How Lisa Kudrow, Michael Patrick King Said Goodbye To The Comeback, Valerie Cherish With Black And White Finale

Even

though The Comeback lasted for three seasons, the HBO series outlasted the global hit show Friends. The comedy series, co-created by star Lisa Kudrow and writer Michael Patrick King, aired every decade at a pivotal point in Hollywood. In Season 2, Kudrow's character Valerie Cherish explored reality television. This time, in its third and final season, it looked at the emergence of AI (artificial intelligence) in Hollywood. Kudrow and King discussed the creative choices of the series that says goodbye to Valerie Cherish and leaves the character, finally, in a good place. Warning: Spoilers Ahead!

Michael Patrick King on shifting from black and white to colour in series finale

In a press conference attended by us, Kudrow explained that the idea to move to colour was all King's. Valerie Cherish loses her show How's That?! after NuNet replaces her with AI version. But this is not the end of Valerie. The show ends in a hopeful manner with Valerie speaking to Jane (Laura Silverman) on camera about life after the big debacle.

King shared that ending the show stylistically was a gamble. He said, "Here was a risk; all of a sudden, we're going to black and white. What I love is the colour coming in, it comes in right at the point that Valerie's humanity really starts to make her. And she's basically saying, “Isn't that what a person does?” So she jumps from being this faded image or different image, black and white, into literally colour. Because people saw Valerie as black and white. Victim, crazy. Loser, winner. There was no gray area. And hopefully at the end, it was Lisa's drumbeat that was so clear that we wanted to make sure people saw Valerie in a different way at the end and could see a little bit of how Valerie sees herself." The writer-director also revealed the last episode was more poignant because it was filmed on the Warner Brothers lot, which is a callback to old Hollywood. Additionally, the finale is just called Valerie Cherish. The other episodes say Valerie does this or Valerie does that. It was all about the character. The ending reveals that Valerie does flourish after that. She gets a new show called Judge's Table and ends up being nominated for three Emmys in 2027.

Lisa Kudrow on Valerie Cherish facing backlash on AI series

In the series finale, apart from facing vitriol from the cast and crew on How's That?! and viewers, Valerie also faces backlash from the industry. When asked how she would deal with the same situation, Kudrow replied, "What is there to do except you take a deep breath, try to regroup?"

The actress recalled a similar situation in her own life when she was starring on Friends. She revealed, "I feel like that to that level on Friends, there was this huge backlash. Where everyone hated us, we were overexposed. And we got together and just said, all right, we have to just head down, stop doing press, and just do our work. Let's just deal with the task at hand, what our actual job is, which is to say the words and do the show. And so I think it's kind of the same."