Stephen Merchant: ‘Most famous people are f**cked up’

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0:25Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that believes, as Truman Capote put it, that failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. He was so good, Truman. Before we get to our guest today, I wanted to mention our subscriber podcast, Failing With Friends. This is where my guest and I answer your questions and we offer advice on some of your failures too. Here's a bit of Stephen Merchant to whet your appetite. She's volunteering and giving teas at an oncology and now she's feeling guilty if she's having a cup of tea. I mean, goodness. Do join in by following the link in the podcast notes and you can send me an email or look out for my call outs once a month on Instagram for quickfire questions.

1:06Let's get into my conversation with Stephen Merchant.

1:12As a child, Stephen Merchant used to draw comic strips of his favourite comedy show, Fawlty Towers. From a young age, his hero was the man who wrote and starred in it, John Cleese. When a few years ago, Merchant's parents happened to meet Cleese on a cruise, the elder comedian admitted he was a huge fan of their son. That's because in the intervening years, Merchant had established himself as one of our foremost comedic writers and performers. In the early 2000s, he co-wrote and directed The Office with Ricky Gervais, his former boss at radio station XFM. The Office ran for only two years, and yet it made both Gervais and Merchant superstars.

1:56When it won a Golden Globe in 2004, it became the first British comedy ever to do so. Since then, Merchant's varied career has taken him from an HBO series, Hello Ladies, based on his stand-up comedy, to writing and directing films such as Fighting With My Family and the comedy crime series, The Outlaws. He's also won plaudits for some serious acting, as the Gestapo leader, Captain Dietz in the Oscar-winning movie Jojo Rabbit, and as serial killer Stephen Port in the 2022 drama Four Lives. If there is one theme that connects his creative interests, it is perhaps ordinary people made extraordinary by events.

2:38Merchant once attributed his desire to keep experimenting to a fear of being stuck. He said, I think there's probably a part of me that was always scared of getting trapped in some life I didn't want and waking up at 50 and going, what have I done? Stephen Merchant, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you so much. You're turning 50 this year. You don't need to remind me. So what have you done? How are you feeling with the stuckness? I remember when people turned 30 in my orbit and they seemed to be having little crises, little mini crises. And I was just swinging for the fences. I was like, yeah, what are you talking about it's all great and 40 kind of came and went and i was like yeah this is good but for some reason as i approach 50 i do feel a little bit more rattled than i was expecting to i don't know if it's to do with impending death or if it's more to do with it feels like there's lots of articles in broadsheets about life after 50 you know and exercising after 50 and have you got your ISO in check after 50 and all those things.

3:45So I'm being constantly told it's a milestone, whereas I've never really lived life based on those sorts of milestones that are sort of imposed by other people. Yes. Well, I wonder if it's strange because you had success really young and sort of success that no one could argue with. So it's possibly not about leaving a legacy. You've got that in shape do you think it feels like there's lots of things i still want to do you mentioned about me drawing comic strips of faulty towers you know the jobs i do were hobbies before they were a career and so people sometimes say you know you you know you're a workaholic and you and you're doing so many things and why didn't you slow down and i always think well i get your point but what was i supposed what am i supposed to be doing in my downtime am i supposed to just take up golf or nothing against golf but it's like i enjoy the things i do they were my hobbies and so And so if I have ambitions, they're for those sort of creative pursuits that seem exciting to me, whether it's, I don't know, writing a play or writing a book or, you know, directing a three-hour sci-fi epic or whatever.

4:56It's sort of, they're all exciting challenges. And I think I'm aware that you only have so long to sort of accomplish those different things. Do you think you had any kind of shame attached to the idea of ambition or success? I definitely think there's something in British culture that seems to force you to downplay ambition. If you become successful, you have to sort of keep making, I was just lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. And, you know, of course, there are elements of that, but you need the drive, you know, the idea of the sort of, you know, you'll hear those guys in the pub, you know, yeah, I could have been heavyweight champion of the world.

