Chris Parnell Confirms His SNL Nickname

So, what's Parnell's secret to staying in character and never breaking? "Well, it helps to be a somewhat joyless person," he deadpanned during our conversation. "I'm a bit of a heavy guy, in terms of emotionally and all that." Jokes aside, remaining in character just comes naturally to him. As Parnell told us, "That's not bragging, it was not that hard usually for me to stay in character and to try to be in the moment and do it."

That doesn't mean it was always easy staying stone-faced; one sketch in particular challenged Parnell. "'Cowbell' was really hard because of Will being up in my face and everybody else breaking," the actor said. 

Still, Parnell was the only person to not break during the aforementioned sketch in which Ferrell plays the off-the-rails Dr. Beaman; both Ferrell and Molly Shannon laughed out loud while Parnell stayed stoic. "I had just done a sketch as Tom Brokaw," he recalled, and what made the difference was a bad reaction to the contact lenses he wore for that sketch. "[E]ven though they had been taken out, they left my eyes burning for some reason. So my eyes were on fire during that sketch, and that's that made it very easy to not break."

Catch the next episode of Archer this Wednesday, October 21, at 10 PM ET on FXX. Stay tuned to Looper for more exclusive Archer coverage.