{"id":581064,"date":"2026-04-13T05:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T05:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/581064\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T05:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T05:38:09","slug":"the-comebacks-julian-stern-on-working-with-mom-lisa-kudrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/581064\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Comeback’s Julian Stern On Working With Mom Lisa Kudrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILERS: This post contains details about The Comeback<\/a>, Season 3 episode \u2018Valerie Does It All\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tLongtime fans of The Comeback might be surprised to learn that one guest star on this week\u2019s episode is the real-life son of star Lisa Kudrow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tJulian Stern<\/a>, who appears in the episode \u2018Valerie Does It All\u2019 as AI<\/a> trainer Evan, told Deadline it was a \u201cgenuine dream come true\u201d working with his mother on the HBO<\/a> mockumentary series, which is currently in its third and final season.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was really nervous going in, cause I\u2019ve never worked with my mom professionally like that before,\u201d admitted Stern. \u201cAnd to be on camera with her, it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh God, am I gonna mess this up because I\u2019m only gonna be able to see my mom?\u2019 But my mom, she\u2019s a great actress. And when I\u2019m talking with my mom, I\u2019m talking with my mom. When I\u2019m talking with Valerie Cherish, different person, and it was really easy to slip into just, \u2018Oh yeah, this is a different person, this is a complete stranger.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Valerie Cherish navigates making a sitcom written by AI, this week\u2019s episode sees all hell break loose amid a technical malfunction. But the actress finds an unexpected form of help in Evan, a former striving TV writer who quit and went into AI, as it provided a more promising career path.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t wanna be too altruistic, but I think he\u2019s kind of the hope that it\u2019s not fully done,\u201d he explained of his character. \u201cIn the first season of The Comeback, writers thought TV was over and no one\u2019s gonna go to the movies anymore because reality TV was the most popular thing that was happening in the early 2000s. And then in 2014, everyone saw younger audiences going to the internet and thought, \u2018Well, that\u2019s it for TV, that\u2019s it for movies, we\u2019re done.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Lisa<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLisa Kudrow and Julian Stern attend \u2018The Comeback\u2019 Season 3 premiere on March 19, 2026 in Los Angeles, California.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJesse Grant\/PMC<\/p>\n

\n\tStern added, \u201cI think it\u2019s the same thing with AI. Yes, Hollywood is gonna lose some of their audience, but they\u2019re not gonna lose everyone, and I think Evan is showcasing that people are still gonna work in the industry and people are still going to come back to watch TV shows. It\u2019s just gonna be integrated in a weirder way than we\u2019ve never seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRead on about Julian Stern\u2019s experience working on The Comeback with his mother Lisa Kudrow, and what\u2019s in store for his character Evan.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: I really love how pivotal and hopeful your role is, just the idea that human ingenuity still exists in the age of AI. What did you make of it, given the growing presence of AI in Hollywood right now?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tJULIAN STERN: Well first, I thought of the role as just a perfect opportunity for me to play an introverted, nerdy, geeky guy, who\u2019s working with a bunch of extroverts, \u2019cause that\u2019s kind of what my life is usually. But when it came to AI, it was kind of like, yeah, AI is more of a tool than a replacement. That\u2019s kind of how I saw it, that it can do these amazing things, it\u2019s very quick, it can be efficient, but you need someone to actually manage it. And I think that\u2019s the core essential to AI, is that it\u2019s not able to replace a worker fully and it still has to be managed by a human being.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Can you tell me about how Evan plays into the rest of the season?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSTERN: I think, for Evan, how he plays into the series and what happens later on and everything\u2014I don\u2019t wanna be too altruistic, but I think he\u2019s kind of the hope that it\u2019s not fully done. In the first season of The Comeback, writers thought TV was over and no one\u2019s gonna go to the movies anymore because reality TV was the most popular thing that was happening in the early 2000s. And then in 2014, everyone saw younger audiences going to the internet and thought, \u201cWell, that\u2019s it for TV, that\u2019s it for movies, we\u2019re done.