The Comeback dropped episode four of its final season Sunday night, and the new installment finds Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish settling in on the soundstage of How’s That?!, and attempting to smooth things over as the AI-written sitcom encounters hiccups in the early days of production.
At the table read for the show’s second episode, Cherish is perplexed by a jail scene and annoyed that some of her co-stars don’t have more lines. As she investigates the situation, Cherish, who is an executive producer of her new show, seeks out the AI assistant, Marco, who introduces her to a new character, a “troubleshoot tech guy” named Evan. He explains that the unusual scene is actually a “hallucination” that AI spit out because it got stuck between the prompt and AI’s knowledge base.
Cherish seems relieved as she takes in the information while being surprised by how spooked Evan acts as two burly crew members walk past him. Evan explains that he was body-checked by some crew members while working on his last AI project. “This is a safe set now,” Cherish reassures him, “We practice safe set.”
In real life, it was also a family set. Evan is played by Julian Stern, a first time actor who also happens to be the only child of Kudrow and husband Michele Stern. Making the collaboration even more sweet (and familial) is the fact that The Comeback filmed on Warner Bros.’ Stage 24, home to Friends and where Kudrow worked when she had Stern, who visited his mother on set as a baby and young toddler.
“When we were writing episodes for this season, we had a role of an AI guy come up and I was just like, ‘Well, it’s him,” she said, referencing casting her son while sitting down with The Hollywood Reporter during a recent cover story interview. Her co-creator and close collaborator Michael Patrick King agreed. “He also said, ‘Yeah, of course, it’s him.’”
Said King: “A lot of The Comeback is like couture, it’s cut for specific beings. We knew we wanted a character that was kind of part tech nerd. When we were looking around to cast somebody, it was like, well, Julian’s a tech nerd who is also uncorrupted by many, many experiences of people knowing him.”
Asked how it was to work with her 27-year-old son on his first television acting gig, Kudrow was complimentary but also very matter-of-fact. “He was great. He was Evan. I was Valerie. I mean, he was great,” she said. “I wasn’t shocked or surprised but you never know what’s going to happen or how it’s going to go because a million things can get in your way if you’ve not done it before and you’re nervous or any of that. But he coped.”
Kudrow, however, wouldn’t take credit for how well he managed. And despite the fact that he visited his mother and her famous cast mates during the height of Friends, Stern did not grow up on sets. “A kid can’t really be a kid,” she said. “He was like three, and would come to a Friends taping but maybe laugh a little too long and we’d have to redo it. So it wasn’t always fun and then he’d go upstairs. He also wasn’t that interested. But then when he was like nine and up, he might come visit me if I was doing something, like he did for Web Therapy. But even then, he would watch a little bit and say, ‘I get it.’ And then he was done.”
He might not have logged a ton of hours, but Stern did pick up some of his mother’s skills. In fact, Kudrow praised him as having “talents I don’t have.” She detailed how, at nine, he was doing stop-motion projects and writing “mind-blowing” short stories. He once pulled off a Lego car crash that built up so much tension it left her wide-eyed. She and her husband were equally awed seeing Stern perform in a high school production of The Laramie Project, during which he sat in an orange jumpsuit for most of the play before delivering a monologue. “My husband and I were boo-hoo-hooing, and I went, ‘OK, he’s got something.’”
Despite a natural talent for acting, Stern went off to college at USC where he studied filmmaking. But during his studies, he wound up performing a monologue from The Normal Heart, which left her wowed again. “My husband can be a really tough critic and even he went, ‘Oh, he’s good.’ So we just said, ‘Listen, pursue all of it and we’ll see what door opens first,’” said Kudrow, who also praised his talents as an animator as he makes “adorable and funny” micro-animated shorts with his girlfriend.
Viewers will catch more of Stern as The Comeback season rolls on. He’s also not the only child of a famous actor to appear on this season. Ella Stiller, daughter of Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor, plays Patience, Cherish’s social media assistant. King brought her on to the show after working with her on his last series, And Just Like That.
“The great gift of both Ella and Julian is that nobody knows who they are yet, so you’re seeing them for the first time in these parts and you’re like, ‘Who is that? Oh, that’s Evan.’ Or, ‘Oh, that’s Patience.’ Then the industry starts to respond and say, ‘Well, that’s Julian Stern and that’s Ella Stiller.’ They’re both incredibly gifted and special.”
The Comeback airs every Sunday on HBO Max.
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