The ‘Orange’ guard

Emily Tarver made her reputation in comedy and commercials.

The New York City-based actress, who spent much of her childhood in Houston and went to The Woodlands High School, was one of the make-’em-laugh talking heads on VH1’s “Best Week Ever,” performed stand-up in clubs and time in the Upright Citizens Brigade improvisational sketch troupe, had a recurring role on the short-lived USA series “Donny!” and was that weirdly passive-aggressive furniture consumer in those spots for Havertys.

So it was a bit of a surprise when she got a call to audition for Netflix’s serio-comic series about women in prison, “Orange Is the New Black.” She had the “comic” part down, less so the “serio.”

“It was three lines … . I was like, ‘Great, let’s do it,’” she recalled in a phone interview from New York. “(But) I actually missed my audition. It was at 10 a.m., and I slept through my alarm.”

After much apologizing, she rescheduled and landed the part of corrections officer Artesian McCullough. Those three lines from 2016 mushroomed into a continuing part, which she reprises in the show’s sixth season, beginning Friday.

“I was nervous about it, transitioning to a more serious role,” she said of how she felt going into trying out for the series. “But I think comedy people are maybe the most dramatic people ever, so it fit just right.”

She said the description of her character made her feel more at ease.

“When I read the character breakdown, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s me,’” she said. “They described her as ‘white trash’ a little bit. Not that I think that, or that there’s anything wrong with people who identify as that. But I’m kind of someone who didn’t wear shoes for part of my life and is kind of a tomboy. So when I saw it, I said, ‘I can do this. This is me. This is so me.’”

Austin start

Tarver discovered her penchant for mining laughs out of life during her senior year at the University of Texas at Austin.

“I took an improv class, and I said, ‘Oh, this is the thing I’ve been doing my whole life and didn’t know it,’” she said.

After college, she moved to New York, where she hit the stand-up circuit, took an acting class geared toward commercials and got a commercials agent. Since then, she’s made ads for Yoplait, Lowe’s, AT&T and Comcast, among others.

“I still do tons of commercials,” she said. “I’ve got one coming up for Fruit of the Loom, but I’m not in my underwear … . So when I’m not filming ‘Orange,’ that’s kind of my living.”

She still gets to express her comedic side in her music project with fellow “Orange” cast member and partner Vicci Martinez, who plays the character Daddy and appeared on the NBC competition show “The Voice.”

“We connected on the last episode of last season and became pretty much inseparable,” Tarver said. “When we perform our music, I had a chance in between the songs to be funny. We’ve kind of shifted our performance from just straight music because she’s so funny, too. We have a funny banter, and that gets my live-comedy itch scratched.”

Tattooed with Texas

The Tennessee-born Tarver says she still loves Texas — “I have a giant Texas tattooed on my back,” she offered as proof — but doesn’t get back to Houston much. “My parents moved to Atlanta … . My brother lives in Austin, and my parents are retiring to Austin, but I miss Houston, I do,” she said, noting there was one particular store off FM 1960 that she still pines for to this day.

“I can’t remember what it was called. It was a thrift store that I would beg my mom to take me to. She was like, ‘I don’t wanna go to 1960.’ I’m like, ‘Just take me, just take me there,’” she said. “And there was a cool record store there. And I spent a lot of time at The Woodlands Mall. I’m not going to lie.”

cary.darling@chron.com