Lisa Kudrow’s First TV Show After Friends Was Strangely Similar To Matt LeBlanc’s Career After Joey

After Friends ended in 2004, Lisa Kudrow took arguably the most ambitious next step of anyone in the show’s main cast by creating and starring in her own sitcom less than a year later. Kudrow’s mockumentary The Comeback was very much a passion project that differed markedly in style and theme from Friends. Yet, some of its storylines are strangely similar to the real-life career of a fellow Friends star. The Comeback had a decade-long hiatus between its only two seasons, but when it returned in 2014, the parallels with Matt LeBlanc’s career were even clearer.

The Comeback is a self-aware parody of a look behind-the-scenes at the life of an aging TV sitcom star. Inevitably, the show features nods in the direction of all the six main cast members of Friends, including Kudrow herself. However, the similarities with Matt LeBlanc’s own TV career after the show that made him ended go much further than just passing references to stars who find it difficult to move beyond one definitive small-screen role. Particularly in The Comeback‘s second season, Lisa Kudrow’s central character’s arc mirrors LeBlanc’s true story.

Lisa Kudrow’s Role In The Comeback Mirrored Matt LeBlanc’s Career After Friends

Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish Disappeared From View Before Playing Herself In Another Sitcom

As well as creating, writing, and executive producing The Comeback, Lisa Kudrow starred in the series as Valerie Cherish, a TV star known primarily for her longstanding role in a fictional sitcom. Cherish had disappeared from the public eye before she made the comeback to which the show’s title alludes, playing a supporting role in another sitcom. This trajectory is precisely the one that Matt LeBlanc’s career followed after he stopped playing Joey Tribbiani in Friends and its failed spinoff, Joey.

The Comeback’s central figure, Valerie Cherish, is a superbly crafted character, and the comedy’s behind-the-scenes mockumentary style mimics mid-2000s celebrity documentaries perfectly.

LeBlanc effectively gave up acting for five years once Joey was canceled, before starring in Episodes from 2011. LeBlanc plays a fictional version of himself in Episodes, a show about two sitcom writers. The second season of The Comeback sees Kudrow’s Valerie do exactly the same thing, as she stars as herself in a show about the life of a writer she’d worked with on a previous sitcom.

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While Matt LeBlanc’s official Friends spinoff may have failed, he more than made up for it with this brilliant British-American sitcom 5 years later.

The parallels with LeBlanc’s appearance in Episodes, which was developed by Friends co-creator, writer, and showrunner David Crane based on his own experiences working with Warner Bros., are uncanny. It’s not clear whether Kudrow took direct inspiration from LeBlanc’s story for season 2 of The Comeback. If she didn’t, then it’s quite the coincidence.

The Comeback Is The Most Underrated Show Made By A Friends Main Cast Member

It’s A Brilliant Satire On The Life-Cycle Of Female TV Stars

Regardless of its relationship to LeBlanc’s career, though, Kudrow’s The Comeback is a wickedly smart satire of how Hollywood treats aging female TV stars. It affectionately mocks the misplaced egos of actors who become successful off the back of one big role, only to find themselves struggling for work once that role comes to an end. LeBlanc couldn’t have been the only sitcom star feeling like some of the show’s jokes were aimed at him.

The Comeback may have flopped initially back in 2005, but the reappraisal it received when its second season aired in 2014 put it in the running for the best series made by a main cast member of Friends.

Meanwhile, The Comeback‘s central figure, Valerie Cherish, is a superbly crafted character, and the comedy’s behind-the-scenes mockumentary style mimics mid-2000s celebrity documentaries perfectly. The hilarious season 2 plot twist of the show effectively devouring itself via a fictional mockumentary-turned-documentary within its mockumentary format is the best possible send-up of modern TV’s apparent obsession with blurring the lines between what’s scripted and “real.”

The Comeback merits more of a following than it has, although the cult status it’s developed in the years since its original HBO run means that it’s gradually getting at least some of the recognition it deserves. The show may have flopped initially back in 2005, but the reappraisal it received when its second season aired in 2014 put it in the running for the best series made by a main cast member of Friends since the legendary sitcom ended.