During a “A Conversation Among Friends,” Lisa Kudrow ’85 and Collaborators Reflect on Fame, Friendship, and the Future of Television
Thirty-two years after she first captivated TV audiences worldwide with her portrayal of Phoebe Buffay on Friends, Lisa Kudrow ’85 has been making waves in the entertainment industry. On May 8, Kudrow and fellow alum Dan Bucatinsky ’87 returned to the Vassar campus along with their longtime partner-in-crime, TV and film director/writer/producer Michael Patrick King, to talk about their latest project, the third and final season of the HBO sitcom The Comeback, and to share their observations about the shifting show business landscape. The conversation was billed as “A Conversation Among Friends.”
Kudrow, Bucatinsky, and King made their remarks before a packed house in the Martel Theater in a conversation moderated by Associate Professor of Psychological Science Dara N. Greenwood. Kudrow noted that The Comeback has made some comebacks of its own. After being canceled after Season One in 2005, it had a nine-year hiatus before its second season in 2014. “We realized we were making a show about the evolution of the entertainment industry,” said Kudrow. In the third and final season, which debuted on March 22, Kudrow’s character, aging B-list film actress Valerie Cherish, accepts a part in an AI-written TV show after taking a break from acting during the 2023 Hollywood writers’ strike.
Kudrow, Bucatinsky, and King joined Conversations at the Salt Line podcast host Wesley Dixon for a wide-ranging conversation about The Comeback and other aspects of their careers in entertainment. Watch now.
Although billed as a comedy, Greenwood noted that The Comeback has its share of dark moments. “It’s a unique blending of comedy and gravitas,” she said. “Some scenes are funny, and others made me cry.” This prompted Kudrow to describe Valerie Cherish as “needy, sweet, and savage.”
It was obvious that Kudrow, Bucatinsky, and King were mutual admirers throughout their 90-minute conversation. Bucatinsky, who won a Primetime Emmy for his guest appearance on the drama series Scandal in 2013 and has a major role in The Comeback, said that while he and Kudrow were at Vassar together for two years, the two didn’t get to know each other until nearly a decade later. They were co-creators of the critically acclaimed Showtime TV series Web Therapy, which debuted in 2011.
King, best known for his writing and directing for Sex and the City, said he first met Kudrow after seeing her perform with a Los Angeles improv sketch group, The Groundlings, long before she landed her role on Friends. Kudrow quipped that at various award shows, she and others in the Friends cast “had to move out of the way to let the Sex and the City folks accept the awards that we lost.”
As the event came to a close, Kudrow and Bucatinsky shared some memories of their time at Vassar. Bucatinsky, a drama major, said he surmised that the closest he might have come to interacting with Kudrow, a biology major, was when he performed in a dance troupe on the steps of Olmsted Hall, where she might have been trying to study inside. “I can see Lisa thinking, ‘Who are these people? Can’t they get enough attention?’”
Kudrow said majoring in science had turned out to be useful in her acting career, “because it’s all about finding things out. It gave me some of the tools I needed, and Phoebe Buffay took me the rest of the way.”
She said one of her favorite biology professors, Mark Schlessman, had once told her that it didn’t really didn’t matter what her major was, saying during her first year at Vassar, “You’re going to learn to think critically here, and there’s nothing you can’t do with a liberal arts education.”
King, who was visiting the campus for the first time, even experienced a “Vassar moment” when he watched Kudrow’s face light up as they approached the campus. “She was just so excited,” he said, “as we passed through the Main Gate.”