Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish is returning to the screen for the very last time, as the Friends star cheekily stresses repeatedly in a new teaser for the third and final season of her cult hit The Comeback.
20 years after the show’s first season debuted on HBO—and more than 10 years after an unlikely follow-up second season aired—the network announced Friday that the Hollywood satire series will be back once more in 2026.
“No matter what the industry throws at her, Valerie Cherish is a survivor. On the 20th Anniversary of her debut, Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow have brilliantly scripted her return to HBO and we can’t wait to see that,” Amy Gravitt, executive vice president of HBO & Max Comedy programming, said in a statement, echoing the character’s “I don’t want to see that” catchphrase.
Kudrow and her co-creator Michael Patrick King (of Sex and the City and And Just Like That.. fame) added, “Valerie Cherish has found her way back to the current television landscape. Neither of us are surprised she did.”
Kudrow, who originated the role of the washed-up sitcom actress in 2005, just one year after wrapping her hugely successful run as Phoebe Buffay on NBC’s Friends, has long expressed interest in making more episodes of The Comeback since the much-delayed second season ended in 2014.
In 2022, Kudrow told the Daily Beast that while she had no idea that if wanted more of the show, she was always eager to return to the cringe-inducing character.
“We always talk about what it would be. Always,” she said then. “Younger and younger people come up to me and go ‘The Comeback!’ Because they weren’t around when it was on TV and didn’t know what it was like in 2005 when it came out. And I love being her. My God, that’s one of the easiest things to do.”
Among the original cast, Robert Michael Morris, who played Valerie’s hairdresser and confidant Mickey Deane, passed away at 77 after the second season aired.
Dan Bucatinsky, who played Valerie’s publicist on the show along with serving as an executive producer, told the Daily Beast just last month that he was holding out hope for the show’s return.
“I would love nothing more,” he said. “The desire is there. It’s definitely something that gets talked about all the time. There’s a desire for it. I think there’s an audience for it. So I would love nothing more.”
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