Does the runtime typically use an imperative interpretation of functional language code

I have a general question about functional language interpreters:

Are there any advantages to using a functional language compared to an imperative language at runtime (or is this done for the translator)?

None of the questions that I saw (for example, this ) really fall into this question, and searches are flooded with arguments due to the definitions of different languages.

EDIT: Trimmed down to the only question I had to answer.