Starting this March, Lisa Kudrow is starring in The Comeback on HBO. The comedy, which is about a former sitcom star desperate to revive her career, originally premiered back in 2005 and was canceled after its first season. However, after becoming a cult classic, the show was revived for a second season in 2014. Although it was canceled once more, it is finally returning for its third season in 2026.
Some familiar faces will be returning to the series, like Dan Bucatinsky and Laura Silverman, but there will be new characters on screen as well. Andrew Scott, who played James Moriarty in Sherlock and the Hot Priest in Fleabag, is joining the series as the head of the studio, appearing in multiple episodes. Kudrow’s real-life son, Julian Stern, is also making an appearance.
“It was heaven,” Kudrow said about working with her twenty-seven-year-old son, who is playing a tech guy in the series. "It's my baby! But he's a grown man and beard, you know? Yeah. I was nervous for him, his first, like, table read. But he was great."
When Phoebe was acting as a surrogate carrying triplets for her brother on Friends, Lisa was actually pregnant with Julian—but that’s not the only connection that The Comeback has to the iconic sitcom. The Comeback was shot on Warner Brother’s Soundstage 24, which is where most of Friends was filmed. Kudrow calls filming in the same location “emotional”.
Although she has been in the industry for nearly forty years and has appeared in popular films like Easy A and Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, she doesn’t mind audiences only knowing her from Friends, which won six Primetime Emmy Awards during its ten-season run.
“Friends gave me everything,” she went on to say. “It just did. And I loved being Phoebe. I loved the whole experience. And it's fine if all you know that I've ever done is Friends.”