5:34did you ever get in the boxing ring no i didn't i didn't but i reckon if i had you know it's like well unless you get in the ring you won't know and i and i feel spending time in america they have the complete opposite right where it's you know teaching kids that they could be president one day if in my school if you'd said i'd love to be prime minister they'd be like what are you talking about know your place this is absurd you need to go to eaton you know it was sort of there There was just assumptions about, like I said, a sort of feeling of know your place. And I suppose I was thinking recently, why on earth when I was young did I think that I could try and be John Cleese?

6:16What a weird arrogance to have as a teenager. And yet in my mind, I was sort of like, well, if you need tall, funny guys that were born in the West Country, well, yeah, sure, I'll give it a go. Got that one down pat. Just talking about those blokes in the pub, I've lost count of the number of times that men have told me that they came up with the idea for How to Fail first. Of course. They just didn't launch it. Of course. They had the idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that counts. So John Cleese, have you ever met him? I've never met Cleese, no. So Cleese's work for me has been done in terms of, you know, in terms of inspiring me and admiring him and things.

6:53And it'd be lovely to run into him and have a chat, but I don't, it's not like it's a great unfulfilled ambition. And he was nice to your parents. He was very nice to my parents. On a voicemail that he left on their cruise room phone, yes. your parents when i said in the introduction that i think one of the recurring themes in your work is that focus on ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances and your parents have they sound like very grounded people with very normal jobs yes how much of that fascination if it is indeed a fascination has come from your childhood i think certainly my father would have you know He's very funny and has kind of a creative spirit, which was not something that was really available to him to explore when he was young.

7:44You know, he came from a very working class background and the expectation was to get a job or to learn a trade. And that was what he did. And so I sense from him, and he would, I think, say that there were times when he was in his working life where he felt frustrated. not because he wished he could go off and write a play but just because it was a job of work it wasn't a career choice it wasn't you know and there was those pressures of feeding families and so on and i think he was a plumber he was a plumber and did some building work and things and so i think i'm not trying to disparage plumbers it's just for him it was just not something that he you know it was a job of work it was a way to pay the mortgage and and that i think kind of fed into me when I was young like oh it was a part of my dad's life he doesn't fully enjoy that's the thing you mentioned about feeling trapped I didn't want to to ever be in that situation where I got up sort of dreading the day and there are times when you of course you do because you know you've got there's a difficult day ahead or whatever but on the whole I look I sort of I get out of bed and I kind of look forward to what I'm doing That's so interesting because the office, which is the thing that first made your name, is exploring that really, isn't it?

9:01It's people who are trapped in this office with this ridiculous boss who probably do wake up with a feeling of dread, but they're saved by the people that they work with. So how much was that exploring your own worst fears? That idea, I forget who coined that phrase of lives of quiet desperation or whatever, but that idea of - John Stein, I think. Was it? Yeah, well, there you are. One of the only quotes I know. No, no, no. But there's a great truth to that. And it seemed like it wasn't just my family. It was just people that you grew up with. It was teachers. It was other people's parents. It was career advisors.

9:38It just always felt there was a lot of people who were feeling frustrated in their lives. And I don't want that to sound sneering. I don't think the office was ever meant to be sneery. It was just that there was a danger that you could wake up, as we mentioned in your introduction, at age 50 and go, what have I done? And for some reason, from a young age, that was an anxiety. I remember years ago, I got a temporary job at sort of a call center and there was a guy kind of training us. And he said, oh, what are you interested in doing? And I said, oh, I'd quite like to get some acting and performing.

10:19And he said, yeah, I used to be an actor. I went, oh, right, okay, yeah. And then he said, yeah, and training people in the call center, that's a form of acting. And I just sensed in it a kind of, like he was making excuses or apologies for it not having quite worked out for him. And that sort of idea that he had nothing to apologise for, and yet he felt a need to. I just thought, I don't know, I always used to pick up on that stuff. That's so beautiful. And that's David Brent and his music career. That's right, yeah. Final question before we get onto your failures. There are certain comedies that everyone can re-watch again and again and again.

