The series about a pathetic actress that one of the protagonists of 'Friends' recovers

BarcelonaFor most viewers and the general public, Lisa Kudrow will always be Phoebe Buffay, the eccentric masseuse who was part of the group of friends from Friends. But the actress's professional life is not limited to the superpopular comedy of the 90s and early 2000s. When Friends ended, Kudrow embarked on other professional projects, the most personal of them The comeback, a comedy considered a cult classic that is now returning to television 12 years after its second season (the first premiered in 2005). The new installment, the last the series will have, premieres this Monday on HBO Max.

The comeback is a satire of the world of entertainment and the television industry. In it, Kudrow plays Valerie Cherish, a sitcom actress who had a brief period of success and is struggling to regain relevance. To achieve her dream, among other things, she launches a reality show about her life. The new season, which is now premiering, is closely connected to the reality of the television industry: Valerie is offered the lead role in a new sitcom. It would be a dream come true if it weren't for the fact that it's the first series written with artificial intelligence, information that is theoretically secret, but that the always loose-lipped Valerie ends up spilling. The protagonist of The comeback is pathetic and generates embarrassment, but at the same time ends up being likable.

In this new season, the series' cast has new faces, some of them quite well-known. Andrew Scott plays the platform executive who offers Valerie the new professional opportunity. Among the illustrious cameos are Jane Fonda and Fran Drescher, who led the 2023 actors' strike as president of the union of professionals in this audiovisual sector.

Born from improvisation

The germ of Valerie should be sought in the improvisation shows that Kudrow did at the beginning of her career at The Groundlings, a comedy venue in Los Angeles. The character was an egocentric celebrity with little self-awareness. Many years after training in the world of improvisation, and once Friends had ended, Kudrow began to devise a new project with Michael Patrick King, screenwriter and producer of Sex and the City, which had also just finished. Together they shaped The Comeback, a series that, although it has not managed to be popular with the general public, has the recognition of the world of comedy and pop culture (Valerie's character is often used in social media memes)."It's fun to be Valerie –Kudrow explains to The Hollywood Reporter– Many times people told me: "}«It must be very difficult to interpret these situations where everyone is so hard on her. Isn't it exhausting?». Exhausting? Not at all. What's wrong with me? It wasn't exhausting at all. I didn't feel bad for a second. Valerie creates her own reality. Yes, she deludes herself a bit, but that's one of the sources of comedy. It's so obvious to us that people want her to stop talking or don't want her there, but she can't help it."When Kudrow created and starred in The Comeback she was aware that many people would try to draw parallels between Valerie and herself, who was one of the protagonists of one of the most popular comedies in television history. The actress, as well as the rest of the cast of Friends, have always had good words for the series that made them famous worldwide and Valerie's failures have little to do with Kudrow's real experiences. "I have to be honest, none of the dysfunctions are Friends' responsibility, but I knew I could never convince anyone of that, so who cares? I can't do anything about it," she remarks. Cherish, like Kudrow, won an Emmy Award and has always been a comedy actress. The difference between the two, however, is that the protagonist of Friends has always been respected by the industry and has never lacked work.