Dan Bucatinsky On ‘The Comeback’ Season 3, His ‘Hacks’ Crossover Idea

As Valerie Cherish returns for one last close-up on HBO‘s The Comeback, her (somewhat) trusty friend and manager Billy Stanton is back as well.

Dan Bucatinsky, who co-produces and stars alongside Lisa Kudrow in the mockumentary reality series, stressed to Deadline that he is “nothing like the kind of partner that Billy is,” as the character is “a child, and it’s really fun to get to play that” in Season 3, which premieres Sunday at 10:30pm ET on HBO, also available to stream on HBO Max.

“To have her in my life as like a sister to me, in my personal life,” explained Bucatinsky, “but professionally, to get to watch her do what she does, to get to see she is razor sharp, she has a razor sharp instinct about character, about emotion, about comedy, she’s brilliant. And so, when I get to act with her, I feel incredibly lucky.”

Meeting on the set of his husband Don Roos’ 1998 indie comedy The Opposite of Sex, Bucatinsky and Kudrow have produced together under their Is or Isn’t Entertainment banner since 2003. Shortly after, she and Michael Patrick King met about developing a project around Valerie Cherish, a character she’d created in LA’s The Groundlings.

“We were a year in, we’d already made a TV movie, we were developing three pilots,” he recalled. “And we were really good friends, and this notion of whether you can be in business with a really close friend, we’ve sort of proved over 25 years that we can, and we both have complementing yin-yang strengths and differences. Lisa is probably one of the smartest, most talented people I have ever met in my life. And what an honor and a privilege it was to work with her, both as producers but also, on camera.”

With the third and final season of The Comeback, Bucatinsky gets to send Billy off with a splash, giving the character several fashion moments throughout the season as he finds his own spotlight. “It really builds to the end of this season. I can’t give it away, but there’s things I had to do this season that I’ve never done in my entire life,” he teases.

And although there’s no comparing to Billy, Bucatinsky’s latest turn in the role comes after his recent appearance as late-night EP Rob on Season 4 of Hacks, a show for which The Comeback paved the way with its biting Hollywood satire.

“Don’t think that I didn’t have a fantasy that Rob’s twin brother was Billy, and that Billy shows up to deliver Valerie Cherish as a late night guest for Deborah Vance,” Bucatinsky revealed.

Read on about Dan Bucatinsky’s return as Billy Stanton in Season 3 of The Comeback, the “agenda-less” AI of it all and his three-decade working relationship with Lisa Kudrow.

DEADLINE: I’ve loved The Comeback since Season 1. Tell me about working with Lisa Kudrow all these years as co-producers and how you first came onto this project. 

DAN BUCATINSKY: Lisa and I met a very long time ago. We met on my husband Don Roos’ movie, The Opposite of Sex, which was 1997. I mean, almost 30 years ago. Let’s just say, we were 10 years old. Lisa and I, and her husband and Don, became very good friends at that time, and soon after The Opposite of Sex, about two years later, maybe, I wrote the All Over the Guy, and I produced it and I wrote it and I starred in it, and I asked Lisa to do a cameo in it, which she’s brilliant in. I have always loved that moment. And after that, Lisa and I started a company at Warner Bros., a production company of just the two of us, called Is or Isn’t Entertainment, and over 25 years, we produced pilots and television shows. And when Friends was over, which was probably a year and a half into our company, Lisa met with Michael Patrick King—and they had known each other, and I had known Michael for years. I had been in a play of his. Lisa met with Michael, and Friends was ending and Sex and the City was ending, and they wanted to have lunch. Lisa had this idea about a character she had developed in The Groundlings, years prior. And what would happen if, à la Anna Nicole Smith at the time? This was one of the only reality shows that was going on … but it was on E!, and cameras were following her around in her everyday life, and Lisa was like, “What if this comedic character that I came up with in The Groundlings (who didn’t even have a name at the time) was being followed by cameras?” And slowly but surely, the two of them met and developed the concept of The Comeback as a show where the raw footage of a reality show was going to be shown to an audience, the good, the bad and the ugly. Those were the germs of The Comeback. But Lisa and I had already started our company. We were one year in, we’d already made a TV movie, we were developing three pilots. And we were really good friends, and this notion of whether you can be in business with a really close friend, we’ve sort of proved over 25 years that we can, and we both have complementing yin-yang strengths and differences. Lisa is probably one of the smartest, most talented people I have ever met in my life. And what an honor and a privilege it was to work with her, both as producers but also, on camera.

