the times Saturday June 11 20226 Body + Soul
electric shock”. They hit it off and began
developing The Office. These days they
don’t seem so close. When an interviewer
asked Gervais if the pair were the sort of
pals who went on holiday together, he an-
swered: “F*** off”, claiming only to have
six “real” friends (Merchant wasn’t one of
them). In response, Merchant said when
they first met Gervais looked like a “mid-
dle-aged paedophile out with a young boy”
and made it clear that he is far more socia-
ble. And while Gervais can come across as
a bruiser, Merchant has been far more
open about his struggles in showbusiness.
Following the huge success of The Office,
Merchant moved to LA where, as a very
tall and pale Englishman, he struggled
socially. “Height made me feel abnormal
as a teenager and standing out at that age
is the last thing you want,” he says. “Added
to that, when I arrived in LA, where there’s
no community as such, it was lonely.”
Ten years on, Merchant is a serious
player in Tinseltown. He lives in Ellen
DeGeneres’s old house. He is friends with
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (they havePeople assume I’m
the nerdy guy.
That’s my schtick
The comedian
Stephen Merchant
explains why he’s
nothing like his
on-screen image
W
hen it comes to
social humilia-
tion, Stephen
Merchant reckons
it’s best to get it out
of the way all in
one go. In his case,
that moment came at an A-list Hollywood
party he attended after arriving in Los
Angeles ten years ago. “Everyone who is
anyone was there,” he says.
Merchant schmoozed, sipped, but then
nibbled on a brownie he didn’t realise had
been laced with cannabis. “I’m 6ft 7in; I
should’ve been able to handle it,” he says
with a sigh.
Instead, he tripped on a TV cable then
stumbled through an 8ft-high plate glass
window, smashing it to pieces. “That’s it,
isn’t it? You’ve gone through the host’s
window but also the barrier of social
humiliation. After that, you’re fine. The
worst that can happen has happened.”
Merchant punctuates the story with his
familiar boggle-eyed grin. It’s the same
gawky charm he brought to the role of
Nathan the “Oggmonster” in The Office
(he also co-wrote and co-directed the
series with Ricky Gervais); to the role of
Darren Lamb, the bumbling agent in Ex-
tras; and latterly to the lawyer Greg in the
BBC comedy drama The Outlaws, which
has just returned for a second series.
Question is, are people laughing at
funny faces and slapstick pratfalls any
more? We talked in the week his old writ-
ing/ directing partner Ricky Gervais
caused a furore with his new Netflix stand-
up show SuperNature, in which he made
jokes about trans rights (Gervais suggest-
ed he might transition to “Vicky Gervais”),
and the “heyday” of Aids when gay people
took “real” risks because there was no cure.
Just in case you aren’t triggered by any of
that, he throws in gags about cancer and
Adolf Hitler for good measure.
Merchant’s comedy/drama The Outlaws
isn’t going to offend anyone. It’s gentle. But
I wonder what role he thinks comedians
should play in the culture wars?
“I’m not going to comment on individu-
al comedians and their material, but out-
rage surrounding comedy is nothing new.
In the 1920s, Mae West did jail time for
‘corrupting the morals of youth’; Lenny
Bruce was convicted for obscenity in the
1960s. In the Seventies, George Carlin
sparked a case that wound up in the
Supreme Court. When I was young, Monty
Python’s Life of Brian was banned by some
English local authorities and Mary White-
house was always trying to ‘clean up’ TV.
“The big difference is that it used to be
the conservative right who were the cen-
sorious ones, now it seems to be the liberal
left. But the cries of shock and disgust
are the same.”
Merchant is sitting in the top-floor
office of his north London home. I see a
shredder, a printer, plus various posters
celebrating his film and TV triumphs. The
best photo is a black and white of him and
Gervais having some sort of play fight. The
pair met while working at the now-defunct
London radio station XFM. Gervais was
head of speech and, despite a 13-year age
difference (Gervais was then 35; Merchant
22) he hired the man he described as look-
ing like “an upright lizard being given anworked on two films together) and regu-
larly runs into A-listers taking part in the
reality TV show Lip Sync Battle, which he
co-created with actor Emily Blunt’s hus-
band, John Krasinski. When the Holly-
wood legend and Oscar-winner Christo-
pher Walken appeared in The Outlaws,
some people wondered how Merchant
had pulled off such a coup. But the truth is,
he’s a player.