10:57The Office, for me, is one of those. what is it that makes a comedy re-watchable it's the characters and their interactions and that feeling that even for all of the discomfort that you can feel watching the office you sort of know that world that you can kind of fall back into it and there's a strange comfort to it even if there's a discomfort watching the show and i think it's one of the reasons why in the pandemic people revisited sitcoms, whether it be Friends or the American version of The Office or The Big Bang Theory or whatever, people, there's something about the kind of coziness, the familiarity, that the problems they encounter are not world-changing.

11:45Their arguments over a desk or a coffee machine or whatever, there's something reassuring about that. There's something comforting. I said it was my final question, I lied, because that's made me think of something else. So the comfort of that sits in opposition to the darkness that you explore in your quote-unquote serious acting. There's no way of saying that without it sounding like I'm being facetious and I'm not. But is that a deliberate decision that you want to explore sort of dark, tricky roles and people? You know, a Gestapo officer and a serial killer? Well, I think that they're all in a strange way.

12:22You can see the thread because to me, what's interesting about a Gestapo character is that those were often people that were mundane nobodies, that were given power of life and death. And yet, in ordinary civilian life, they would have been petty bureaucrats. And so you can see a sort of warped version of the office in which that's what David Brent becomes. You know, it's petty people with too much power. You know, they're not... And the same with Stephen Port is that these people, when you start to dig into them, they're not these fascinating, Hannibal Lecter-esque, erudite, classical music-loving, Shakespeare-quoting geniuses.

13:09They're mundane people with some wiring that's gone awry that has made them do abhorrent things. But they're the person who lives in your street. They're the person on the news where the neighbor goes, he just seemed like a quiet, ordinary bloke. I was totally shocked there were 14 bodies in the basement. You know, again, that's what's sort of fascinating about human nature is that people are very rarely, when you scratch beneath the surface, utterly unknowable and extreme. And that's, I think, what's interesting about those people. That's such a good answer. Yeah. Okay, let's get on to Seamless Link, your first failure.

13:49Your failure to realise that your height was an advantage. Yes. When was the first time you realised you were tall? I feel like I was always tall. I can't really remember a pre-tall era. But I suppose by the time I was in my early teens, it was a sort of feature. It was, oh, you're the tall guy. And then by the mid-teens, you're the lanky, gangly guy. And that's the sort of hallmark of you. If people were to characterize you or had to describe you, that was the thing. And so I suppose it made me self-conscious in a way that, as the reason I mentioned not realizing it was an asset, was that it took me a long time to realize that people dream of being tall.

14:51They're jealous of tallness and they're envious of it. And so there was a long time, I think, where it made me feel awkward or self-conscious. Someone said to me in an interview once, I thought it was quite a presumptuous question, but there's probably some truth in it. Did you go into comedy to control when people laugh at you? And I think it's sort of this degree of that, but I think it was more that I felt like I stood out without asking to stand out. I didn't need to have a mohawk or a crazy sense of dress. I drew your eye whether I liked it or not. And so comedy was a way of leaning into that, I suppose.

15:33And sort of, well, if you're going to look at me, you may as well look at me for a reason because I'm being amusing on stage or whatever it might be. So what were your teenage years like at school? What was your experience like? It was pretty good, really. I know a lot of people who went into comedy talk about bullying. I don't really remember any bullying. I felt like people were always sniping in every direction, but it was never directed at me exclusively. And I didn't dread going to school. I felt I enjoyed school. And by the later years of school, as a kid who was doing quite well grades-wise, It gave me a lot of leeway with teachers because it was like they thought, we've got to keep this kid on the books because he'll probably get a couple of A's that'll look good in the stats.

16:26you know so um but i suppose i remember my look when i look back now i feel like um i was i was there was an insecurity that was masked by a certain kind of by a outspokenness or a sense of humor or whatever whatever it was um yeah are you an only child no i have one sister is she tall she's relatively tall but no i'm the i'm the freak of the family. So height is very interesting because I've had Richard Osman sitting exactly where you're sitting on this podcast before, and I think you're exactly the same height. Yes, that's right. And he talks about the way people respond to him as a form of body shaming.

