Colleen Hayes/HBOIf you love TV, you have seen Lisa Kudrow's The Comeback. If you say you love TV and have not seen The Comeback, stop reading this, go watch The Comeback's two seasons—they're only 21 episodes—and come back (get it) and finish reading this when you've stopped laughing, crying from laughing, and just generally crying.
Anyway, Lisa Valerie Kudrow has always loved the name Valerie. In fact, she told Conan O'Brien Tuesday that she wanted to be known as L. Valerie when she was growing up. She told all her friends that was her new moniker, she thought it was much more interesting than just Lisa, but then she lost all her friends.
"I'm kind of making fun of myself with that," Kudrow said on Conan. "Bear with me. But when I was in junior high school I thought Lisa was too common and silly a name. There's no Lisa you take seriously in the world, but Valerie is a name of substance, I thought."
Then came Valerie Cherish. When she was creating the character, she said Valerie Cherish was the "type that would think Valerie is a sophisticated name, but still kind of fun." And then there's the red hair "for comedy, ‘cause it's not dumb blonde and it's not sexy brunette, but it's someone you take seriously," Kudrow said to the redhead host. "I've not had that experience," O'Brien said.
Kudrow's The Comeback and Valerie Cherish returned to TV nine years after the first season aired. Kudrow is up for an Emmy for Lead Actress in a Comedy Series alongside Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Amy Schumer, Amy Poehler, Lily Tomlin and Edie Falco. She told E! News it was gratifying to be recognized for her performance 10 years later.
"Yeah, it is. It is on a lot of levels—it is. We were on so long ago and—I don't know, it's just really—I kind of was preparing myself for, 'You know, the show might not get on the radar for this, so be OK with that.' And so I still had to be OK with categories—like Michael Patrick King's a phenomenal director and I thought the writing was really good and all the other performances...But, listen, I can't not be ridiculously grateful for being nominated. I can't, I can't," she told us.
As for more adventures of Valerie Cherish, well, that remains to be seen.
"Oh, the desire is always there, so, this doesn't increase it. It's fully there," she said with a laugh. "We're talking anyway, talking about what that would look like. This [Emmy nomination] is icing to me. This is another gift alongside all the other fantastic things."