‘The Comeback’: Laura Silverman Teases ‘Big’ Changes With Valerie & Jane in Final Episodes

Well, it got leaked. Valerie Cherish’s (Lisa Kudrow) big AI secret is public knowledge as of The Comeback Season 3 Episode 6. Now, Valerie faces a public reckoning like she’s never seen before. Here, we break down the pivotal episode with Laura Silverman, who has played Valerie’s beloved documentarian, Jane, since The Comeback Season 1, and what it means for Jane to be in front of the camera for the first time heading into the final episodes. Warning: The Comeback Season 3 Episode 6 spoilers ahead.

Valerie brought her former rival, Paulie G (Lance Barber), to How’s That?! when she needed a new showrunner for the first sitcom written by AI. The AI part was a badly-kept secret, but the secret was leaked at the end of the episode. Silverman thinks that the leak was Jane, who went from a supporting character to main in this episode.

Jane went from being behind the camera to in front of it in Episode 6, marking a major shift for the character. Jane revealed that she never signed her NDA about keeping the AI secret, and that she hasn’t cashed a single check since she started working with Valerie again on this sitcom. This is the biggest story of Jane’s career, and she’s not going to stop making the documentary about the technology that’s threatening to take writers’ jobs in Hollywood.

Despite all of that, Jane still defended Valerie on the news when the AI hell broke loose. Here, Silverman explains Jane’s love for Valerie and teases what happens next now that Jane is speaking out.

What was your reaction when you heard that the show was coming back?

Laura Silverman: I was super excited, but I tend to have delayed reactions to things. It lodges in my body, and I’m just kind of walking around like, “Yeah, that happened.” And then it will start to seep in. But yeah, I was so excited. I got a text from Michael [Patrick King, series co-creator] saying, “Can I call you?” I was thinking, “This could only be one thing.” And so then he and Lisa called me, and he said, “Well, it’s been 10 years.” That was in February [2025], so he said, “The Comeback Season 3 shoots this summer.” And he just gave me the shortest description. He said, “Valerie does the first sitcom written by AI.” And that was all I knew. That was all I wanted to know, really. I didn’t tell anyone until it became announced.

Why didn’t you want to tell anyone? Maybe you couldn’t.

I didn’t want to tell my family because they’re just, in the best possible way, overbearing. They care, so they’d just be like, “What’s happening with The Comeback?” And I would just be like, “I don’t know, nothing.” I didn’t feel like having questions. I didn’t even tell my manager. I was like, “He’ll find out when he’s supposed to.” It felt really fun to have this secret. And I didn’t want anyone that I told to leak it because I wanted the fans to be surprised. I wanted it to be the best possible experience for the fans that it could be.

In this episode, we see Clea DuVall come in to show that the people in Jane’s life do not support her working with Valerie again. How hard is it for Jane to return to work with Valerie, given the feedback she knows she’s going to get from her friends and family?

I think the circumstances made it so that it wasn’t hard. She’s a documentarian at heart. She’s passionate about it. And as she says in the Trader Joe’s scene, she’s rattling off all the things she cares about that no one else does. And she says the inevitable dangers of big tech. That’s on the forefront of her mind, so when she hears [about Valerie’s AI sitcom], it’s instant, like, “OK, yeah, I can go be on the inside of this. I’m going.” It doesn’t occur to her that it’s anything other than that or it will be perceived as anything other than that, but she gets very absorbed in her work. And I guess Perry, her girlfriend, has not seen that side of her because Valerie hasn’t been in Jane’s life since they’ve been together, but there’s also this element of we find out that they spent a long time together after Season 2 trying to create a documentary together about Valerie’s life that just never really went anywhere.

Because there was no studio, it was just the two of them trying to do something. They developed a different kind of closeness. It ended three years prior when Jane was still doing it, and we find out she felt indentured because Valerie had lent her money to do another film, and so she just kind of bailed.

Erin Simkin / HBO

I think Jane just likes Valerie on top of all of this, too, and respects her. Because even with all of these complicated things that her connection to Valerie has caused in her life, she’s still defending her against Paulie when he comes back and defending her when the leak happens and she’s talking to the press. How do you think Jane’s feelings for Valerie have evolved between Season 1 to now?

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Well, Season 1, she was new. She had to do what the studio wanted to do, but she felt bad about it. She didn’t show up at that screening because she felt bad about it. When Valerie shows up at her house, you can see that she feels bad. She’s not yelling back. She’s like, “I didn’t have control over what they did with it,” even though you see her plenty of times getting juicy stuff that isn’t flattering.

Even when they’re scattering Mickey’s [the late Robert Michael Morris] ashes, she’s overwhelmed. They’ve shared a lot together, and they’ve had losses together, and she’s seen Valerie grow as well. And when [Valerie] left the Emmys, that probably was like, “Oh wow, I’m worse than her. I’m scared.” But you start to see it early on with the spreading of the ashes; she has feelings for her. When [Valerie] tells off the wardrobe guy, [Jane is] like, “All right!” She’s rooting for her. And then [Valerie] doesn’t want to be difficult, which is also a great quality that Val has. She knows that ultimately, you catch more flies with honey, so Jane doesn’t always fully understand that, although she does it in her own way. She’s all sweet and kind of keeps Valerie talking.

