When Kellan Lutz auditioned for HBO’s The Comeback, he had just a handful of TV guest spots and half a college degree on his resume. Once he starred alongside the Friends star, everything changed.
“If I could tell you a little secret, my mom did not like that I threw college away to pursue this acting thing until I booked this show and she found out that Lisa M.F. Kudrow was on this show,” Lutz, 40, said on Obsessed: The Podcast.
“I just moved to LA and started pursuing this fun thing called ‘acting.’ I had no idea what acting was,” he added.
Lutz had been earning a chemical engineering degree from Chapman University when he made an abrupt turn towards acting at age 19. The Twilight star’s work with Kudrow, 62, is what finally convinced his mom that it was a worthwhile pursuit.
“I think she was hoping that was gonna go as long as Friends did,” he jokingly admitted.
On The Comeback, Lutz plays Chris McNess, a costar to Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish on the sitcom Room & Bored. Lutz said he drew real-life inspiration from the moment when Cherish stands up for him after the network threatens to replace the young cast.
“When you do have the weight that you can swing around, it’s sort of an honor to step in for the little guys,” Lutz said. “But also this being a comeback for Valerie Cherish, you’ve got to be careful with the waters that you’re treading to make sure you don’t get fired and need another comeback someday.”
His time on the HBO comedy led directly to his breakout role in the film Stick It alongside Jeff Bridges. Lutz said the Oscar winner gave him a career-defining piece of advice.
Bridges told him, “Don’t make the industry your life. Make your life outside the industry, because the industry’s always looking to chew you up and spit you out.”
“I always hold on to advice from the people ahead of me,” Lutz added.
In the same interview, Lutz shared how his celebrity doppelgänger gets him free meals, why he never gets embarrassed, and why he rarely rewatches his work.
21 years after he first joined The Comeback, Lutz’s career has greatly changed. He acted in all five Twilight movies, starred alongside Sylvester Stallone and Harrison Ford in The Expendables 3, and led several of his own action movies.
He said his real-life filmography influenced how the showrunners wrote his character in the HBO show’s long-awaited third season, premiering this month.
“I loved doing action movies, and I did so many. That was sort of ‘Kellan Lutz: Action Star,’ just like Chris McNess. Art imitating life,” Lutz said.
“I really love that we were able to take Chris to that next level with confidence,” Lutz added.
“We had to embrace certain realities,” The Comeback actor and producer Dan Bucatinsky said of writing the new season. “So if we’re going to meet Juna again 10 years later, Malin Akerman has grown in her career, as has Kellan Lutz. So why not embrace the realities of these actors?”
Season 3 of The Comeback premieres on HBO Max on March 22.
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