Valerie Cherish is ready for her close-up… again!
HBO gave fans the beloved sitcom “The Comeback,” starring Lisa Kudrow, twenty years ago in 2005 and a second season nearly a decade later in 2014, and now, Season 3 is finally happening.
In a clip posted to Instagram on Friday, Kudrow, 61, as Valerie, sits in an interview chair and announces her new show, with her signature line “How’s that?” before the producers make her do another take.
In typical Valerie style, she walks away, with producers saying they are sure she’ll come back.
Off camera, Valerie quips, “I know what I’m doing. I’m a grown-up now!”
The streaming platform captioned their post: “How’s that?! The third and final season of #TheComeback premieres in 2026 on HBO Max.”
Fans flocked to the comments section to share their excitement, with one social media user writing, “THIS IS THE MOST EXCITING NEWS I HAVE RECEIVED IN A VERY VERY LONG TIME!!!”
A second viewer exclaimed, “THIS IS THE BEST NEWS!!!!!! Ahhhh.”
“Valerie Cherish has found her way back to the current television landscape. Neither of us are surprised she did,” the show’s creators, Michael Patrick King and Kudrow, said in a joint statement.
“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, EVP of HBO & Max Comedy Programming, also shared.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, Dan Bucatinsky, who played Billy Stanton, Valerie’s publicist who struggled to control his anger, recently got candid on whether a reboot was possible.
“I would love it,” the actor, 59, exclusively told The Post at the 2025 Astra Awards. “I would love it. It gets talked about all the time. So just know — I hope so.”
“We talk about it all the time,” Bucatinksy continued. “If there are talks happening, I can’t answer, but we talk about it all the time and we all would love it.”
The sitcom also featured Damian Young, Lance Barber, and Robert Bagnell. Robert Michael Morris, who played Kudrow’s hairdresser Mickey Deane, passed away in 2017 at age 77.
The “Scandal” alum also reflected on a favorite memory of shooting “The Comeback” with Kudrow.
“We worked together a lot over the years,” Bucatinsky explained. “But certainly shooting ‘The Comeback’ was one of them. I think one of the scenes I loved the most with her, was going into her trailer in Season 2 when Billy has just had it and is quitting and throws his phone across the room.”
“That was a really iconic moment for a publicist who could never really keep his rage to himself,” he went on. “We had a really good time doing that.”
Kudrow was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2006 for Season 1 and again in 2015 for Season 2.
King, 70, who created the satirical comedy that poked fun at reality television and the entertainment industry, has previously opened up about wanting to tell Valerie’s story once more.
“There’s always a meeting, every now and then, where we put ideas on the table,” he elaborated to Variety in honor of the 20th anniversary of the program earlier this month. “It has to be a really intricate combination of things to get us both to the place where we think, ‘Oh, God.’ We laugh at anything.”
King continued. “Valerie could be funny anywhere. But the thing we’re always looking for is, what would make an event worthy of Valerie coming back? So we’re constantly meeting — ‘Hey, what about this?’”
Now is as good a time as ever, as Kudrow realized the show would resonate even deeper with those trying to make it on reality television.
“It’s much more identifiable,” the “Friends” star confessed. “I’ve seen ‘Housewives.’ We have another point of reference for a woman and what she’s willing to do. Every one of those Housewives, they know what they’re doing; they’re playing a role in order to get their brand out there, and it’s a means to an end.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
