Lisa Kudrow showed up on Hot Ones, sat across from Sean Evans, and apparently left The Last Dab untouched. Fair enough. Smart, even.
The appearance is a promotional crossover for The Comeback on HBO Max. It’s the kind of promo that actually works. Not the kind nobody watches. Hot Ones, produced by First We Feast, has a simple formula. Celebrities eat progressively hotter chicken wings and try to hold a conversation. Most of them are a mess by wing six. The final sauce, The Last Dab, is where dignity goes to die.
HBO Max’s official Instagram account teased the episode this week.
Kudrow is obviously best known as Phoebe Buffay on Friends. But The Comeback is the project serious fans point to when her name comes up. She created the HBO mockumentary series herself and starred in it. The show ran in 2005 and went dark for nearly a decade. It came back in 2014 for a second season. Kudrow plays Valerie Cherish, a fading actress clawing back relevance with a reality camera crew documenting her every humiliation. It’s uncomfortably funny. Kudrow earned an Emmy nomination for it. The show never got the mainstream recognition it deserved. The people who found it became obsessive fans, and they’ve been hoping for more ever since.
A return to The Comeback on HBO Max would be genuinely big news for that crowd. The show has a reputation for being ahead of its time. It satirized reality TV and Hollywood ego in a way that hit differently with certain viewers. The fanbase has stayed loud and loyal across all the years in between.
Evans has built a legitimately impressive track record as an interviewer. He does real research. He asks questions that catch guests off guard. He knows exactly when to keep pushing. The show has been running since 2016 and has brought in everyone from Scarlett Johansson to Gordon Ramsay to Billie Eilish. Some of those episodes went fully viral. The format just works.
Pairing Evans with Kudrow is smart casting. She’s sharp and self-aware, and she clearly doesn’t mind looking ridiculous. Phoebe Buffay was beloved. A lot of that came from Kudrow playing her with zero vanity. Those instincts probably serve her well here. Stiff and defensive guests tend to become cautionary tales on Hot Ones. The ones who lean in usually become fan favorites.
HBO Max knew exactly what it was doing with that Instagram caption. Dangling the Last Dab question is a direct play to the Hot Ones community. They track this stuff. There are whole conversations dedicated to ranking celebrity performances on the show. Skipping the final sauce isn’t a scandal, but everyone always clocks it.
Nearly 67,000 likes on a single promotional post says the audience is already locked in. The full episode is what everyone’s waiting for now.
Valerie Cherish absolutely would have demanded The Last Dab and then fallen apart spectacularly on camera. Did Lisa Kudrow make the smarter call? That’s what everyone is currently arguing about.
