{"id":3752,"date":"2026-04-13T05:48:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T05:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/3752\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T05:48:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T05:48:23","slug":"lisa-kudrow-reveals-why-she-cast-her-son-on-the-comeback-final-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/3752\/","title":{"rendered":"Lisa Kudrow Reveals Why She Cast Her Son on The Comeback Final Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Comeback<\/a> dropped episode four of its final season Sunday night, and the new installment finds Lisa Kudrow<\/a>\u2019s Valerie Cherish settling in on the soundstage of How\u2019s That?!, and attempting to smooth things over as the AI-written sitcom encounters hiccups in the early days of production. <\/p>\n

\n\tAt the table read for the show\u2019s second episode, Cherish is perplexed by a jail scene and annoyed that some of her co-stars don\u2019t 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 \u201ctroubleshoot tech guy\u201d named Evan. He explains that the unusual scene is actually a \u201challucination\u201d that AI spit out because it got stuck between the prompt and AI\u2019s knowledge base.<\/p>\n

\n\tCherish 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. \u201cThis is a safe set now,\u201d Cherish reassures him, \u201cWe practice safe set.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 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.\u2019 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. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we were writing episodes for this season, we had a role of an AI guy come up and I was just like, \u2018Well, it\u2019s him,\u201d she said, referencing casting her son while sitting down with The Hollywood Reporter during a recent cover story interview.<\/a> Her co-creator and close collaborator Michael Patrick King<\/a> agreed. \u201cHe also said, \u2018Yeah, of course, it\u2019s him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSaid King: \u201cA lot of The Comeback is like couture, it\u2019s 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\u2019s a tech nerd who is also uncorrupted by many, many experiences of people knowing him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJulian Stern, far left, Mike Mitchell and Tony Macht in The Comeback from HBO Max. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tErin Simkin\/HBO<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked 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. \u201cHe was great. He was Evan. I was Valerie. I mean, he was great,\u201d she said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t shocked or surprised but you never know what\u2019s going to happen or how it\u2019s going to go because a million things can get in your way if you\u2019ve not done it before and you\u2019re nervous or any of that. But he coped.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tKudrow, however, wouldn\u2019t 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. \u201cA kid can\u2019t really be a kid,\u201d she said. \u201cHe was like three, and would come to a Friends taping but maybe laugh a little too long and we\u2019d have to redo it. So it wasn\u2019t always fun and then he\u2019d go upstairs. He also wasn\u2019t 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, \u2018I get it.\u2019 And then he was done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe might not have logged a ton of hours, but Stern did pick up some of his mother\u2019s skills. In fact, Kudrow praised him as having \u201ctalents I don\u2019t have.\u201d She detailed how, at nine, he was doing stop-motion projects and writing \u201cmind-blowing\u201d 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. \u201cMy husband and I were boo-hoo-hooing, and I went, \u2018OK, he\u2019s got something.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLisa Kudrow, Julian Stern and Michele Stern at The Comeback premiere in L.A. on March 19, 2026.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto credit: David Jon Photography<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite 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. \u201cMy husband can be a really tough critic and even he went, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s good.\u2019 So we just said, \u2018Listen, pursue all of it and we\u2019ll see what door opens first,\u2019\u201d said Kudrow, who also praised his talents as an animator as he makes \u201cadorable and funny\u201d micro-animated shorts with his girlfriend. <\/p>\n

\n\tViewers will catch more of Stern as The Comeback season rolls on. He\u2019s 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\u2019s social media assistant. King brought her on to the show after working with her on his last series, And Just Like That. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe great gift of both Ella and Julian is that nobody knows who they are yet, so you\u2019re seeing them for the first time in these parts and you\u2019re like, \u2018Who is that? Oh, that\u2019s Evan.\u2019 Or, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s Patience.\u2019 Then the industry starts to respond and say, \u2018Well, that\u2019s Julian Stern and that\u2019s Ella Stiller.\u2019 They\u2019re both incredibly gifted and special.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Comeback airs every Sunday on HBO Max.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKudrow as Valerie Cherish in a scene from the third season of The Comeback.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tErin Simkin\/HBO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Comeback dropped episode four of its final season Sunday night, and the new installment finds Lisa Kudrow\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,3614,3615,268],"class_list":{"0":"post-3752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-lisa-kudrow","11":"tag-michael-patrick-king","12":"tag-the-comeback"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}