Lisa Kudrow on ‘The Comeback’ Finale, Saying Bye to Valerie Cherish
Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish in ‘The Comeback.’
Photograph by Erin Simkin/HBO
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[This story contains major spoilers from the season 3 and series finale of The Comeback.]
That’s a wrap on Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish — forever.
The Comeback aired episode 8 of the HBO Max’s third and final season Sunday night as Cherish bowed out at the end of an eventful episode that welcomed surprise guest stars Bradley Whitford, Adam Scott and Justin Theroux and saw Cherish tangle with NuNet boss, played by Andrew Scott, over the future of her career and the fate of her show How’s That?!
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It was an eventful and historic run, too, as The Comeback is the only show in TV history to have three seasons each separated by a decade. “The most respectful thing we can do for the audience and for the character is make it a three-part story. It’s a trilogy, and this is the end,” Kudrow told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year when she sat for a cover story ahead of the return. That ending was an emotional one, too, as Kudrow said goodbye to The Comeback and to Cherish on the Warner Bros. lot just steps away from Stage 24 where she had filmed Friends and became a household name. “The fact that both things ended there feels momentous and touching,” she said.
It’s likely that fans will use similar adjectives in describing the finale episode that closes with Laura Silverman’s Jane and Cherish on a soundstage filming a final moment of Jane’s years-long documentary. Laura praises Cherish for how much she’s changed over the 20-ish years, especially after being humiliated so much. Cherish objects to that characterization. “I think you have to agree to be humiliated and I never signed up for that,” she says in how she was able to adapt and roll with the punches. “I did the best with what I was given. Isn’t that what being a human being is?”
Laura then tells Cherish she feels like she was seeing her “for the first time” in the show’s last moment. Below, Kudrow opens up on that final scene, what got cut from the episode, how they snagged guest stars Whitford, Scott and Theroux and why she and her The Comeback collaborator Michael Patrick King felt it important to point out that “no AI was used in the writing of this series.”
In the previous episode 7, Valerie had drama at a coffee shop when she was confronted by angry writers for starring in an AI sitcom, and she gets coffee thrown on her. The finale starts more calmly as Valerie and Mark are at home watching her show when an AI version of Valerie appears onscreen. It becomes an key plot point. Tell me about the scene and how it sets up what’s next?
She went in for color timing and got scanned, and Jane was very suspicious. As you know, Valerie is her usual rose-colored glasses self so she assumes it’s for stunts. Then we find out that they are using a digital Valerie to promote or sell subscriptions for NuNet. Valerie says it’s alright because they’re just using her as a spokesperson and that would be OK. But we find out later that because she had signed a DocuSign, it gave them permission to use her image any way they like. She didn’t know that it was a legal contract. Depending on who you are in the audience, you may agree with her or you might say, well that doesn’t seem right.
There’s a moment in the scene when Mark gets up to go to bed and tells Valerie not to look at any of the reaction to her episode or to read any of the comments. She agrees but it takes her only a few seconds before she starts to read some comments. What’s your relationship to online discourse and comments. Do you read?
Sometimes I read the comments, yeah. Not a lot. I mean, I really stopped for the most part during Friends, and after the first season because there were all these internet discussions happening in chat rooms and such. I looked then and saw some unpleasant things being shared and I thought, well, that doesn’t serve me. At all. What I don’t know really doesn’t hurt me at all. When it comes to performing or any kind of art, you need a certain level of confidence and the ability to relax your brain to do what you do. And all of that negativity doesn’t help.
Kudrow and Damian Young in the third season of The Comeback on HBO Max.
Erin Simkin/HBO