But we’re going to see that Jane becomes more and more and more protective of Valerie in a big way.

That’s certainly teased at the end of this episode when the leak happens. The AI cat is out of the bag, and Jane is doing press defending Valerie. She’s saying, “They are using AI, but Valerie didn’t want it.” What does it say about Jane that she is defending Valerie in this public space?

In a way, they’ve become sisters, and they’ve become allies. Jane learns a hard lesson in this upcoming episode that when you’re too narrowly focused on what you think that your ethics and your principles are, you’re turning your back on people in a way that isn’t healthy. You have to be able to hold many truths at once, and sometimes chasing a story can make the focus too narrow. So I think that because of the sisterhood between them, what they’ve gone through together, and also what Valerie is going through, Jane becomes an ally. Jane is like, it’s more important for me to protect my friend as she navigates through this, and for me to sort of understand that I don’t have all the answers. I can’t put this genie back in the bottle with some four-minute documentary that I spend someone else’s money on. She has to figure out how to navigate it as well. And so they do it together.

Erin Simkin / HBO

Do you think that the upcoming episode is kind of the biggest challenge to Jane that we’ve seen in the series so far?

Oh, definitely. Episode 6 is just packed for Jane. It’s something that, as the actress that plays Jane, I never in my wildest dreams thought that they would have me do. It was the highlight of my professional life, for sure. It was incredible to shoot those scenes. It was incredible to just really become a character and to take up space. I was very hesitant at first. I was like, “Oh, you want me to actually take up space?” It’s something that, as a supporting actor, you’re very conscious of. You don’t want to take up space that isn’t yours. And so I was thrilled, and I had the best time. We all had the best time.

It was such a bonding experience to be able to really play scenes together and interact to that level and to have Michael writing it and watching it and being excited by it. So was it the hardest? Yes, the hardest for Jane, for sure. She gets to a point where she has to be looking at Valerie and just she’s saying, “I’m so sorry, but I have to do this and come with me, but do I have to do this?” She has to make a decision really quickly, and it’s very, very loaded.

It’s kind of left up in the air who the leak is. It could be Paulie, it could be Jane…

I thought it was Jane.

Really?

We were dribbling out the episodes because they were frantically writing to finish by the time we shot, because it was such an undertaking to figure out how to really do it right.

And this isn’t the last we’ll see of Jane, right?

Yeah. It seems like Jane goes away … but we do see her. She comes back, and she has a different approach to things. And after that, you really see her. She’s really fiercely protecting Valerie, and it’s fun.

Erin Simkin / HBO

It’s kind of fourth-wall breaking, having Jane be a character and not just part of the camera crew.

Yeah, and again, I had no idea going into it. No idea.

Really exciting though. I’d love to know what your take on the AI of it all and if you personally think that AI is really going to kill Hollywood like the show fears. It’s certainly a valid concern.

It’s definitely a valid concern. I mean, it has affected my husband and I. It’s been difficult for him. It’s been difficult for a lot of people I know. A lot of people are out of work. The way I feel about it is you can’t undo it. You can’t make it not be what it is. Like I said before, I guess people say you can’t take the genie out of the bottle. It’s not that original, but it is happening. And throughout history, things happen that change everything. And it’s not good, it’s not OK, but it is what it is, so we just all have to figure out a way to adapt and move on.

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The way I feel about how it’s going to affect the entertainment industry, I mean, I find it very hard to believe that the people who get really rich are going to stop getting really rich. There might just be less of them. And I mean, not even actors, but more like producing and producers. I don’t want to say anything negative about producers. I love producers. Hire me!

OK, so what I’m trying to say is, there was a time when being in show business was not a big money thing. You scraped by and ate crackers for dinner or whatever and got a teaspoon of sugar once a week. I don’t know, in the olden times. There are countries in which it’s not a big money thing. It’s socialized. So, you can’t stop people from making things. You’ll never stop people from creating visual art, music, writing, filming things, and making comedy. People will never stop doing it because they do it for a bigger reason than money. So, there’s going to be some kind of a shift. I don’t know what it’ll look like. And I just hope and pray that everybody’s going to be OK and be able to make a living and feed their families.

How did it feel to film your final scene with Lisa Kudrow after all of these years of making The Comeback?

It was just surreal. I had just a few lines, and I had to have them on a piece of paper, and my hand was shaking because I couldn’t … I mean, everything had to be exactly right because it’s one shot, although actually, they figured out a genius way to make it to be able to cut. But both of us just couldn’t get the words out. It’s almost like if you said the words just right and we did the three takes, and it was done, it was done. Something in our brains was making us just not be able to do it. But Lisa was super emotional. It was surreal. And I think that it’s not really going to fully sink in until I see it.

The Comeback, Sundays, 10:30/9:30c, HBO

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