Lisa Kudrow: ‘OK, so I’ve gotten older — excuse me for not dying’

Lisa Kudrow, 62, will always be Phoebe, but now, for many, she’s also Valerie Cherish, the main character on The Comeback (HBO Max), a series created by and starring herself that brings to life a mature actress attempting a return to the entertainment industry by putting on a brave face despite all kinds of humiliation. Its first season in 2005 was not a huge hit, but its slightly-pathetic-yet-endearing has-been female lead, who attempts to resuscitate her career with a reality show, won over discerning tastes.

In real life, the series was canceled, only to be brought back 10 years later with a second season in which a tragicomic take on what show business means for a “woman of a certain age” brought great comedic moments. Another decade later, Valerie is returning for the third and last time. On this occasion, she’s embarking on a television project whose script was written by artificial intelligence in the middle of a writer’s strike.

“Before, it was just certain people who got it, and they loved it. Now I get the feeling that the majority of the people I talk to understand what it’s about,” Lisa Kudrow says, with her characteristic and disconcerting laugh, by video call from the living room of her Los Angeles home.

Question. What do you think led to that change?

Answer. In our first season in 2005, there weren’t that many reality shows around, there was no Housewives anything, so there wasn’t such a common reference point. Nowadays with social media, everybody is putting on their own reality show constantly. Plus, 10 years ago the general public didn’t know how bad they treated people, how abusive some of the people in power could get. When we created this series, we weren’t exaggerating, but rather, informing. People found it hard to watch how they treated that woman, but the truth is that any actress who has had a certain amount of success has had to put up with this, get over it and deal with it.

Q. Do you think that movements like Time’s Up, and even newer perceptions of feminism have had something to do with that?

A. Yes, absolutely. On the other hand, I also think the series is a Rorschach test: what you see in it, that which hurts you the most, is your greatest fear. You look at Valerie and you say, “If someone was that horrible to me, I hope I would stand up for myself better.” Or, “Do I also keep talking when I should stop out of a fear of silence?” It has a very “me too” aspect to it, but not a “me too” of the #MeToo movement, but rather “that could be me.”

Q. Are you still worried about other peoples’ perception of you?

A. When I got started, I realized that the press sometimes deliberately misinterprets things, was misinformed or simply made things up, and it made me really anxious about what people were going to think. Then I understood that it only matters that my friends, my family and I know the truth, and that you have to turn the page.

Q. And on the physical level? Do you feel more or less secure?

A. Well, both at the same time. That is to say, now when they take photos of me for interviews, I see myself and I think, “OK, yeah, wow, look at that.” On the other hand, honestly, I’m too afraid to do anything drastic [touches her under-chin area]. I’m really afraid of that. I don’t want to look too different. So I say to myself, “OK, so I’ve gotten older — excuse me for not dying.”

Q. You have said that there’s a very fine line between coping and living in denial. Have there been periods of your life during which you’ve been in denial?

A. Maybe a few times in terms of my appearance. I was convinced that I was super-skinny and even though I was never morbidly obese, it turns out I wasn’t that skinny. And all of a sudden, someone suggested that I get something done to “look better” and then I looked at myself, thinking, “Oh, I get it. Right, yeah, I’m not like I thought… I don’t look like I thought I did. OK, I get it.” For me, denial was good until things started to go bad, and then you have to stop to assess. But in the background, you always know if you’re in denial. You feel it, there’s a sense of unease. We call it “denial”, but it’s not that so much as it is that you just don’t care.

Q. James Burrows [creator of TV mega-hits like Friends, Frasier and Cheers] made a cameo on the series and gave Valerie some bad news about her career. Has he ever said anything to you in real life that was hard to take?

A. Well, I have heard him say some things, but he is very diplomatic. He knows how to express himself very objectively, and I’ve never seen him try to hurt anyone or wield power over them. He’s just transmitting information.

Q. And could you give me an example of something he’s said that was hard to take?

A. Well, they cast me in the pilot episode of Frasier and fired me after a week of rehearsals, before they started filming. He’d already picked another actress to replace me, Perry Gilpin, but I didn’t know that yet. I was just thinking “Finally! This series is going to be a hit.” And one day when we were rehearsing, Jimmy said, “This isn’t working. It’s not working. But, well, the writers will fix it.”

Q. Did you accept that? Did you reject it? What did you do?

A. In the moment, I thought, “Wow, I hate myself.” But it didn’t have anything to do with hate. He saw that the chemistry wasn’t there, so it’s not the script’s fault, it’s that they miscast someone who has a different vision of the character than what is required. It hurt, but that’s because I added some of my own stuff. But he didn’t hate me. It was just that I wasn’t the right person. And he didn’t even say it like that to me, he was more delicate.

Q. On Friends, was it hard to say what you wanted?

A. Sometimes it was hard, because sometimes it’s hard to express complex issues. I’m not even talking about an interpersonal problem, but rather asking yourself, “What am I doing with this joke? Or with this sentence? I don’t know what I’m saying in order to really get the most out of it.” That is to say, when it comes to relationship between us, communication was fundamental and very welcome, and that same dynamic was there among the six of us: when we needed to talk, we said, “Can we talk?” “You said something that made me feel a certain way”, and then it got fixed, “Oh no, that is definitely not what I wanted to say.” And things would immediately get cleared up. It was a very healthy relationship between the six of us. That’s really difficult to achieve.

Q. Despite that good communication, is there anything you regret not saying to Matthew Perry?

A. No no no, I think I left things clear, very clear. That I loved him. I loved him, and he knew it. And if he didn’t know it then, he knows it now, because now he knows everything.

Q. This season of The Comeback was filmed in the Friends studio. How would you characterize what it felt like to go back?

A. At first I thought, “How cool, we’re going to film on Stage 24. How thoughtful of Warner Bros.” But then I realized that it was a way bigger deal. Nine years of the experience that changed my life, where we said our goodbyes and cried our eyes out that last night. Where the reunion also took place, which was huge and transcendental. And now I’m saying goodbye to The Comeback and Valerie Cherish, which for me is only second to Friends and, in a certain way, not even because I’ve been co-creator and co-screenwriter on The Comeback. And my son is even in the cast! I was pregnant with him when I was filming Friends and he was five years old when we finished.

Q. The truth is that he really nails the role of the company’s IT guy and AI expert…

A. Of course. And I assure you, he’s nothing like that.

Q. Do you use artificial intelligence?

A. I don’t want to, and even then, it pops up when I go online to ask a question. I am convinced that it will have some fantastic uses, but I promise you that Michael [Patrick King, her co-writer on the show] and I haven’t used it to write the series. Though they suggested we do it to be able we say we did and joke about it. We refuse to use it precisely because then we can say we don’t use it.

Q. Are you the kind of screenwriter who likes to argue?

A. I don’t like to argue because emotions come in and that doesn’t solve anything.

Q. Your husband just passed by, so I’m going to ask if you’ve ever used the same excuse you had for your husband on the series when he wants to have sex: “Don’t bother me, I’m reading my lines.”

A. Let’s just say that’s never been a problem. [laughs]

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