I always tell baby comedians is about bombing. Killing never makes you funny — it’s only bombing that makes you funny. Killing just makes you an arrogant jackass.

Tyler’s “Nowassitall” music video, which she wrote and directed.

So you really have to be a masochist to love stand-up starting out…

Repeated and brutal, humiliated bombing is what makes you a funny person, and if you aren’t prepared to suffer, well… It’s definitely mental, intense masochism and abject self-flagellation.

I know you’re in the new Tony Kaye (“American History X”) movie, “Black Water Transit.” What else are you working on between stand-up dates?

I’m directing a series of short films for Funny or Die right now, which are coming out over the summer. I’m squeezing them in between road dates.

I’m guessing you have something against free time?

I never want to go to sleep thinking I could have worked a little bit harder. It comes from being a poor kid, trying to hustle as hard as you can, knowing that you have the chance.

John Wenzel is the co-editor of Reverb and an arts and entertainment writer for The Denver Post. He recently published the book “Mock Stars: Indie Comedy and the Dangerously Funny” and edits the Get Real Denver blog.

More from Get Real Denver

• Comedy Q&A: Jon Lovitz
• Comedy Q&A: Robert Klein
• Comedy Q&A: Bobby Collins
• Comedy Q&A: Doug Benson
• Comedy Q&A: Ben Roy

Get Real Denver Recommends

• The Mile High Makeout: The love-in begins  (Reverb)
• CMJ Q&A: Author Tony Fletcher  (Reverb)
• A comedy success story  (The Peek)