Lisa Kudrow discussed the finale, the second season as a whole, and addressed important questions (i.e., is Valerie Cherish Jewish?) with BuzzFeed News.
Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, with Dan Bucatinsky as her publicist, in The Comeback's second season finale.
Colleen Hayes / HBO
The 2005 season of HBO's The Comeback combined comedic farce with a deep character study of Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow), a faded fortysomething actress hellbent on propelling herself back to fame, even if it came at a profound personal cost. The Comeback's tone was hilarious, painful, true, and uncomfortable; it was a specific evisceration of Hollywood, and a general examination of how women are treated, slighted, and discarded.
But The Comeback — created by Kudrow and Michael Patrick King — flew too close to the sun and did not achieve broad success, lasting only that one 13-episode season.
That is, until this past spring, when HBO announced that it would revive The Comeback, which had since achieved cult status. The members of that cult felt both joy and terror: Could Kudrow and King achieve something so alchemically delicate again? Maybe it would be better just to leave that one perfect season alone. Even Kudrow had those thoughts. "They loved it so much," she told BuzzFeed News in the fall, referring to The Comeback's ardent fans. "I hope it's as good."
With the finale now having aired, it's safe to say that, yes, the eight-episode comeback season was as good. We saw Valerie go through it: Her once-stable home life with her husband, Mark (Damian Young), and her tethering friendship with her hair stylist, Mickey (Robert Michael Morris), were both thrown into crisis.
Her career thrived after she made the morally compromised choice to play a fictional version of herself, in her nemesis Paulie G.'s distorted, self-serving HBO dramedy, Seeing Red. But that decision had consequences: on her marriage, on Mickey's failing health, and on her friendships, as we saw in the finale when Juna (Malin Akerman) wondered how Valerie could have ever taken part in such a thing. Not only did Valerie take part, she ended up winning an Emmy for her portrayal of Mallory Church, Paulie G.'s gnarled vision of her.
Yet, in the finale's biggest twist of all, Valerie left the ceremony before receiving the award. After learning from Mark that Mickey had collapsed, she found she simply couldn't stay away from him. And in a stylistic rupture, her Emmy departure also marked the first time The Comeback broke from its reality/documentary visuals. Without the accompaniment and pressure of being surrounded by cameras, Valerie's world seemed rich and hopeful. Having been raw as fuck all season — as well as screamingly funny — The Comeback finale brought us back from the brink: Valerie's care for Mickey and reconciliation with Mark provided a lovely, warm ending.
Over breakfast recently, Kudrow discussed (sometimes in Valerie's voice) the nuances of the finale, as well as the season as a whole. And on the pressing question of whether we will get to see The Comeback for a third season — according to HBO, the show drew an average of 1.4 million viewers across its channels and on demand — Kudrow said she has not "heard it officially," but that she and King have gotten the impression that the door is open for more. Soon, she hopes she and King will begin to "talk about what more would look like."
(Yes, please.)
Kudrow as Valerie.
HBO
Let's begin at the end. Valerie wins an Emmy and she chooses not to be there to receive it. How did you and Michael decide that was the place you wanted her to end up?
Lisa Kudrow: She's choosing Mickey. She's choosing a person. That, we knew we wanted. Because that, to us, was the biggest surprise — to everyone, probably, including her. There's a human being in there, who, for the first time, is showing some priorities that we can finally be on board with.
It's very emotional. I cried watching it.
LK: Yeah. Me too.
It doesn't seem like Valerie has even a second of regret once she makes the decision to leave and go to the hospital.
LK: I guess it has to do with something I experienced that I was telling Michael about. My son broke his arm, and he needed surgery, and we were in France. And my husband had to be the one at the hospital. And I was outside of my body until the next morning when I could go to the hospital. And once I was just in the room and saw him, I was the happiest. That was, like, the best day of my life. I don't know how to put it.
And it's Mickey. He does mean something to her. She can't not be with him. She didn't intend to leave when she stepped out. But she can't go back in there. She has to be with him. That's all she knows. It's sort of a primal instinct.
In terms of the reconciliation with Mark, it appeared to me that he was just waiting for one sign that she was still the person he has loved.
LK: But this wasn't a test from Mark. Yes, I think he is blown away. I don't think he was looking for a sign, but I think this did surprise him as much as it's surprising to maybe all of us, which I think we see. He's like, I sent you the text, I didn't expect you to come down here. Yeah, why would he? She hasn't given him any indication that she would be that person.
In terms of the way it's shot, her leaving the Emmys is the only time we've seen her not being filmed by a fictional camera. It's actually beautiful — and is so jarring. Are we seeing the real her?
LK: She's not a completely different person, obviously. But what I like about it, just personally, is your real life is a prettier movie than a produced reality — how someone else is going to edit your life. We don't go too deep, Michael and I. But we know it's an impulse, and we know it's right. He directed it, and he said, "You come out, and it's going to be beautiful." I'm like, "Great, yes, it should be beautiful."
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