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When Lisa Kudrow was in her 20s, she had a meeting with an agent who inexplicably declared, \u201cIt\u2019s funny; I can remember my first car \u2013 everything about it \u2013 but I can\u2019t remember the first girl I slept with.\u201d Kudrow told him that this made sense: after all, he\u2019d probably spent more time inside his first car. It wasn\u2019t until the next day she realised she\u2019d delivered a devastatingly witty rejoinder.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m always speaking up and saying something when I should keep my mouth shut,\u201d Kudrow, 62, says in an exclusive Australian print interview. \u201cTo me, there\u2019s something very \u2018Valerie Cherish\u2019 about not getting [the meaning of something immediately].\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking via Zoom from the Los Angeles home she shares with Michel Stern, her husband of more than 30 years, Kudrow, elegantly dressed in an olive shirt and gold pendant, is discussing the remarkable trajectory of HBO\u2019s The Comeback, which she co-created and co-wrote.<\/p>\n
In the satirical comedy series, Kudrow plays Valerie Cherish, a sitcom star desperate to reclaim the fame<\/a> she\u2019d enjoyed in the late 1980s. It was Kudrow\u2019s first major project after Friends, the series that propelled her to global stardom as the eccentric Phoebe Buffay, but The Comeback was cancelled after just one season. It then became a word-of-mouth phenomenon, prompting HBO to air a second season in 2014. Now, The Comeback\u2019s third instalment \u2013 shot on the same sound stage as every season of Friends except the first \u2013 is streaming on HBO Max. (Despite being set in New York, Friends was filmed in LA.)<\/p>\n \u201cThat was emotional,\u201d says Kudrow of the return. \u201cI was touched that Warner Bros was having us shoot this there. The Comeback is important to me; it\u2019s up there with Friends, even though less people are aware of it. It\u2019s something I created and co-wrote, and I am proud of it.\u201d<\/p>\n In contrast to Phoebe\u2019s endearing kookiness and Valerie\u2019s cringeworthy need for attention, Kudrow has the friendly, down-to-earth manner one hopes to find in a doctor. This is no coincidence: after completing a degree in psychobiology, she spent eight years working for her father, Dr Lee Kudrow, an eminent headache specialist. She even contributed to a scientific study, published in a medical journal<\/a> seven months before Friends premiered, that disproved the theory that cluster headache sufferers are more likely to be left-handed.<\/p>\n In that study, she is credited as L.V. Kudrow \u2013 her middle name is Valerie. This is also the moniker she bestowed on a prototype of her Comeback character, one she created in 1989 as a member of an LA improvisational comedy troupe, The Groundlings.<\/p>\n Juggling live performances with a career in medical research wasn\u2019t easy, but when she informed her parents she\u2019d decided to devote herself to acting, their reaction surprised her. As she told The New Yorker<\/a>, \u201cThey went, \u2018Thank god! Maybe this\u2019ll lighten you up, and then you can meet someone.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In 1993, Kudrow was cast as Roz Doyle on Frasier, which should have been her big break. But she felt something was off and director James Burrows agreed, replacing her with Peri Gilpin before the pilot was filmed. Not long after, Kudrow accepted an offer to play a nameless waitress on Mad About You, a part her agent urged her to decline, not least because she\u2019d already appeared as a different minor character in an earlier episode.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought, \u2018I\u2019m not in a position to say no,\u2019\u201d Kudrow says, adding that she hadn\u2019t yet received her lines when she rushed to the taping. Instead, she told herself to \u201cjust listen, respond and make it funny\u201d. Her instincts were correct, allowing Kudrow to parlay a tiny part into the recurring role of Ursula Buffay.<\/p>\n Simultaneously invited by Fox and NBC to audition for sitcom pilots, Kudrow chose the latter because Mad About You aired on the same network. Little did she know that the series she\u2019d chosen, tentatively titled Friends Like Us, would become a worldwide smash. (To explain her presence on both shows, she was cast as Ursula\u2019s twin sister Phoebe in Friends.)<\/p>\n Burrows, who directed some episodes of Friends (and who plays a fictionalised version of himself in The Comeback) was keen for the lead actors to bond in real life, so he encouraged them to play poker in his office. \u201cCourteney [Cox] doesn\u2019t even like poker!\u201d Kudrow says. \u201cBut we all understood that we\u2019re playing best friends who\u2019ve known each other for a long time, so let\u2019s make that happen. It turned out to be a really high-functioning relationship among six people.