Tara Lewis (Criminal Minds)

After the end of Season 10, showrunner Erica Messer said that she wanted to have "a fun guest star" while both Jennifer Love Hewitt and A.J. Cook were on maternity leave during Season 11. Messer said that her original plan was not to replace both Hewitt and Cook, and that there was "an opportunity there to have fun for a few episodes".[4][5] In an interview with TV Guide, Messer expressed her interest in bringing back characters from previous seasons instead of adding a new character to replace Hewitt permanently on the show. She explained, "I feel like when you look at 10 years of people we could bring back, it would be fun to do that". Messer added that bringing back old characters would allow the show to focus on the team without having to service a new regular character.[6]

On June 22, 2015, it was announced that Aisha Tyler had been cast in a recurring role as Dr. Tara Lewis to temporarily replace both Hewitt and Cook.[7] Messer said that Tyler's character was only meant to appear in the first six episodes of Season 11 with the possibility of extending her role. In September 2015, the producers decided to extend her role and Tyler went on to appear in twelve more episodes that season.[2] In July 2016, Tyler was promoted from her previous recurring status to series regular.[3]

Lewis is very intelligent, and holds a degree from Dartmouth College. She joined the FBI as a forensic psychologist who interviews a number of psychopathic criminals to determine whether they are fit for trial. Through her job, she has encountered a number of depraved minds, giving her the experience necessary to join the BAU. Before joining the BAU, Lewis worked at the San Francisco FBI field office. In recent seasons, she is engaged to a man named Doug Fuller (Rob Kirkland), which causes her some personal distress after other women begin flirting with him.

Due to a childhood spent traveling around the world, Lewis is fluent in both French and German. Lewis revealed in the episode "Mirror Image" that she was bullied throughout her childhood due to her name, resulting in her brother giving her the nickname "T".

In "The Witness", Lewis tells Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) that when interviewing serial killers, she tries to find something about them she can identify with to establish a therapeutic alliance, which is key to establishing a relationship between psychologist and killer. For example, she bonds with one killer by pointing out that their mothers attended the same elementary school, and that they both liked fossils as children.

In "False Flag", Lewis becomes upset after a suspect, Melissa Miller (Zelda Williams), tells her that she believes the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged. Lewis then reveals to the team that she was present at Sandy Hook on the day of the shooting. She tells the team that she provided counseling to the parents of the shooter's victims and that she also saw the victims' bodies, which severely traumatized her.

She was briefly married to Daryl Wright (Gale Harold), but they divorced because of his drug addiction.

Douglas Wolfe of TV Fanatic in 2015 said the introduction of Aisha Tyler's character, Dr. Tara Lewis, was "the saving grace, and a reason for hope for this season".[9] Meredith Jacobs of Buddy TV wrote that the character of Tara Lewis was "good, as is Tyler in the role, in a way that I want to see more of her but I don't feel is in any way taking away from the regular team members". She also wrote that, "Tara brings something new to the show that we haven't seen quite that much of before".[10] In 2016 while reviewing "Mirror Image", Angela Niles described Lewis as "eager and dedicated to the job without taking away from any of the others’ skills, and comes off as a like-able, supportive team member". She noted that her character had "remained something of a mystery" during her first two seasons on the show.[11] Jay Ruymann of Tell-Tale TV said that "Criminal Minds has not made a better decision in the past decade than casting Aisha Tyler as Tara Lewis".[12]