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Stephen Merchant
He was minding his own business in a dark corner of a North London pub. suchsmallportions were a bit tipsy and despite the hostile glances decided to interrupt Stephen Merchant anyway. We chatted to the lanky award-hogger mere moments before he took the stage for a rare stand-up appearance
SSP: How do you feel about the gig tonight?
SM: “I feel fine really. I don’t have any expectations. I’m just doing this for my own amusement really. I’m not working on a show or planning a tour or anything like that but I feel like I’ve got unfinished business with stand-up. I used to do it a long time ago and never really cracked it. So now I’ve come back to it and I’ve done a few gigs to discover that I’m essentially mediocre. It’s a shame. I thought I’d come back to find I was the new Richard Pryor. I fear I’m the new Richard Blackwood.”
SSP: Were you mediocre when you did stand-up before?
SM: “No, I was quite good before. I was a bit more avant garde and I’ve somehow become worse. I think it’s because I tried to become more conventional. I used to do a character but you restrict yourself when you do a character so I had to break that off. Now I’ve got nothing to hide behind so if they don’t enjoy it it’s because they don’t like me.”
SSP: Do you worry that people come to these shows expecting to see you as the character you play in the sitcom [Darren Lamb, the hapless agent that Merchant plays in Extras]?
SM: “Well, I’m pretty much like that so I’m not too worried. My only worry is that people come expecting to see a fully formed act as opposed to a work in progress. This is like seeing a [Gervais and Merchant] show unedited. You might see bits of good stuff, but there will be a lot of chaff that needs to be cut out or worked on.”
SSP: So you’ve literally decided to do these shows with no plans for Edinburgh or anything like that?
SM: "No plans at all, no."
SSP: Why would you put yourself through this then?
SM: “That’s a very good question. I started this interview feeling in high spirits and now I feel like this is all a grand waste of time. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Merchant as Darren Lamb in Extras
SSP: How’s the final episode of Extras going?
SM: “We’re still writing it. Still trying to break the story as they say. Thrashing ideas about.”
SSP: Have you any idea who your celebrities will be this time?
SM: “Not really, no. We’re really trying to come up with a decent story line first. This is only one episode so it needs to have a beginning, middle and end in itself which are satisfying."
SSP: Are you going to tie-up the loose ends like you did with the last episode of The Office?
SM: “To a degree. We want it to at least be a satisfying watch in the end. Maybe if you’ve never seen it before then it would give you a certain pleasure anyway.”
SSP: Do you have any idea what you want to do after you’re finished with that?
SM: “We’d quite like to do some drama maybe. Comedy drama. It’s a bit vague though. We’re too successful and complacent to really put any effort in there. I’m sure we’ll aim for The Sopranos and settle for Boon.”
SSP: Would you want to follow Ricky and do a national stand-up tour?
SM: “He’s more of a natural stand-up than I am. I need to work on it a lot more to get it right so I wouldn’t want to do that. I’d want to get my act really good and play places like this first so I know that when I go out onstage at a big venue that it’s all killer material. If you’re charging £25 you feel like you at least want to give people a song and dance.”
SSP: Do you feel like you might be tempted to use your persona as Stephen Merchant to get easy gags in there?
SM: “I’m relying on that entirely. I don’t have a persona really amongst the wider audience. Comedy fans are aware of who I am but generally other people don’t know. I’ve still got to a bit of work to really use my persona in that way.”
Merchant wins Best Actor at the British Comedy Awards
SSP: Is that what Ricky does? Does he use his fame to get laughs?
SM: “It’s not a question of fame really. There’s a sort of comfort that comes when an audience is very relaxed and knows you’re going to be funny. They allow you to play around a little more. I get anxious if there’s a big silence between jokes and I feel I should fill that silence, whereas a good comic just lets it breathe, safe in the knowledge that they’re enjoying the whole process. That’s what I think you gain from being very well known [like Ricky]. But then he still puts the work in.”
SSP: On another tack- how are you finding 6Music? [Merchant has been hosting a show on the BBC’s indie music station for the last few months]
SM: “I enjoy it. I mean it’s not it’s a music show, which I was intending it to be.”
SSP: It seems like it’s you chatting with your mates…
SM: “It was always going to be me and my mates. But it was constantly the idea that that’s kind of how I share music. Music to me is mates recommending stuff. So I was trying to get that feel in the show. Now I suspect we’re doing more talking then playing records but then it’s only 6music, so who cares?”
SSP: Finally, have you got any favourite stand-ups that we should know about?
SM: “I tell you who I’m really loving at the moment – this guy Louis CK. He’s worth checking out. He’s a really great filthy observational comic. He manages to be really acute and also be foul-mouthed.”
Interview by Henry Barnes and Josh Widdicombe
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