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The second episode of The Comeback‘s third and final season begins the same way that every episode of the HBO comedy does: with Valerie Cherish on camera.
This time around, however, the aging sitcom star played by series co-creator Lisa Kudrow isn’t being captured by a multicam set up on a studio soundstage or by documentarian Jane Benson’s (Laura Silverman) voyeuristic lens. Instead Valerie is being viewed through the iPhone of her social media manager Patience (Ella Stiller).
As Valerie rolls up to the studio, she prompts Patience to begin filming with a countdown of “5-4-…” but Patience cuts her off with a quick “ready!” The iPhone camera was already rolling. It will always be rolling. That’s a reality that Valerie Cherish can’t quite adapt to. Neither can her manager-turned-producer Billy Stanton (Dan Bucatinsky). “Did you get me on camera, Patience?” he asks from the back seat, and then unsuccessfully attempts to enter into the vertical frame.
Since it first premiered in 2005, the Kudrow co-created comedy has played many roles. It’s been a satirical exploration of the TV industry in times of increasing uncertainty. It’s been an examination of a guileless woman who seemingly never lets an avalanche of humiliation dull her (admittedly pained) smile. But more than anything else, it has been a character study of cameras themselves.
The Comeback was part of the TV vanguard of an emerging confessional trend alongside the American version of The Office, which itself was inspired by the British Office of 2001 and the Christopher Guest films of the ’80s and ’90s. Even when compared to both Offices, the Guest movies, and all the mockumentaries that came after them, The Comeback is uniquely interested in the camera as a participant in storytelling, not merely a tool.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in this third season with the introduction of Patience and her iPhone. Speaking to Den of Geek at the SXSW 2026 Film & TV Festival, co-creator Michael Patrick King revealed that he viewed Ella Stiller as much a crewmember of The Comeback as he did an actress, going so far as to use the footage she shot in the show and create custom rigs to keep all other camera operators out of the frame.
“Which was difficult,” Stiller confirms. “There were some days when I was maybe more happy about it than others.”
“It’s challenging! It’s not like anyone can be a cameraman,” Kudrow adds.
Still, the experience of actually filming The Comeback season 3 allowed for Stiller to feel a unique investment in the project.
“[The iPhone] was genuinely my real way in of being in the scene with Valerie. I was actually filming her as if this was for real. To see her in that way was very interesting for me. It made me feel, as the young Gen-Z person on set, that it was a very real role I was stepping into.”
If anyone can understand what it’s like to visually render the show you’re simultaneously acting in, it’s Stiller’s co-star Laura Silverman. Through The Comeback‘s first two seasons, Silverman has starred as Jane Benson, the documentary filmmaker attempting to capture Valerie’s two comebacks. Though in this case, “starring” as Jane Benson often means existing only through Valerie’s frequent calls of the name “Jane.”
In The Comeback season 3’s first episode, set amid the 2023 actors and writers’ strikes, Jane remains behind the camera to document Valerie’s attempted Broadway debut in a production of Chicago. That set-up felt quite familiar for Silverman.
“I had the rig and I was on the monitors and Michael screams in ‘You’re the only coverage I have of this!’ I’m choosing which one to go to and when. It was so much fun. I was so engaged. I was actually doing the thing,” she says.
Then episode 2 finds Jane leaving the documentary game behind and getting a job at Trader Joe’s. Seeing Valerie Cherish’s longtime camera operator in front of the lens feels like seeing a shark on land for the viewer. And indeed it was an adjustment for the performer as well.
“I went into it fully expecting to just be Jane and do choreography with the cameras and make sure they catch this little piece of my hair at this second. But I was very surprised it was a little bit different than that. I got hit in the head with the camera like 90% less this season.”
But moreso than Patience’s phone or Jane’s new job, The Comeback season 3’s biggest visual gambit might just be the embrace of traditional, non-intrusive camerawork.
“In the third season, we contrived a lot of ways to see Valerie and [husband] Mark without the cameras for the first time, which was a risk and a gamble,” King says. “It’s fun for us to see them when there is no awareness that there’s a camera that’s looking at them.”
The fact that Valerie and Mark don’t act much differently on camera or off reveals just how much we’ve all come to expect the tape to always be rolling.
New episodes of The Comeback season 3 premiere Sundays at 10:30 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
The post The Comeback’s Always-On Cameras Have Never Felt More Relevant appeared first on Den of Geek.
