Even when playing an actress from a ’90s sitcom directed by Jimmy Burrows, Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish is able to, against all odds, make viewers (or at least this one) briefly forget about Phoebe Buffay.
Photo: Erin Simkin/HBO
In the third episode of the new season of The Comeback, Valerie Cherish arrives at Stage 24 on the Warner Bros. lot, where she’s set to film her new sitcom, and admires the plaque listing all of the famous films and TV shows that were also shot there. “Look at all these legendary movies, and now How’s That?! can be the big TV hit for Stage 24,” she says, at which point the documentary camera zooms in on the shows listed on the plaque under “television,” including Mike & Molly, Full and Fuller House, and, most conspicuously, Friends. It’s a great visual gag, using The Comeback’s mockumentary format as a device to silently underline Valerie’s delusions of grandeur. But it wasn’t until days later that the second layer of that joke clicked, and I realized: Oh right, Lisa Kudrow was on Friends.
How could I have forgotten that? Did I need to see a doctor? Should I switch out sudoku for the People magazine crossword puzzle to help improve my cognitive function? I was rocked by this bizarre lapse in memory, especially about a show that I, like everybody else in the world, have watched in full. And yet, when I first saw that meta nod to Kudrow’s own sitcom stardom, I was so grounded in the world of The Comeback that I simply took the joke at face value. The same thing happened an episode earlier with an even subtler reference, when Valerie is listing off Jimmy Burrows’s directing credits, flirting with actually saying the name of the show that’s been otherwise left unsaid, but ultimately gets cut off by Mary (Abbi Jacobson) just as she finally starts to say, “Frie—”
Both nods work because they’re just that — nods. They aren’t distracting enough to pull you out of the action nor heavy handed enough to leave you with existential questions. (If Friends exists in the universe of The Comeback, does that mean Lisa Kudrow does as well? Did Lisa and Valerie ever meet at the People’s Choice Awards?) Instead, they’re simple winks to the audience with punch lines that don’t rely purely on the reference. That’s in part why it fully went over my head, but ultimately that moment of forgetfulness about one of the most famous sitcoms of all time is actually more of a credit to Kudrow’s ability to completely disappear into Valerie Cherish. Even when playing an actress from a ’90s sitcom directed by Jimmy Burrows, Kudrow is able to, against all odds, make viewers (or at least me) briefly forget about Phoebe Buffay, an otherwise unforgettable behemoth that would be impossible for any other actor to outrun.
It’s normally incredibly difficult for actors to shake off the iconic roles that they’ve become synonymous with. Sarah Jessica Parker will always be Carrie Bradshaw, for example. Jason Alexander will always be George Costanza. And Tom Hanks will always be, say it with me, Larry Crowne. But in Valerie Cherish, Lisa Kudrow has created a character who manages to escape the shadow of Phoebe, not by being more successful or known than Phoebe but by being completely distinct from her. There’s such little overlap between the two characters that there’s practically nothing Valerie could do or say that would remind the viewer of Phoebe. Whereas Phoebe lacks inhibitions, Valerie is plagued by them, and the contrasting sitcom formats of Friends (multi-cam) and The Comeback (mockumentary) call for totally different performance styles.
Sure, the visual distinction between the characters also helps — who knows better than Valerie Cherish, who once famously had to play a brunette with migraines, how pivotal hair color can be — but the difference all really comes down to Kudrow’s performance. Valerie Cherish remains one of the most dimensional, nuanced characters on television because when Kudrow embodies her, she doesn’t let a single frame go to waste. Even the smallest of glances or bits of vocal cadence tell us something about who Valerie is or what she’s feeling, creating a character who feels lived in and real and who is occupying a similarly real and familiar world. So when we’re looking at her on The Comeback, we don’t see Lisa Kudrow and her past roles, from Phoebe to Romy — we see Valerie and her past roles. And one thing I’ll never forget? That Valerie Cherish was Mrs. Hatt!
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