“Hopefully he’ll be served,” Michael Patrick King says of honoring the star and character, who played the hair stylist to Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish on the HBO comedy.

The Comeback season 3 will honor the late Robert Michael Morris’ Mickey: ‘A big loss’ (exclusive)

"Hopefully he'll be served," Michael Patrick King says of honoring the star and character, who played the hair stylist to Lisa Kudrow's Valerie Cherish on the HBO comedy.

By Patrick Gomez

Patrick Gomez is an Executive Editor at . Formerly at People magazine and The A.V. Club, the Critics Choice and Television Critics Association member has appeared on 'Today,' 'Extra!,' 'Access Hollywood,' 'E! News,' 'CNN,' and 'Nightline,' and can be seen frequently on 'Good Morning America.' Follow the Texas Native at @PatrickGomezLA wherever your media is social for all things 'For All Mankind' 'Top Chef,' and puppy related.

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January 1, 2026 1:26 p.m. ET

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Mickey (Robert Michael Morris) and Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) on 'The Comeback' season 1 in 2005. Credit:

Sundance Channel

Michael Patrick King knows there was a fine line to dance when crafting Lisa Kudrow's *The Comeback* character Valerie Cherish.

The fading sitcom star at the center of the co-creator's HBO comedy could easily be seen as vapid and narcissistic, but those around her who knew the real Valerie helped ground the character and showed the audience why people fell in love with her on her breakout comedy, *I'm It*.

And no one served that role more than Valerie's longtime hair stylist, Mickey (Robert Michael Morris).

"People fell in love with Valerie because of Mickey," King tells **. "They could see her through his eyes."

Now, as King and Kudrow prepare to bring *The Comeback* back for a third season after an 11-year hiatus, they will have to do so without Mickey, as Morris died in 2017 at the age of 77 after battling stage 4 melanoma.

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But, King promises, the comedy will find a way to honor Morris and Mickey.

"How could you not?" he says. "You know that we're going to bring up Mickey. There has to be a way to acknowledge his absence. We tried to find a way that would not at all deny that, but also not.... Hopefully, he'll be served. It's important."

"Robert Michael was such a big, big, big, big, big, big moment. And his absence is a big loss. A big loss," he continues. "And Mickey being gone is a loss for us as well, so we'll have to address that."**

The new season will see Valerie as the star of a new multi-camera sitcom called *How's That?!*, which is written by AI.

"But the thing we didn't want to do is the obvious joke that AI is bad. That's all been done," King recently told EW of the new storyline. "The scary thing about AI is that maybe it's learning really fast, and what does that do to our business. What does that do to our perception of what television is and what writing is, and what being an actor is? The most fun thing about Valerie in AI is all her drama has been with writers. And now what will her drama be if there are no writers?"

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.***

Season 3 will see the return of reality show producer Jane (Laura Silverman), and Valerie's husband, Mark (Damian Young), and publicist, Billy (Dan Bucatinsky) — but also the addition of Andrew Scott as a studio head, as well as Abbi Jacobson, John Early, Tim Bagley, Matt Cook, Jack O’Brien, Ella Stiller, Barry Shabaka Henley, Tony Macht, Brittany O’Grady, Zane Phillips and Julian Stern.

*The Comeback* season 3 is set to debut in March on HBO.

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Comedy”