\u201d<\/p>\n After the Friends finale was filmed in 2004, Matthew Perry, who played Chandler Bing, presented Kudrow with a gift: the \u201ccookie time\u201d jar with a static clock face from Monica and Rachel\u2019s apartment. It stemmed from a scene in an earlier season in which Phoebe realises she\u2019s about to miss an appointment. As the cameras rolled, Kudrow noticed there were no visible watches or clocks on set, and therefore no reason for Phoebe to register her own tardiness. So she pointed to the cookie jar and announced, \u201cI\u2019m going to be late; I\u2019ve got to go!\u201d<\/p>\n Perry, who died in 2023 from accidental overdose, was so impressed by her improvisation he obtained special permission from Warner Bros to give her the prop, which contained a handwritten note. (\u201cIt was really touching,\u201d says Kudrow, tilting her head towards the room where the jar is displayed. The contents of Perry\u2019s note, she explains, will remain \u201cbetween me and him\u201d.)<\/p>\n After Friends ended, Kudrow had lunch with producer Michael Patrick King, who had directed and written for Sex and the City. He loved her character from The Groundlings and together they created The Comeback.<\/p>\n The large gaps between each season proved to be a creative advantage. In 2005, the series involved Valerie filming a reality show, also called The Comeback, documenting her return to the spotlight in a cheesy sitcom, Room and Bored. In a clever twist, the 2014 season featured Valerie playing a thinly veiled version of herself in a brooding HBO dramedy, with her own camera crew still in tow. The latest incarnation sees Valerie being trailed by her social media producer while filming How\u2019s That?! \u2013 the first sitcom written by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n Kudrow, an accomplished screenwriter and producer, wanted to explore how AI might upend Hollywood. It also allowed her to examine the current state of social media, which enables fame-seekers to bypass established platforms such as reality television. Does she believe this technology, which encourages users to relinquish their privacy in return for validation from strangers, is making Valerie Cherish clones of us all?<\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d Kudrow replies. \u201cThat was a quick answer!\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019re yet to see The Comeback \u2013 one of the great TV comedies of the past two decades \u2013 you\u2019d be forgiven for thinking that Valerie is a narcissistic monster. But Kudrow always finds a sympathetic angle for her character. \u201cYou\u2019re seeing the cracks behind the facade,\u201d she says. \u201cShe\u2019s not a bad person; there\u2019s something nice about her.\u201d<\/p>\n The more Valerie tries to control a tricky situation with self-reverential spin, the more likely she is to blurt out an impolite truth. Indeed, it\u2019s Valerie\u2019s unvarnished need for approval that many viewers find so disconcerting, perhaps because we share the same impulse but conceal it behind a veneer of indifference.<\/p>\n The success of Friends, which ran for 10 seasons and collected six Emmys, gave the principal cast considerable clout in Hollywood. Kudrow chose to use this to pursue her passions, including bringing the British genealogy program Who Do You Think You Are? to the US, where she served as the series\u2019 executive producer. In her own episode, which aired in 2010, she learnt the harrowing details of her great-grandmother\u2019s murder in Belarus during World War II. Her father\u2019s grandmother was among 900 Jewish men, women and children rounded up and shot inside an ice storage shed before the building was set alight. Villagers reported hearing the screams of those who\u2019d survived the Nazis\u2019 bullets as they burnt to death.<\/p>\n![\"Lisa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/e64dd37c91ee1e97230972293e8ef56c2ad0a356.jpeg\")
Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, a sitcom star desperate to reclaim the spotlight, in The Comeback.HBO Max<\/p>\n![\"For](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/8c8f3b991b27a9f3f6690505acfbe5f17c682857.jpeg\")
For Kudrow, Friends \u201cturned out to be a really high-functioning relationship among six people\u201d.Daniel Jack Lyons\/Magnolia Photos\/Headpress<\/p>\n![\"Friends](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/52986cfdca9270e69b2db8f11400c4ce70cade90.jpeg\")
Friends cast (L-R): Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox and\u00a0Matt\u00a0LeBlanc in 1995.
\nWarner Bros<\/p>\n
![\"Guy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4bee32ec3e0a7bd8d6ac1f9383f8b0986c334c4a.jpeg\")
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