The fate of The Comeback as a series has unfolded with such perfect idiosyncrasy for the story of The Comeback. For the kids who don’t know: The Comeback was one of Lisa Kudrow’s first big projects after Friends ended (and if you’re a kid asking “What’s ‘Friends?’”… I cannot help you). She co-created the series in 2005 with Sex and the City showrunner Michael Patrick King and starred in it as Valerie Cherish, an actress 10 years past her moment of modest fame who’s desperately trying to stage — you guessed it — a comeback. Lisa was resplendent in the role, because she’s an intelligent and underrated actress, but the show was in many ways ahead of its time and was canceled after one season. Then it miraculously came back in 2014, and now the third and final season is airing on HBO Max. Three seasons over 21 years; a whole generation was born and graduated college in the time it took The Comeback to get from seasons one to three! Lisa and Michael just did a delightful joint interview with The Independent, a few highlights:

On the idea that her characters are ‘the other’: Kudrow is perplexed, then not, then receptive. “Gee, I dunno… what? Because that’s! A new… thought.” She puts vocal emphasis in what feels like all the wrong places. It’s discombobulating, then not, then hilarious. Next to her is Michael Patrick King, her Comeback co-creator… “Look at how many magnificent not-chosen characters Lisa has played,” he says. “Or don’t-look-at-me characters. It’s really special. And it’s what’s so thrilling about Valerie — we’re taking the outsider and making her the main character. She’s a character so outside that you can’t look away.”

Humor in cringe: Kudrow gives one of TV’s greatest ever performances, wearing a desperate smile as indignities rain down upon her, her desire to be seen at any cost propelling her through a series of misadventures. The show itself was mean, satirical and caustic. “The socially painful can be hilarious,” King says. “People just didn’t get it.” I wonder if that pain stems from Kudrow’s own life, but then I have second thoughts. She’s so sparkly. “Don’t worry, you’re not bringing the mood down,” she interrupts. “You can’t help it with this show, because it’s hitting on deep stuff.” She thinks it’s why it was met with a mixed response back in 2005. “People were watching it covering their eyes. They’d say ‘it’s so cringe’. But really it’s so human. It taps into all of our worst fears.”

It all starts with biology: Kudrow studied biology at university and initially had her sights set on becoming an expert in cluster headaches (!) like her father, a doctor. But then she found the famed Los Angeles improv comedy troupe The Groundlings, where she … gravitated towards broad pastiche, the lonely, and the secretly sad. “Those parts just hit close to home,” she says.

She’s always clicked with gay men: I wonder if Kudrow has ever wondered what it is about her that appeals to gay people, or if that might feel a bit navel-gazing. “No, I have!” she says. “But I ask questions about everything. I’m a biology major — it’s nothing but ‘why’. But honestly, I’ve always felt safer when gay men were running things. And I’ve always felt like gay men just get me.”

‘The sixth Friend’: “Nobody cared about me,” she laughs. “There were certain parts of [my talent agency] that just referred to me as ‘the sixth Friend.’” King guffaws. “No way! But you were the first Friend to win an Emmy, right?” (Outstanding Supporting Actress is a Comedy Series, in 1998.) “Yeah,” Kudrow shrugs. “But there was no vision for me, and no expectations about the kind of career I could have. There was just, like, ‘boy is she lucky she got on that show’.” The silver lining to this, of course, was that she could do what she wanted outside of it.

She utters ‘Valerie-isms’ in real life: “I’ll hear her in my head all the time,” Kudrow says, “and I have to tell myself not to say some of it out loud.” Often she can’t help it. “I did it in front of Anna Kendrick once, who turned out to be a fan,” she laughs. “She was like, ‘oh my god, that was Valerie!’ I was so embarrassed. But she just slipped out like a burp, you know?”

[From The Independent]

I love how Lisa traces her approach to the world and her work back to being a biology major — asking lots of questions! It’s taken me a shocking amount of time as an adult to realize that asking questions is a far more valuable skill than having the answers. (Sidenote: as someone who’s been a lifelong headache/migraine sufferer, I selfishly half wish she’d pursued becoming an expert in cluster headaches!) Also in this article, Lisa confirms what I’ve often suspected from the outside: that she was seriously underestimated as Phoebe on Friends, even after, as Michael Patrick King points out, she was the FIRST Friend to win an Emmy. When you’re that good, people don’t think you’re doing anything. But the upshot, as noted here, is that Lisa has been able to craft the career of her choosing. She banked the Friends money, and was able to do whatever she cared about. May we all be so lucky.

Photos credit: Lounis Tiar/Avalon, Yui Mok/PA Images/INSTARimages, Friends screenshots via YouTube/TBS