It’s been 12 years but the “comeback kid” has come back to HBO Max. Lisa Kudrow, famous for her 236 episodes as Phoebe on “Friends,” is back as the ever-eager Valerie Cherish in “The Comeback” for one last season.

“I love acting and I think It's fun to be an actor for hire,” she says. “I don't have a production company anymore. And I think there's such a thing as people wanting to have a nice set and select the group of talent around. 'How fun is this going to be?' And so that's great. And that's also what I'm looking for,” she says.

“This isn't part of, ‘Well, am I gonna drag myself out of my house to do “The Comeback” again?' No, no. Valerie Cherish is very dear to me and important to me, and our work on this show ... I'm very proud of it. It's, I think, the best thing I've ever done. Well, because (of the) writing too.”

The writing by Michael Patrick King is spot-on as he guides his character through the agony and ecstasy (but mostly agony) of showbiz. The specter of AI creeps over the horizon in Hollywood, changing everything.

“AI’s a daily hellscape,” King concedes. “Because it's the hellscape that we're living in, what is it and how much power does it have? We're living a nightmare of what could possibly happen to all of us. There's no actual hands-on experience yet of people working with it to do what we do that we know of ... So the reality is, it's all the hellscape.”

Kudrow seems more optimistic. “I firmly believe an audience will always let you know what it likes and what it doesn't,” she says.“And yeah, there might be some AI entertainment that audiences like, but it's not going to take over everything.”

This will be the last time that “The Comeback” comes back and somehow Kudrow continues to manage the quixotic character of Valerie Cherish with subtlety and an innate sense of comedy.

“When people would say, 'Oh, my God, how did you play her? That must have been so hard, especially the first season; that must have been so hard to be her.' And it wasn't at all,” Kudrow shrugs.

“I mean, I never felt terrible. And I was BEING her. So, what is it? She's that delusional that she just believes the reality she's creating. I kept asking myself, 'Why doesn't it hurt me? Why does it hurt everyone so much?' She's fine ... It caused some confusion for me, but look ... I guess it's sort of like Phoebe too: here's how I see the world and you don't have to agree.”

Kudrow says she inherited her unique sense of humor from her family. “My father was really funny and my brother and sister, my whole family is really funny and I'm the youngest — so I was just trying to keep up always. Well, it was the coping for our household ... I didn't realize it then, but no matter what was going on, someone would make a joke. Make a joke at a funeral. It's just — it was needed. It's a needed release, you know?”

Kudrow continues with that idea, “There's just nothing better than making people laugh and what's better than laughing? It's so healing. It so cathartic ... And it's funny because the first thing isn't ego. I mean, the things that make us feel the best are the things we actually do for others, right? Aren't those the things that make you feel the best? So, it's something in there. I didn't analyze it.”

Kudrow’s predilection for acting began when she was a youngster. “When I was a little girl, real young in elementary school, I took play production one summer in summer school and I just loved it with all my heart,” she recalls.

“Then I'd do little sketches, like in the fifth grade and doing lip-syncs and organizing sketches for slumber parties — I just always loved it.”

She says her parents tolerated her passion.“My folks said, ‘Good for you. We're so relieved.’ I already had a degree from Vassar. They thought, ‘That's good. it should be good for something.’ Little did they know. They were great and only supportive, but I think part of it might be because I'm a girl, and they thought I could always get married.”

Whether it’s the unconventional Phoebe or the earnest Valerie, Kudrow says, “I just like being someone else and convincing others: ‘Now I'm like this, and now I'm like this.’ I’m always fascinated with personalities and what makes people do this, that, or the other. And I like to explore that.”

In Season 3 of “The Comeback,” streaming now, the character of Valerie is met with a whole new world when she’s offered the starring role in a sitcom written by AI.

The real author of that hilarious dilemma is King, who says, “ Look, we all know stuff ... And if the stuff you know is all you know, then you're not going anywhere. You can't just know what you know. You have to know stuff, and then learn stuff, to keep knowing stuff or else you're out of the loop.

“So, I know stuff that you know — everybody knows stuff — and then what you do with it and the saving grace is an idea will come and almost beta-block what you know, so that you can fall into a creative amnesia, and it all goes away.

“And you're just working moment-to-moment in this creative playground where you know technique stuff, that's a delight, but the bigger stuff, the knowing stuff about how things are met in the world and whether they're accepted or rejected, kind of goes away until you're done playing. And then it becomes the business. So, I don't think you can know stuff and ever stop knowing stuff; you’ve got to learn new stuff.”

