A Conversation Among Friends

Thirty-two years after she first captivated TV audiences with her portrayal of Phoebe Buffay on Friends, Lisa Kudrow ’85 continues to make waves in the entertainment industry. In May, Kudrow and fellow alum Dan Bucatinsky ’87 returned to 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.

Kudrow, Bucatinsky, and King spoke 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 in March, 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.

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.”

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 though 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 and Bucatinsky shared 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?’” he said.

Kudrow 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.” Nevertheless, she 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.”—Larry Hertz