\u201d I think it\u2019s the same thing with AI. Yes, Hollywood is gonna lose some of their audience, but they\u2019re not gonna lose everyone, and I think Evan is showcasing that people are still gonna work in the industry and people are still going to come back to watch TV shows. It\u2019s just gonna be integrated in a weirder way than we\u2019ve never seen before.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tElla Stiller, Julian Stern, Tony Macht and Mike Mitchell in \u2018The Comeback\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: I also appreciated some of your physical comedy, how he\u2019s expecting everyone to beat him up. Was it fun getting to play that kind of awkward, nerdy role, like you were saying?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSTERN: It unfortunately comes very natural. Cause I\u2019m not that much of a confrontational guy to begin with. So, Michael Patrick King, who was the director for all the episodes, he would always tell me, \u201cHey, you can play it up more when you\u2019re scared.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cReally? It\u2019s not coming off goofy on camera?\u201d He\u2019s like, \u201cNo, no, more goofy.\u201d And I was like, \u201cOK, cool. As long as I\u2019m not looking too stupid or it looks fake.\u201d But it was very natural, unfortunately, to just play very awkward, timid and frightened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: What was it like working with your mom?\u00a0I know she\u2019s playing a character, but it was really fun to watch you two together.<\/p>\n

\n\tSTERN: I was really nervous going in, cause I\u2019ve never worked with my mom professionally like that before. And to be on camera with her, it\u2019s like, \u201cOh God, am I gonna mess this up because I\u2019m only gonna be able to see my mom?\u201d But my mom, she\u2019s a great actress. And when I\u2019m talking with my mom, I\u2019m talking with my mom. When I\u2019m talking with Valerie Cherish, different person, and it was really easy to slip into just, \u201cOh yeah, this is a different person, this is a complete stranger.\u201d And I just wanted to make sure that I was doing my job and making sure I\u2019m not playing her son, I\u2019m playing this guy, this nerdy guy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: What was it like kind of growing up with Valerie Cherish?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSTERN: Oh, that\u2019s a good question. Well, I would say I didn\u2019t grow up with Valerie Cherish, I grew up with my mom, and my mom is a completely separate character from Valerie.\u00a0That is a character that she created. But I mean, look, I didn\u2019t know the full extent of who my mom was until I was maybe in my late teens, and exactly what it meant to be her son. But beyond that, my only frame of reference is that it was a normal childhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Did you ever visit the set of The Comeback in the first two seasons?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSTERN: I think for the first season, I did. I did visit for the first time. I don\u2019t truly recall much. I think I got to hold slate at one point. That\u2019s my biggest memory that I have from the first season of The Comeback.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: I also see that you\u2019ve made some shorts over the past few years. Can you tell me about some of the stuff you\u2019ve been working on and what\u2019s next?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSTERN: Well, I made a short animated film called The Voiceless Man. It\u2019s an animated horror short, and it was really fun. I actually met my girlfriend working on that, and now we\u2019re living together, so It was a lot of fun. We\u2019re actually now working on an internet series called Goblin Girlfriend. We just have internet shorts online, and we\u2019re setting up a Twitch, basically to just do livestreams as our characters. For other projects, I\u2019m mostly working on a book option with my writing partner, and we\u2019re working to get that into a feature-length movie script that we can sell off or work on. That\u2019d be pretty cool. I\u2019m trying to do kind of everything \u2019cause at this point in the industry, you kind of have to. You gotta be a writer, gotta be an editor, gotta be a director, just gotta do it all and know the industry inside and out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILERS: This post contains details about The Comeback, Season 3 episode \u2018Valerie Does It All\u2019 Longtime fans of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[182,88,1035,254792,63328,67118,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-581064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-hbo","11":"tag-julian-stern","12":"tag-lisa-kudrow","13":"tag-the-comeback","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}