The actor behind one of TV’s longest-running marriages said the key to their 21-year relationship is remembering the reason why they’re together.
“You can’t sustain scorn, resentment, anger, annoyance,” Damian Young, Lisa Kudrow’s onscreen husband on HBO’s The Comeback, told Obsessed: The Podcast host Kevin Fallon. “There has to be a reason why these people are together.”
Across two decades, Young, 64, has portrayed Mark, the husband of Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish, on The Comeback, which premiered in 2005 and returns for its third season this spring. When we last saw the characters at the end of 2014’s Season 2, their marriage was facing increased scrutiny due to Valerie filming a reality show about her life.
“There has to be something underneath other than gimme, gimme, gimme,” Young added. “I always so much admire this about her: She’s so on—right on the edge of caricature—and she never, ever goes over. It never goes into cartoon-land. It’s always grounded.”
“It’s the most grounded part of the show,” agreed episode co-host Dan Bucatinsky, who plays Kudrow’s publicist Billy on the show.
“It’s her desire to be in show business, her desire to get seen, her desire to keep working, her desire to be liked by writers, to be liked by showrunners, to be liked by her co-stars,” Bucatinsky added. “But then there’s Mark, and it just brings her home.”
In the same interview, the actors revealed their worst experiences prepping for nude scenes, and Young recalled the moment he felt he truly belonged as “part of the family” in the cast.
Young’s 21 episodes with The Comeback are the most he’s done for any single show in his extensive filmography, which includes Ozark and House of Cards, as well as in films like the Best Picture Oscar winner Birdman.
Even after the show’s most dramatic fight, in which Mark and Valerie shout, lob insults, and degrade each other, the bond remains. During rehearsal, Young was told off by the show’s director for forgetting his character’s affection in the throes of the argument.
“Actors hear this all the time, ‘It’s not a fight until it’s a fight,” Young said. “I have to go in trying to make it work— confident that it’s going to work—in order for it to be torn down by learning that, ‘Oh, even this intimate moment she’s using for the reality show.’"
In the argument, Mark and Valerie fight over her new, Emmy-nominated reality show, which requires omnipresent filming that, to Mark, makes their marriage seem performative.
“One of the great things about a well-written scene—and this is true always in an argument situation—whether you side with one person or another is not the point," Bucatinsky added. “The point is that both arguments make sense.”
The podcast with Young and Bucatinsky is the second installment in Obsessed: The Podcast‘s series leading up to the return of HBO’s The Comeback. All previous episodes of The Comeback are available to stream on HBO Max.
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