BEVERLY HILLS — It’s been 10 years, but Lisa Kudrow is back as the eager, fame-seeking Valerie Cherish in HBO’s comedy, “The Comeback.”

The coterie of fans is delirious that the cable network has decided to resuscitate Valerie after a decade of reluctant anonymity. After all, what does 10 years do to an actress’ career? Ask Michelle Pfeiffer, Demi Moore or Meg Ryan.

“The Comeback,” which is co-written by Kudrow and Michael Patrick King (“Sex and the City”), is about an actress who felt the blazing inferno of a hit show and keeps trying to reignite that flame.

“Our first poster, which Lisa and I designed, was Valerie standing in a meat grinder, happy,” says King, who knows how to write for women. He also wrote “Cybill,” episodes of “Will & Grace” and “2 Broke Girls.”

“She was happily throwing herself in,” adds Kudrow, who was always the most adroit performer on “Friends.”

“She’s grinding herself up to make television, and we’ve seen that that has really happened on every single (reality show),” says King. “We will not have to explain a woman who doesn’t have financial problems putting herself in front of a camera and putting herself in harm’s way. That’s already in the world. What we do with it from there is our sort of swing at storytelling — to make it be a beginning, middle and end of Valerie and her life,” says King.

Of course things have changed since the two created “The Comeback,” most especially the dominance of the reality show and the ends zealous producers will go to to exploit the medium.

“When we did the first series, we thought it would be so great if Valerie went into therapy with reality cameras (running), and we went, ‘Oh, that’s too far,’” says King, ‘“that would never happen. Get a grip! We can’t do that.’ And now it’s like a go-to — that and a bikini wax is on every reality show you have to see.

“So we’re trying to incorporate the fact that everything’s very accessible. There’s a youth element in the show, how kids process stuff versus how older people process stuff.

“We tried to mash up everything that we see and is happening right now in television and in life, and put it in a comedy,” he says.

In the original series, Valerie Cherish was trying to earn back her glory by playing a minor character on an atrocious sitcom. Much of the comedy came from her struggles to accommodate the creators of the show, though she was secretly embarrassed by it. There will be a show-within-a-show again, says King. But this time the show will be a dramady — on HBO no less.

“How we sort of depicted a sitcom, a network sitcom that wasn’t doing well (before), we’ll do our very best to reflect Valerie’s experience if she got lucky enough to be cast on an HBO dramady, which through plot twists — which I won’t get into here now — hopefully you’ll believe.”

While Kudrow is a savvy comedienne, she also lends a subtle pathos to Valerie and her fruitless quest to be recognized.

“I just like being someone else and convincing others: ‘Now I’m like this’ and ‘Now I’m like this.’ I’m always fascinated with personalities and what makes people do this, that or the other — and I like to explore that,” she says.

“The interesting thing about acting is you can draw your own conclusions, and somehow it makes sense. Even if you’re wrong about what drove this person to behave that way, it seems like you’re allowed a lot more leeway as an actor.”

But she wasn’t always funny, she insists.

“When you’re the youngest one in the family, you’re absolutely NOT the funniest one in the room. So I was always the least funniest in the room, but my family’s very funny. So I would steal their stuff and bring it to school and score.”

King says when he and Kudrow were writing “The Comeback,” they would improvise, write and discuss for hours.

“And then we did the hair and makeup test right before we started (to shoot), and when Lisa walked in as Valerie, I got like really shy. I was like, ‘I haven’t seen you in nine years. Hello.’ I mean, Valerie is a powerful being, and she doesn’t go away. She might power down, and then maybe you see her again, if you’re lucky.”