But we didn’t really get to act together until The Comeback and getting to play Billy. So, I have to say, it’s just been one of the things I’m most grateful for in my life. To have her in my life as like a sister to me, in my personal life, but professionally, to get to watch her do what she does, to get to see she is razor sharp, she has a razor sharp instinct about character, about emotion, about comedy, she’s brilliant. And so, when I get to act with her, I feel incredibly lucky. So, that’s a long answer, but we’ve had a very long history. We’re still incredibly close friends and continue to play games and have dinner together. We still produce a game show together for eight seasons. We’re about to start our eighth season of 25 Words or Less and we made 10 seasons of Who Do You Think You Are? together, as well, and Web Therapy. So, we’ve gotten to luckily get to know each other and work together personally, but I think it’s been one of the most inspiring [experiences], and I think I’ve been made better as a creative artist because of Lisa.

DEADLINE: Well, it’s great to see The Comeback back again, and I love that it’s like a decade between each season. What was it like for you getting to satirize another era of Hollywood, especially taking aim at AI and recreating the WGA strikes?

BUCATINSKY: Here’s the happy accident about The Comeback. It was a series that we made in 2004, it aired in 2005. We had every intention of coming back to make another season right then and there, and another one after that, another one after that, and it would have impacted the kind of stories we were telling. They would have been a much more micro look at Valerie Cherish and her day-to-day challenges, had we made three or four seasons right then in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. One of the happy accidents that occurred as a result of not getting a pickup, which was very painful in 2005, was the opportunity to come back in 2014 and look at a much bigger picture. What has changed in Valerie’s life? What has she been doing for the last 10 years, and how much fun are we gonna have? I remember in Season 2, how much fun it was to see her on the set of an independent feature, horror movie, and seeing her on the set of a procedural medical show, and seeing her selling her hair product. What a delight to watch a little bit of like “previously on,” a little bit of the greatest hits of the years you haven’t seen her. But the bigger, gift is that with a 10-year span, we get to tell a story that is about how our industry has changed, how the challenges of being in the entertainment business over a decade presents different challenges to the creative artist, to the actor, to the writer, to the producer, to the way in which television is made. And that was true in 2014, with the story that we told. And now it’s 10, 12 years later, and the opportunity to talk about the threat of—if we’re gonna call it that—of AI. I don’t think we should call it a threat, I think we should call it the reality of the technology we have and how will that impact the way we do our business? It was an exciting opportunity, and I think it’s the reason why Michael and Lisa, who’ve written every episode together and have always been the creators of this series together, they both got very excited about, “What if Valerie gets offered the first ever sitcom written by AI?” And once you pose that question, you’re able to fill in, “OK, well what does that mean? How did that happen? What was she doing beforehand? What came right before this? Who was involved in that?” And so, I think they had a really good time filling in the pieces of those stories. “What’s happening in her marriage? What’s happening with Jane? What’s happening with Billy? And then, how is the business is going to incorporate this threat and whether we’re gonna treat it as a threat?” One of the things I’m most impressed about this season, is that it’s kind of agenda-less. We’re not telling the story from the agenda of “good versus evil.” We’re telling it from the agenda of, “This is reality. This is where we are in 2026, and how are we going to live all of us together with reality?” But it’s been very fun to watch and very inspiring to see the way Michael and Lisa together have carved out stories, small ones, personal ones and big ones that are very reflective of what’s happening right this minute. 