17:15Do you feel that? Well, it's funny. I'm working on a new stand-up routine at the moment, and I'm talking about how people feel that they can make remarks about your height and they can make jokes about it. And again, this is not an oh, woe is me thing. It's just interesting that when we talk about body shaming or sizeism or whatever it is, no one feels they have to hold their tongue about someone who's tall. And because it's seen as some kind of accomplishment. I had no involvement in being this tall. It's not like I worked out in a very vertical sense. It was just something that happened. But yeah, there is, as Richard says, there is a sort of, you know, you walk in a pub and you place a drink for two pints of beer and someone will say, that's a tall order.

18:01And everyone will laugh. But everyone laughs because it's not seen. And again, I don't go away in tears. It's fine. It doesn't bother me. But it's interesting that it's something people feel very comfortable about commenting on. But it must be annoying as well. Well, it's annoying because it's boring. Yeah. If you ask me, do I play basketball? No. Where's that conversation going? What's the weather like up there? Okay. But I've heard this for, you know, 40-something years. It's not, you know, I try to be polite, but there's part of me that wants to go, oh, mate, come on. You know, so much from you.

18:37Do you think that people try to be funny with you when they meet you because they want to impress you? Yeah. or sometimes I think it will go the other way where you'll have people that will want to do a little dig as so as if so as if to say I'm not impressed have you ever had feedback from an audition or from conversations with I don't know tv or movie execs where they're like you're just too tall I haven't but I would imagine that it must be a deciding factor in people's casting decisions. There must be part of them that has pigeonholed me slightly as the very tall guy. When you get to this height, it starts to seem abnormal on screen in a way that just being a strapping six foot two just feels manly.

19:29When you get to six foot seven, it's like, all right, come on, mate. You can play a mutant in a Wolverine film. But the reason I mention not realizing it was an asset was, I think, more in private life. There was a moment, probably in my mid to late 20s, where it dawned on me that this is something people are envious of. and that instead of trying to make yourself feel smaller as if to not draw attention to yourself, just embrace it, you know, walk with that, with a swagger or a confidence that comes with being tall. I did feel like it kind of, it opened something up in me, not feeling so self-conscious about it.

20:14And funny enough, years later, someone said to me, I was working on a project and someone said to me, you know, oh, the thing is, Steve, you know, because of your height, you know, you can seem intimidating. and I was like wow you're right of course like that never occurred to me because I try not I'm not trying not to be that person but of course it can you know you can walk into a room and you can and it can seem quite commanding particularly if you're in a position of authority as a director or whatever and so it's just interesting you know the way that my relationship with height and my own height has sort of changed over the years what are the greatest assets now what are the things that you experience because of your height that you're really grateful for well there's the obvious things of you know being at concerts yeah being able to reach things down from a high shelf and it's funny because even when i hear i'll hear someone like donald trump sort of boasting about how he's tall and how you know he's making some sneering comments about bruce springsteen of whom i'm a big fan you know that's little bruce springsteen whatever and it's like it's funny to me that you know well but i'm taller than you donald i mean there's always someone taller you know it's just sort of it's such a strange thing to be arrogant about it wasn't even something you were you didn't accomplish this donald yeah you're just taller than some people it's still a pain in the arse i mean it's a pain in the arse in terms of getting clothes it's a pain in the arse in terms of fitting into cars and plane seats and beds and this chair i mean now it's a little bit too tiny and i'm sure richard felt the same it's all fine but you know what i mean so it's a it's a bit of a pain in the arse as well but you know it's all fine it's it's as a complaint it's it's a minor one is it true that you've got a lifetime ban from high and mighty the tall person i don't know if i don't know that high and mighty is still going i'm feeling like might have gone into administration at some point yes but i i gave a comment years ago in an interview in timeout and i think probably because i didn't realize that i was that anyone would really pay attention to it and so i made some comment about how high and mighty which was a shop for tall and um larger people the clothes were kind of not great quality but were rather overpriced and then some years later a costume designer on a production had gone into high and mighty to buy clothes for a character i was playing and she had asked so i'm buying these for a tv show and can i bring back the ones we don't use and they said uh which actor is these which actor are these for?

