What was your favourite moment from the first series of Extras? Ross Kemp being compared with Zippy? Kate Winslet in a nun’s habit offering advice? Or tragicomic Les Dennis calling up Heat with fake celebrity sightings of himself? The first series, shown last year, was the equivalent of the difficult second album — how could Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant come up with a comedy that could match The Office? Amazingly, the on-set misadventures of the frustrated extras Andy and Maggie came mighty close. Gervais and his co-star Ashley Jensen won plaudits, but Merchant, as Andy’s peerlessly inept agent, stole every scene he was in.
While on his way to catch a plane to the Emmy Awards the other week, he took time out to offer The Knowledge his thoughts on the new series of Extras, its crop of celebrity guest-stars and, of course, “Barry from EastEnders”.
“The new show is about Ricky’s character’s rise to a level of celebrity, the things that happen around that, and his friendship with Maggie. His sitcom gets made and, despite the fact that it’s critically mauled, it is actually quite popular with the public. So he has this double-blind of being fairly well known, with people asking for his autograph and popping up on chat shows, and not having the credibility and critical respect he craves. So he is just as frustrated as he was when he was a lowly extra and it’s all about him dealing with these anxieties.
“It’s almost a parallel universe about where Ricky and I would have ended up if we’d made the wrong decisions. It also draws on our experience of the absurdity of celebrity. But of course, the greatest fun we have is through the comedy of embarrassment — people being in awkward situations. Somehow if you’re well known, those embarrassing situations are magnified. Suddenly, if you make a fool of yourself in a restaurant, you are in the papers.
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“People keep asking why the stars want to mock themselves on Extras, and we can’t really figure it out. Maybe it’s because it is quite a fun day out. Actors like to act but if they’re on a big movie set, they’re sitting around all day in trailers drinking tea and reading magazines. With us you get to act pretty much non-stop, so hopefully it’s a fun day. It’s an Alton Towers for movie stars.
“Also, if you are a well-known face it is a tiresome fact that people have a perception of you that is normally completely misguided. Les Dennis is the most obvious example of that — the public perception of him is entirely wrong and doing our show was a way of countering that. Or it can just show a different string to their bow. But I would hate to suggest that the show is all about the stars — they’re just the icing on the cake.
“My character, as ever, has more interest in promoting ‘Barry from East- Enders’ than massaging the ego of my other client. It’s never really explained why he likes Barry so much — maybe he feels he owes him something after foolishly persuading him to leave EastEnders. Ricky and I love doing scenes together, so there’s a lot more of that.
“After this, we are both quite keen to get involved in drama. That doesn’t mean turning our back on comedy, it’s just something we’d like to experiment with.”