Logan signs up for 'Murder'

Phyllis Logan, the wonderful housekeeper, Mrs. Hughes, on “Downton Abbey,” is starring in the BritBox thriller, “A Taste for Murder,” premiering Tuesday, April 7. This mystery takes place in exotic Capri with a culinary touch. While things may seem lavish and peaceful on the surface in this drama, underneath hovers a sinister truth.

The Scottish Logan, who also co-starred with Ian McShane in the popular British series, “Lovejoy,” says, “When I was very young when I went to secondary school anything involved with drama I just loved. I did all the plays. I was in the film club. Because I came from a small town outside Glasgow nobody from my school had ever gone into the acting profession.

“It was just something you didn’t do. You joined the bank or became a teacher or whatever you did. I thought, ‘I’ve only got another year or so of school, what am I going to do?’ And a girlfriend said, ‘Why don’t you apply for drama college.’ I said, ‘I can’t do that.’ I suggested it to my careers adviser who said, ‘No,’ basically, ‘why would you want to do that you'll never get the grades?’

“He was talking about being a drama teacher and that’s not what I was talking about. Thankfully I ignored him and between this friend and I, we sent away for a prospectus. There was a rather good drama school in Glasgow, so we sent away for a prospectus. I auditioned and got a recall and went back and then got accepted. So that was it.”

‘Malcolm' cast reunites

It’s hard to believe, but the original cast of “Malcolm in the Middle” is back together after 20 years in “Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair,” premiering on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ Friday, April 10.

Bryan Cranston, Jane Kaczmarek, Frankie Muniz and Christopher Masterson are all back. This rarely happens in showbiz, as most of the participants have gone on to other projects that monopolize their time.

But “Macolm” — this story of the off-beat working-class family — is special. Kaczmarek tells me that after the success of “Malcolm,” she could only land “mother” roles. “They do see me as a mom,” she says. “For so long I couldn’t get anything in comedy because I was thought as this serious actress. I’d come out of Yale, and I did parts where I was not funny.

“There were a lot of things I couldn’t even get an audition for. And then I did a Neil Simon play, took over for Mercedes Rule in ‘Lost in Yonkers’ and suddenly, Oh, she did a Neil Simon. I guess she CAN do this.’ And that really opened a whole new world of doing comedy.

But co-starring in the original “Malcolm" proved difficult, she says. “Because I was pregnant twice on the show and (her then-husband Brad Whitford) Brad was working constantly on ‘The West Wing.’ But it was glorious that seven years. You knew exactly where you were going to be. You knew when you could take vacation. You knew what you could spend on renovating your house.

“I remember thinking if I got the part it would pay for a new bathroom ... It was a funny week. I was trying to have another baby, going through all sorts of fertility stuff, and one day Warner Bros. called and ‘West Wing’ had gotten picked up, the next day Fox called, and ‘Malcolm’ had gotten picked up. The next day the doctor called and said I was pregnant. I remember saying to Brad, ‘I wonder if our lives are going to change?’”

‘Grantchester’ holds services one last time

“Grantchester” will be given one more chance at PBS as the show will be back June 14 with the third actor playing the parson who’s forever involved in murder cases with the police inspector. You wonder how they manage that, but they do. This upcoming season Rishi Nair will play the vicar, but (thank heaven) Robson Green will return once more as the Colombo-like detective inspector.

While not many fans may know Green from his previous endeavors, it is certainly worth the time to check out “Touching Evil,” which he did back in the late '90s in his native Britain. The show is streaming on Prime Video as well as the ad-splattered stations Roku, Plex and Pluto.

Green tells me how that series came about: “I was in a very popular show called ‘Solider Solder.’ During that I sang a song in the show, and suddenly a recording career happened for three months. As that was happening, a writer called Paul Abbott sent me this script and I just could NOT put it down.

“I pictured every scene; the visual grammar was superb. And I saw the character and thought it was very interesting to play the notion of that one moment your life is normal, the next, you’re a patient because he was shot in the head, that notion. It received, quite rightly, acclaim in Britain and Europe.

“And over here, I could not believe the people — the William Friedkins and Arnold Rifkins and Bruce Willis — and all these other people who’ve seen it. I was shocked. In Britain, I don’t even have friends ringing me saying, ‘I really enjoyed it’. But over here. They rang ... Bruce Willis called. I shouldn’t have been surprised because I remember reading that first draft, and you just didn’t need to tamper with it. It was just brilliant, different, that notion of a character who is having an out-of-body experience and how do you articulate that? The thing that keeps him going are his children, so it’s a very human story. I thought the relationships were great and the subject matter.”

He was right. It was superb and is airing now for a whole new generation to discover it.

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