22:41And she said, I have no liberty to say who the actor is. And the person behind the counter pulled out a laminated copy of the timeout interview and said, is it him? We don't serve him. And yeah, so I mean, I guess I hadn't gone in there for a while, so it hadn't come back to haunt me, but I do feel bad that particularly if that had any involvement in there going under.

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23:57how long do you think it took you to catch up with the the level of fame that you attained Well, I think it's sort of because it, I've always, my analogy is that one that people use about the frog in the pan of water, right? And you slowly heat it up and it doesn't realise it's getting boiled alive. whereas if you throw a frog into the boiling pan then it jumps around and i think if you're on the x factor and you're suddenly well known overnight it must be quite a culture shock whereas if you begin as a writer behind the scenes of a show and then you start to perform and it's sort of over time you you know the snowball of your celebrity is it takes a long time to get down the hill and so probably the time i gave that interview i was relatively unknown so i probably didn't think that it would have any bearing.

24:48Do you like being a celebrity? Well, I think it goes back to that point I made initially about being tall. It was that I always stood out. People always made comments. They always looked at me. They always remarked. I could never blend in. And so now when people look at me, they go, oh, it's that guy. And they, on the whole, because I think comedy generally is something people, it puts a smile on people's face i very rarely have negative comments so people are normally always very lovely i mean it's frustrating at times because you know you don't all again you don't always want to stand out from the crowd but um on the whole it's treated me very nicely your second failure is your failure to get into oxbridge yes so you mentioned that at school you got good grades yes was this an early ambition that you well again this i was very lucky and i I felt like I knew what I wanted to do from a young age I can't remember exactly how young but I do feel as you mentioned I was writing my little comic strips about sitcoms and 40 Towers and I used to read about them and I read about someone like John Cleese you know who'd come from Western Supermare not far from Bristol where I come from he had gone to Cambridge the Footlights was the kind of comedy you know breeding ground of great talent and that that was a sort of way you ended up on the BBC.

26:13And that seemed like a career path. And so that was sort of my plan, was like, well, I'll just get to Cambridge, and then I'll go in the footlights, and then I'll be on TV, and I'll do comedy. I sort of didn't have a fallback plan, that was it. And I remember going to teachers and saying, this is my plan, and they just sort of looked at me like, you're a maniac. Again, just going back to that feeling. And maybe that's changed, but certainly then it felt like people were like what are you talking about like you're not going to be john cleese it's be sensible at the same time they just they didn't think i'd get into cambridge they were like you're i don't i think this is a pipe dream i don't think you're going to get those kinds of grades and so they said you're not going to get into cambridge the best chance you have is is trying to go for oxford where you could do an exam as an entry exam which i think at the time wasn't available at Cambridge.

27:05But the problem was, I got that news quite late, and so I didn't really have time to fully study for the Oxford exam. So I did it, and I guess I didn't do very well, and I never got a place. And you could only at the time apply to either Oxford or Cambridge. So it went out the window. And then the exams came along, and I got three A's at A level, which I think would have been sufficient for Cambridge. But having never applied, it was too late and and so I felt like I sort of felt like I'd been done a disservice because other people's ambitions for me were were lower than my own and I felt frustrated by that um and so I had to sort of pivot um and as it was I went to University of Warwick I studied film there was a radio station at Warwick which is one of the reasons I went there I started doing a radio show I started making some short films that radio show gave me a sort of grounding in radio which subsequently got me a job at a radio station in London which is where I met Gervais Ricky Gervais and off we went so it all worked out but it and as it and looking back now I think it was sort of for the best because I don't think that very kind of erudite sort of Stephen Fry brand of comedy, although I'm a huge fan, that's not really me.

28:25And I think I would have been slightly out of depth at Cambridge. I don't think I even realised I had a Bristol accent until I went to university. So I suspect I'd have got to Cambridge. I might have felt slightly out of place with lots of very well-speaking RP accents. I mean, I think I'm academic, but I don't think I'm Cambridge academic. So as it is, I think it kind of worked out for the best. And I think that wouldn't have been the natural fit for me. But of course, when you're a teenager, you don't realise that until later. Yeah, it's crushing, especially if other people seem not to believe in you in the way that you secretly believe in yourself.