DEADLINE: I love that we get to see more of Billy this season, and I’m curious, after the past two seasons, have there been any managers or producers that have inspired your performance of Billy? 

BUCATINSKY: Let me think about it, that’s a good question. Not really. The truth is, Billy came onto the scene in the first season as somebody who felt scorned and betrayed by a big PR firm, who passed him over for a promotion. And so, he was a little pissed off. I don’t particularly go through my career with that much rage. Sometimes, but it’s not really what drives me. I think, what we saw of Billy 20 years ago was driven by, “I’ll show them something about who that little gay kid was—.” I mean, to that degree, there are ways in which I have been inspired by the stories of this need, or maybe even my own personal story, this need to prove the bully is wrong, that I think has inspired what is the impulse control problem that I think Billy has, his need to feel seen and heard. But his need, he’s put it all into Valerie, like, “I’m going to show you how good I am and how talented I am by getting you work and getting you covers and getting you opportunities.” It was important to me that, when I talked to Lisa and Michael, making sure that Billy in Season 3 feels like he connects to the same human being that he was in Season 1, who was pushing people around when they didn’t do what he wanted, almost like a petulant child. And then in Season 2, that petulant child is ready to quit and throw a hissy fit. Anybody that’s a person who is losing, is a little bit unhinged, is really fun to to play. And in Season 3, Billy takes the opportunity that he has to finally focus a little bit more of his attentions on how this opportunity could benefit him. 

DEADLINE: It’s interesting, that dynamic with Billy and Val this season, because while he’s trying to boost his own profile, it seems like he starts to let her down a little bit. Can you tell me about where that goes? 

BUCATINSKY: I feel like Billy’s had dreams from the very beginning, which he has not necessarily voiced. And I think now that this opportunity has come for him to also executive produce this show alongside Val, he sees this opportunity to maybe level up the playing field and be like, “OK, you’re good, you’re the star of a TV show, you’re good. Now, what about me?” “But what about me?” was a joke that my husband and I started telling years ago. We used to call it BWAM. You’d be telling a story or you’d be doing something, and you’d always end it with BWAM, “But what about me?” And I think Billy has been thinking BWAM for 25 years, “But what about me? When’s my moment?” And so, I think the dynamic really has been hard for me, because I have been a partner of Lisa’s life, we have been business partners together as well as friends. I am nothing like the kind of partner that Billy is in this series. I think that there are moments in this season—spoiler alert—where Billy will really disappoint Val, because he’s thinking about other things. He’s thinking about his own opportunities, and that’s something that I could never live with. It was hard for me to even do it because I was like, “Oh my God, how is he not showing up?” So, it was fun to play and hard, and I also think in this world—I heard Lisa in an interview say once, and it’s so true, especially in today’s world—everybody is Valerie Cherish. We have come to a place now over the last 25 years, where because of our phones and social media and how much we are documenting our own lives as we are living it, we feel almost like, “Did I really experience that if there’s no photograph of it?” The notion of having to make sure the world sees every food that we’re eating and every rep that we’re doing at the gym and every design on our cappuccino froth, the notion that it didn’t really happen unless we’ve documented it is such a Valerie Cherish impulse. And this notion that everybody is Valerie is something that really resonates story-wise, and it certainly will become evident for Billy, as the season progresses. “But what about me?” really drives him. So, I think people will really delight in that. It’s annoying and hard for me, because I wanna be good at my job always. But in playing Billy, as somebody who’s taking opportunities and sometimes disappointing his partner as a result of it, it poses new challenges for Valerie, which I think actually are thrilling to watch. 

DEADLINE: I have to ask, do you wear Thom Browne kilts the entire season? Do you wear pants at all or just the kilts? 

