Few shows have lived up to its name more than The Comeback. The show has been canceled, come back 10 years later for a “final” season, and then left for another decade before coming back one last time. Now, The Comeback Season 3 is truly the last run. In the time since the first season, they’ve watched the series rise from niche to prestige. Dan Bucatinsky is grateful for the time between seasons in hindsight.
“It really did, to some degree, depend on Lisa [Kudrow] and Michael [Patrick King] getting together and having an idea that felt big enough to sustain a season,” Bucatinsky tells TV Insider. “And the 10 years in between each season turned out to be an enormous gift because it really does allow us to tell this story like Valerie is a tour guide through a time capsule of our industry, told through the eyes of this incredibly buoyant, resilient, hungry-for-the-camera actress who makes us laugh, but is also the series is commenting on the changes in the business. I can’t say that I expected us to come back, but when we were told that HBO was in on the idea, it was absolutely thrilling, absolutely thrilling.”
Bucatinsky has played Billy, Valerie’s publicist, talent manager, and now fellow producer, since Season 1. In Season 3, he’s executive producing for the first time ever on Valerie’s AI-written sitcom, How’s That?! As Billy gets to step out into a new role, new shades of his ambition are revealing themselves. Bucatinsky was eager to see Kudrow and King’s vision for Billy 3.0.
Erin Simkin / HBO
“In 2005, Billy was just passed over for a job at a big company like PMK and had this impulse control problem,” he says. “And then 10 years later, that evolved into this kind of self-hate and self-pity and this like, ‘Everybody eventually fires me anyway, so you may as well fire me.’ That emotional, impulsive, petulant part of Billy, I was very curious to see 10 years later, what has that turned into? I could not have asked for a better storyline.”
The Scandal alum says Billy represents a very real Hollywood type.
“Billy is complicated, but he also represents so much of the purity of need and desperation and a desire for the spotlight and for credit and for acknowledgement and for thanks,” he explains. “It’s like, ‘I’m doing this because you tell me that I’m not doing this, but where’s my thank you?’ He’s just looking for acknowledgement the entire time. And it was really fun to play and it really did feel like the organic evolution of the person we met 20 years ago, who now is like, ‘I finally have the money and the billing and the credit and the title and the parking space, and now it’s my turn.’ It’s scary and is unlikable and it’s certainly not the way I would behave necessarily, but it was really fun to play the manifestation of Billy, he becomes like a butterfly.”
If that’s Billy’s Hollywood type, who is Valerie Cherish?
Erin Simkin / HBO
“I’ve been thinking this since the very beginning,” Bucatinsky says. “She’s such a heroic figure in her ability to bounce back, her ability to, in the face of setbacks, in the face of embarrassment, humiliation, failure, rejection, all these things that one faces on a daily basis in our industry, nothing pushes her down and stops her from wanting to keep going. And she’s got a strong marriage — in Season 2, it was really tested — but she’s not somebody who financially needs to be in the business. She wants it. She’s a creative artist. When she gets kicked, she just keeps on going. What an inspiring role model. If you’re going to be in our industry, the ability to get back up off the floor is crucial. I’ve always loved that about Valerie.”
When you meet Valerie in Season 1, you think she’s going to be the butt of every joke, but then you spend some time with her, and her earnestness, quick wit, and charm win you over. She just wants to work and for that work to be remembered.
“She’s also kind,” Bucatinsky adds. “She always has a smile on her face and she never wants anyone to feel bad. She leads with that. She leads with trying to put a positive spin on almost everything. It’s almost pathological, her need to re-edit the narrative so that it’s the way she sees it. It’s hilarious, but also it’s positive. It’s something I think that we needed right now anyway.”
Billy has been trying to carve out his place as a solo personality in this final season. Episode 7 showed him diving head first into that at an event promoting The Comeback, which was just a red carpet disguised as an actual premiere. He’s wearing an androgynous look that is “the best reflection of who he is inside,” Bucatinsky says. “You see everything you need to see.”
Erin Simkin / HBO
The Hacks alum was deeply involved in the creation of Billy’s step-and-repeat look (pictured at the top of the page).
“I was really collaborative with Tom Broecker and Audrey Fisher, who were our costume designers,” the actor explains. “We talked for several months about what that final red carpet look should look like and how androgynous it should be, how much he embraces his feminine side, how much he embraces his masculine side, what were the visual influences that would go into that look? We’ve tried lots of different things and we kept landing on whether it would be a bustier or a corset or pants or steel toe boots. We really had a conversation about what would be the manifestation of Billy emerging on that red carpet. And I think we landed exactly right.”
Bucatinsky says that Billy’s gender expression “is in the epicenter” of masculinity and femininity. “If the scale is zero to 10, he’s at a five on both scales so that he’s very much a guy. He’s a gay guy, but he’s not looking to necessarily do drag. But the makeup was very much inspired by that all male Swan Lake, that Matthew Bourne Swan Lake. And the notion of a little bit of a tutu with a tuxedo and these big boots was sort of our way of splitting the difference. And I think Billy feels like that is the manifestation of his star.”
“It’s Billy with an I and a star over the eye. And boy, that says everything,” he adds.
What are Billy’s dreams after this, and how could that play out in The Comeback‘s final episodes?
“I think Billy in a very bold way is just looking for a spotlight, is looking for his name to be in lights, is looking to be photographed and to sit at the fashion shows and to be dressed to the nines,” Bucatinsky shares. “I don’t necessarily think he wants to work hard. I don’t think he wants to be a writer or a producer or give notes on a script. I mean, I don’t think he read one script for How’s That and he’s got an executive producer on it. So, I think Billy is going to look for all of the fast and easy routes. I mean, he is absolutely primed to be the star of his own reality show. Let’s put it that way. And in so many ways, I feel like Billy is going to be exactly where Valerie was when we started: chasing a crew that will follow him around in his everyday life so he can always be on camera.”
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