Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King Unpack Season 3 of HBO Max's The Comeback

AI looms large as the series returns

If you are a creative person living in fear of AI destroying your career, the latest season of HBO Max’s The Comeback will speak to you. The show finds Lisa Kudrow’s actress alter ego Valerie Cherish cast in a multi-cam sitcom. Sitcoms are back in vogue? Great! But here’s the catch: This show, titled How’s That?, is written by AI.

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Oh, and it’s a secret that Cherish needs to keep to avoid blowback. Not surprisingly, she feels conflicted, but she also wants to work.

Kudrow and Michael Patrick King, who co-created the series, recently held a press conference to promote The Comeback, now in its third and final season.

Here’s four things we learned from that presser:

THE STORY HAD TO BE TOLD ASAP

There are always time limits when it comes to writing a show, but the pressure was on to write the latest installment of The Comeback as fast as humanly possible. Yes, humans wrote these scripts!

King recalls accompanying Kudrow to pitch season three to HBO chief Casey Bloys. He loved the idea, responding, “‘Yes. Now!’” King says. “It was very much: As fast as you can.”

There are developments in AI every day. And the worry was, “We’ll be old news,” Kudrow says.

“Our goal was to get on the air before a studio admitted they were using AI,” King adds.

FEAR FACTOR

Ultimately, the comedy in this season of The Comeback comes from the fear of AI among the creative class. “We’re living in a nightmare of what could possibly happen to all of us,” says King, a veteran of the industry also famous for writing and directing Sex and the City.

While King didn’t address his personal thoughts on the technology, Kudrow doesn’t feel threatened.

“There might be some AI entertainment that audiences like, but it’s not going to take over everything,” she predicts.

HOW VALERIE CHANGED SINCE WE LAST SAW HER MORE THAN 10 YEARS AGO

A quick history of The Comeback for those of you who haven’t watched the show since the beginning: It debuted in 2005, a time when there was an explosion in the production of cheap reality series. Cherish, a B-list sitcom actor, agrees to star in a reality show based on her life despite the drawbacks because she is desperate to reignite her fading career.

In the show’s second season, from2014, prestige television is all the rage, and Cherish plays a fictionalized version of herself in a series called Seeing Red. She wins an Emmy for her performance. It’s a dream come true, but she doesn’t take the stage during the awards ceremony to receive the biggest honor of her career. Instead, she rushes to the hospital to be with Mickey, her hairdresser, who has fallen ill.

In the 11 years since then, Cherish’s fortunes have waned as the television industry has crashed and burned, with Hollywood rattled by mergers, strikes and the loss of production overseas. Cherish is also up ageism.

“She’s been adrift for a few years when we meet her again, which is exactly right where we want her,” Kudrow teases.

IS SEASON THREE REALLY THE END OF THE ROAD FOR THE COMEBACK?

The Comeback is unique in how it pops up every decade or so to portray the state of the television industry through Cherish’s experiences. Certainly, there will be more story to tell a decade from now. Is this really the final season, or might we see the show return down the line?

When a reporter hopefully poses that question, Kudrow responds, “But it’s a trilogy!”

“We’re not doing a quadrilogy,” King confirms. “So that’s an absolute no.”

The Comeback returns to HBO Max for its third—and let us stress, final—season on March 22.