TELEVISION: After-Office party

Photo: Ray Burmiston/HBO

Ricky Gervais, the star of the adored British comedy The Office, is back with another import, Extras—and Office fans will be happy to know it includes just as many squirmy moments as its predecessor. "We adore that painful, excruciating, watch-it-through-your-fingers kind of comedy," says Stephen Merchant, Gervais's co-writer and codirector for both projects. On the new show, Gervais plays Andy Millman, a misanthropic "proper actor" stuck in the background of films with such A-listers as Ben Stiller and Samuel L. Jackson (who appear as themselves). 

Time Out New York: With The Office—a fake documentary—you had to be a slave to realism.

Ricky Gervais: We're a little bit freer now. There was no surrealism in The Office. People said strange things because they were stupid, or odd. With Extras, stranger things happen.

TONY: So was it doubly difficult for you to finish a take without breaking up?

RG: There was one day when I nearly couldn't do the scene. It took two hours. Patrick Stewart, this dignified Shakespearean actor of such grace and gravity, is pretending that he's writing a screenplay—but it's just this adolescent boy's fantasy that he's got superpowers.... He goes: "And I might see an attractive lady, and her clothes fall off." A combined age of about 100, me and Patrick Stewart, and we're giggling like teenagers.

TONY: All of your guest stars come with larger-than-life personae. Why is that?

RG: We need people with baggage 'cause there's no "sit" in this sitcom. We jump around. So the more you can have someone coming in and know everything about them, the easier it is. But of course, they're really playing twisted versions of themselves—Ben Stiller [directing the story of a Bosnian orphan] doesn't really shout at children. What's fun is blurring that line.

TONY: BBC Two has already commissioned season two. Since Madonna offered to sweep your floor at Live 8, she's probably a good candidate. Who else?

RG: Clint, Sly—I would love Sylvester Stallone. Tom Cruise—I know he likes The Office. And I don't mind if he says, "Are you mental?" I've got no ego. I'm certainly not scared of asking.

TONY: Perhaps you should ask his fiancée as well.

RG: They can come as a pair. Same price, though. I'm not paying double. [Laughs] We're not made of money.—April P. Bernard

Extras premieres September 25 at 10:30pm on HBO.

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