Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow — friends since, um, “Friends” premiered more than 30 years ago — are thrilled to see each other, especially because it’s been so long: a year and a half, according to Kudrow. She’s been busy working on “The Comeback,” for which she and co-creator Michael Patrick King wrote all eight episodes of the third and (sob!) final season, bringing sitcom actress Valerie Cherish’s fraught Hollywood journey to a close. “I’m so single-focused,” Kudrow tells Aniston, “and it was a lot of work.”
Mary Ellen Matthews for Variety
The fourth season of Apple TV’s “The Morning Show,” starring Aniston as news broadcaster Alex Levy, premiered in the fall, and along with its usual ripped-from-the-headlines topicality, Alex had to reckon with some personal issues: Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons played her estranged father, Martin, a law professor and a rake; happily, by the end of the season, father and daughter found closure and a way forward.
On the subject of closure, the third season of “The Comeback” shot on Stage 24 of the Warner Bros. lot, where “Friends” famously filmed each week before a live audience. The two friends get teary-eyed reminiscing about their Stage 24 memories, as well as thinking about the fact that Kudrow’s son, Julian Stern, with whom she was pregnant during “Friends,” has a supporting role on “The Comeback.” As Aniston puts it, “He grew up hearing laughter all the time.”
