‘The Comeback’ Creators Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King on Ending the Series, the AI Threat, Valerie Cherish’s…

Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow didn’t mean to be so on the nose with the title of their HBO comedy “The Comeback.” But, it turns out, that has actually been the case for the show — every ten years, it makes another comeback.

“It’s more meta than we tried to be,” Kudrow tells Variety‘s Awards Circuit Podcast. Adds King: “The second season we thought was going to come back right after the first season, and that did not happen, and here, it became our brand to be this thing that comes back every decade!”

“The Comeback” first launched in 2005, was canceled, then revived in 2014 — and then returned for a third and final season this past March. Again, they didn’t mean to do this, but “The Comeback” wound up being quite a chronicle of how the business has changed over the past 20 years. So why end it now?

“Because it’s a perfect piece,” Kudrow says. “It’s a trilogy, and that’s perfect, it’s completely full circle. First season, reality shows were an extinction event for scripted television. This one, it’s AI that’s an extinction events.”

Says King: “We’re always having potential extinction events, which create enormous fear and comedy. I mean, we thought reality TV was going to end narrative TV, and now it’s just like there’s another wing on the house that you go to if you want to see reality TV. We sort of posture at the end of this, we say maybe there will be incredibly well-received and emotional human shows, and then there will be shows with digital actors that people can leave on while they do whatever. We made room for it, because I think it’s real. That’s why we have a whole final series, because the threat is very real.”

On this episode of Variety‘s Awards Circuit Podcast, “The Comeback” creators Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King discuss the evolution of the series (and Kudrow’s character, Valerie Cherish), what they wanted to say this season about the threat of AI, and why they’re ending the show. They also look back at their first time in Variety, and take the Awards Circuit 10 Questions quiz. Listen below!

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In this season of “The Comeback,” Valerie agrees — somewhat reluctantly — to star in a new sitcom that she discovers is being written mostly by AI. As they discover the truth, the show’s stars and pilot director Jimmy Burrows express their qualms. King says he hears from a lot of real-life writers about a speech Burrows gives about how complicated it is to be a writer.

“We also learned very early that it wasn’t a joke, and that it’s really not what it was two years ago when people were doing awards shows and doing bad monologues, and the joke was that ‘ChatGPT wrote my monologue,'” King says. “It’s past that. We did get the sense that there’s stuff that no one’s even seen yet that is so far past where we are now.”

This season, “The Comeback” pokes some fun at the Hollywood lists that all of us put together — including at Variety. And in one episode, Billy (Dan Bucatinsky) is excited to land on Variety‘s “50 Over 50” list.

“You should do ’50 Over 50,’ it would be a great homage!” King says. “People are so proud of that!”

Speaking of Variety, this season on the Awards Circuit Podcast, we’ve been looking at the first time our guests appeared in the pages of Variety. For King, it was November 14, 1984, with a mention of his play “Todays Special.”

“It was a play about three sisters, and how really they each separately have things that, when they’re together, that makes one perfect person,” he says. “It was a family comedy, and it was done in Woodstock, New York. That must have meant so much to me then, that little mention making it in Variety made it, more from a wish to like a dream coming true. That’s a tiny blur, but has a giant impact.”

And for Kudrow, on March 14, 1989, a review of The Groundlings Sunday Company show “And on Sunday He Laughed” earned her some praise, lauding her for “some of the show’s subtlest work in her very funny portrayal of a self-absorbed chatterer in a quiet theater.”

TEN Qs WITH LISA KUDROW AND MICHAEL PATRICK KING:

1. Childhood nickname: Kudrow: “Lisa Pizza.” King: “Sissy.”

2. Something you loved as a kid but can’t believe you were into it now: Kudrow: “Candy dots. It’s just sugar!” King: “My grandmother used to make us something called ‘toast on the stove,’ which is she would put a piece of white bread slathered in butter on the open gas jet, and then take two scoops of sugar and put it on the toast. We would sit at a table like characters from a Dickens novel, eating toast on the stove, and then probably fall into a coma and a nap.”