“I am surprised how often people
assume I’m the same guy they see on a talk
show or doing stand-up comedy — the
nerdy guy is my schtick. Fundamentally
I’m quite a serious-minded individual who
writes, directs, produces, executive produ-
ces. I play awkward gangly characters
because that reflects my teen past.”
Earlier this year Merchant did play a
meaty crime role, portraying the serial
killer Stephen Port in the BBC true-crime
drama Four Lives. “Psychologically, it was
one of the most challenging things I’ve done.”
Greg in The Outlaws might be a more
traditional Merchant role, but creating,
co-writing, co-directing and co-producingthe series also came with substantial risks.
First, he decided to write with the former
American gang member Elgin James.
Then, what had been a feature film idea set
in LA was refashioned as a series set in
Bristol. Then, when Merchant decided he
wanted Walken for a role, he had to travel
to Connecticut to persuade him (Walken
doesn’t own a phone and would only com-
municate via fax). They finally began film-
ing just as the pandemic started. “It was
total hell,” Merchant says.
He has been based between LA and
London with his American girlfriend,
Mircea Monroe, for five years now (Mon-
roe is an actress who starred in the British/
US sitcom Episodes until it ended in 2017).
The pair met at an Emmy awards party
and after spending the past two years in
London as a result of Covid restrictions, he
feels they have finally mastered their
cultural differences. “She is more friendly
than me,” he says. “I think generally people
find me more difficult — a colder fish. But
we both really notice the difference in atti-
tudes when we’re watching Antiques Road-
show. The expert will say, ‘This vase you’ve
been keeping your geraniums in is actually
worth £25,000’, and the British owner will
politely go, ‘Oh’. But in America they
would go, ‘Wa-heyyyy!’ You realise just
how repressed we are.”
Merchant is resilient, and in a showbiz
world full of flaky beautiful people he
seems to have learnt his value. “I’m quite a
good bet because I am not a troubled per-
son. You don’t have to talk me down from
a ledge. I don’t have ecstatic highs or crash-
ing lows and I’m not as riddled with self-
doubt as some — when I scratch beneath
the surface of some people I really admire,
they have far more demons than me.”
At the weekend he and Monroe have an
enviable routine. “I’ll spend hours on the
sofa watching Saturday morning cookery
shows. Then we’ll go to the local farmers’
market and buy the ingredients to make a
treat. Mircea was quite blunt at the start:
she doesn’t cook. But I love it and find it
relaxing, so it works.”
Merchant is 47 and Monroe 40. They’ve
discussed starting a family. “Never say
never; having children is a decision we ha-
ven’t made yet,” he says. “But not having
them gives us the freedom to travel,
which is the current plan. I’ve been to Viet-
nam and Cuba but really haven’t seen
Europe properly.”
Merchant also wants to write, direct or
act in another film (he was in the 2019 hit
Jojo Rabbit and in the same year wrote and
directed Fighting with My Family) as well as
do another stand-up tour. Merchant is on-
ly half joking when he says his goal is an
honourable mention in the In Memoriam
section of the Bafta awards.
“And not only that,” he adds. “I want the
voiceover to say, ‘How can one tall man in
glasses have possibly achieved so much?’ ”
Series 2 of The Outlaws continues on
BBC1 on Sunday, 9pmStephen Merchant’s
perfect weekend
Bristol or LA?
Bristol
Smoothie or fry-up?
Healthy in the week, then a fry-up
Satire or slapstick?
Slapstick
Gym or country walk?
Country walk
Signature dish?
Lamb shank
Screensaver?
A photo of Mircea
I couldn’t get through my weekend
without...
A napStephen Merchant with his
girlfriend, Mircea Monroe, in 2019It used to be the
conservative
right who were
the censorious
ones — now it’s
the liberal left
TODD WILLIAMSON/JANUARY IMAGES/SHUTTERSTOCKby Michael
Odell