BUCATINSKY: No, I wear pants too. I was asked like 17 times, “Are you wearing underwear under that kilt?” I was like, “Yes.” Now, by the way, I would say no to Thom Browne. If you’re gonna make a men’s kilt, it wouldn’t hurt to put like a culotte. Like every pair of swim trunks that exists for men, there’s a nice—what do you call that inside of it that helps the whole process? I do think that the Thom Browne kilt could be helped by an inside pant, for the suggestion box. But first of all, in real life, I’ve never worn those kilts before. It was really kind of refreshing, quite literally, and breezy. Not sure I would repeat it, but it was a cool look. This season, Billy really turns up the fashion, and his obsession with fashion becomes very clear. But you see Billy in his casual looks, as well as in looks that he chooses when he thinks he’s going to be seen by certain people. And so, that’s really what the difference is, what he puts on depends on who’s going to see him. 

DEADLINE: Well, I’m enjoying his feeling himself with the Thom Browne and all the fashion moments. It’s great. 

BUCATINSKY: It really builds to the end of this season. I can’t give it away, but there’s things I had to do this season that I’ve never done in my entire life. 

DEADLINE: I think it was the third episode that has a really beautiful tribute to Mickey. What was it like returning without Robert Michael Morris after his death? 

BUCATINSKY: It was really hard. We loved Robert so, so much. He was ill in the shooting of all of Season 2, and we worked it into the storyline of Season 2. Him having the opportunity to shoot Season 2 was so healing for him. He found reserves of energy that he had not had in months to make Season 2. It was a huge gift, to us and to him. And then to lose him, I don’t remember how soon after, maybe a year after Season 2 aired, was really, really hard. But the season 3, episode 3, every single time I read that script, I was a mess. I was on set every day, and then to watch Lisa navigate the story of that episode, all the while sort of trying to process her grief over Mickey, was really moving and incredible. And I love that episode so much. Robert would be so, so honored by that episode, and that’s the thing that I’m so touched by, because wherever he is, when he sees that, A, that we’re back, but B, that he’s so honored by the season, it’s lovely. But we have Jack O’Brien [as Tommy Tomlin], who was a friend of Mickey’s and who comes into the season in such a lovely, surprising, fantastic way. I mean, this multi Tony Award-winning theater director who was not an actor, but is an incredible personality, winds up being fantastic in every episode. 

DEADLINE: I also have loved your Hacks character, and I love that you’re almost typecasted in these Hollywood satires.

BUCATINSKY: It’s great. It’s amazing that they keep wanting me to play people’s manager, publicist, executive producer, agent. I’ll take it, especially if they’re interesting. I mean, the thing I love about playing Billy is that … onn Hacks, it felt very much like something that I’ve done before, which is like, come in and deliver the goods and tell people the way things need to be, and sort of herd the cats, really. because the comedy is coming from Hannah [Einbinder] and Jean [Smart], and somebody needs to sort of be the grown-up. So that’s who Rob was for Hacks in Season 4. Billy is not a grown-up in any way, shape or form. Billy is a child, and it’s really fun to get to play that. 

DEADLINE: But are you returning for Season 5 of Hacks? 

BUCATINSKY: I’m not. The truth is, Season 4—if you haven’t watched it, close your ears, anybody—but Season 4 ends with, the end of late night for [Smart’s Deborah Vance].

DEADLINE: So, it makes sense that she wouldn’t be back on the studio or anything. 

BUCATINSKY: Yeah. So no, I’m not in season 5 of Hacks, and they were shooting at the same time that we were shooting The Comeback, so it would have been a little weird anyway, I think. 

DEADLINE: That would be funny to have just a three-way crossover of Hacks, The Comeback and The Studio, all just running into each other on the studio lot. 

BUCATINSKY: Don’t think that I didn’t have a fantasy that Rob’s twin brother was Billy, and that Billy shows up to deliver Valerie Cherish as a late night guest for Deborah Vance. Of course, who’s gonna make that? Nobody, but…

DEADLINE: I mean, they’re both at HBO. That would be perfect. I would love that. 

BUCATINSKY: It would, it would have been fun. But you know, that’sDan’s agenda. That’s not the agenda of how to tell a story about Deb Vance or Valerie Cherish, really.