3. Go-to Karaoke or sing-in-the-shower song: Kurdrow: “It’s different every time. I always think it’s interesting, why is this song on my mind today?” King: “I have to be careful because I don’t sing and I don’t think musically, so if I hear a song, it gets trapped in my head. Now I’m still hearing Adele, ‘should I give up or show I just keep chasing pavements.’ Which when we wete doing the show, Lisa thought the lyric was, ‘should I give up or should I just keep chasing rainbows.’ And I thought that was so Valerie to spin it up, ‘chasing rainbows,’ but now that’s in my head a lot.”

4. Give me an alternate title for your show: Both: “Raw Footage.” Says King: “When we started our research, we got raw footage from ‘The Osbornes’ bootleg tapes, because I had somebody that worked on the show that I knew. That color bar we kept in the first season, everything started with that, because it was supposed to be like an assembly that was created by the second editor, not the final cut, but raw footage was the first thing. Because it was all raw footage, and that was how we defined what the show could be versus television, because we didn’t want it to look polished at all. We wanted it to look off.”

Adds Kudrow: “And how awkward it was really going to be!” Says King: “All that downtime that we saw when we looked at the ‘Osborne’ footage was just boring! And you could see people sort of trying to get something going, and so ‘Raw Footage’ was the first title, and we also thought we were doing it with one camera. Carolyn Strauss at HBO was such an advocate, she said maybe try two cameras.”

Aren’t you glad now you didn’t call it “Raw Footage?” King is relieved: “Yes, because I don’t think ‘Raw Footage’ comes back.”

5. What’s your secret talent?: King: “I can wiggle my ears.” Kudrow: “I don’t have any!”

6. Favorite ice cream flavor: King: “Chocolate chip mint.” Kudrow: “I don’t like ice cream! Too cold. Even as a kid, I thought, why is this a treat? It’s milk! I hate milk. Just chocolate! That’s a treat. But frozen milk, that’s kind of bullshit.” So what is Kudrow’s favorite dessert? “I love chocolate chip cookies.” (“Friends” fans might note that on the show, it was Ross who hated ice cream — because it was too cold.)

7. The one item you couldn’t live without: Kudrow: “There’s too many! But Nicorette.” King: “My version of nicotine, which is television.”

8. What TV show in all of history do you wish you were a cast member of?: King: I feel like there’s a magical, ‘Brigadoon’ kind of bridge that I would have liked to have crossed to go into ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show.’ That felt like something new and warm, and I bet she was a great No. 1. It had all those great writers, and it felt like a charmed circle.” Kudrow: “When I was a kid, ‘The Brady Bunch.’ Or ‘The Partridge Family.’ I used to be like, ‘what if I could be in the Partridge Family? Wouldn’t that be great?’ I wasn’t acting, it wasn’t even a possibility.”

9. Fictional character you most relate to: [Not asked]

10. Your favorite piece of advice: King: “I tell writers all the time that there’s only one path, and it’s yours. Don’t think you have to have somebody else’s path, because they can all be very personal to them. Don’t compare yourself path wise to anybody else, and it’s easier said than done, but it’s a valuable lesson. As you start on the road to writing and showrunning, you look around and see how everybody else got there. But it doesn’t help, just keep doing you.”

Says Kudrow: “I had an acting teacher, and it was really just a cold reading class. It was about coping with acting, auditioning, and on TV and film, and it was something along those lines. Do what you do, and be your version of who that character is, and you at least have done a good job. The rest is none of your business. That’s your only job, and it’s really simple, so you don’t have to take it personally.”

At the start of the episode, the Awards Circuit Roundtable discusses CBS’ “60 Minutes” debacle, previews the Tonys and answers a listener question about broadcast dramas at the Emmys.

Variety’s “Awards Circuit” podcast, hosted by Clayton Davis, Jazz Tangcay, Emily Longeretta and Michael Schneider, who also produces, is your one-stop source for lively conversations about the best in film and television. Each episode, “Awards Circuit” features interviews with top film and TV talent and creatives, discussions and debates about awards races and industry headlines, and much more. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or anywhere you download podcasts.