29:03That's right. And it comes back to what we said about ambition. It was like, no one was kind of, they weren't sneering. It just seemed weird to them. certainly at the time i just i've ended up putting a lot of faith i think in in in adults yes you know yeah well i think it was a different time as well i mean we came of age of very similar decades and there wasn't the internet and so you couldn't find your community of other like-minded people who might also be drawing comic strips the 40 towers so you only had that sort of immediate community yes that's right you you relied on the sort of advice of the people around you and again my parents weren't disparaging they they were very encouraging but what did they know about how you got into cambridge or what my grades were going to be or you know they they were in a sense as dependent on and i'm not trying to throw teachers under the bus i just think it was there was culturally a sort of feeling particularly in sort of suburban bristol in a kind of you know a relatively modest school, that that wasn't what people did.

30:12I'm very interested in this idea of little Stephen being very into comedy. And it sounds to me like you always knew what you wanted to do. Yes. So was your mother, did she also have this aspect? You've spoken about your dad having this kind of creative side to him. What about your mum? Did they both have really good senses of humour? I would say my mum's got a sense of humour, but I think my dad is the joker of the pack and he's the one who I bonded with watching old comedy and movies and things like that. And so laughter was a currency. And as I got a little older and I would hang out with my dad and his friends, laughter was a currency among them.

30:52And blokes joked with each other and they were wise asses to some degree. And so humor was valued and had an asset. And so because my dad was and remains kind of quite a gregarious, funny man in a social situation and will make jokes and will be fun and often the life and soul, the idea of taking that to the stage and actually performing didn't seem a mad idea. It was like one step further in a way than what you would do down the pub. So what does stand up teach you about failure? well that's pretty immediate because it took me a long time to pluck up the nerve to do stand-up and I eventually did it probably when I was about 19 and the first gig I did was about five minutes and it went terrific it was great and I thought well I've cracked this it turns out I'm naturally brilliant at this and then the next gig I did oh not so good you know I was I sort of bombed and it swung back and forth then you know sometimes it went great sometimes it didn't and I think any stand-up will tell you that particularly when you're building an act and working up material however well known you are you've got a grace period of five minutes maybe and then people will laugh or they won't and they don't laugh just because you're the bloke off the telly they laugh because it's funny and I remember um when I was doing stand-up in my early 20s I did a gig in Exeter and no one laughed except the waitress and someone actually shouted taxi for the comedian and I phoned my agent and said well you've got to get me out of all future gigs I can never do this this is this was terrible and he said well no I you can't you booked for another gig in Plymouth or somewhere and I thought and I went to Plymouth and I had an anxious day in Plymouth and I went out and did the act and it went great and I was oh no I'm back on the horse you know but what was interesting was when you die in front of a room of whatever it was you know 100 people you don't die physically obviously and so you're like you kind of dust yourself down and you think that was embarrassing but on you go and and it's a baptism of fire in some way and it's not fun you never enjoy it and when if it happens again you never look forward to it you want to avoid it but you you sort of battle you battle on you know i guess it's also such a lesson in subjectivity of taste and so you were doing the same material for different audiences in different locations yeah and you had an entirely different reaction which suggests that it's the audience who are bringing their stuff and their emotional baggage and their perceptions well that's happening even at the moment i mean i'm working up on new material i've got about an hour and so i'll try this out this hour out in you know as i'm trying to refine it in different places and And some nights, everything will go gangbusters, sometimes certain portions.

33:50Sometimes other portions will go well, and the things that went well the night before, not so well. And so your brain's frazzled because you're like, well, I'm doing the same words here, and they're having different impacts. And so people will say, well, there's no such thing as a bad audience. But there's definitely the night of the week, the time, the size of the crowd, how much booze they've had. And of course, also, you know, whether you're tired or whether you're complacent or whatever, or whether you're feeling too self-confident, whatever, there are a lot of variables about what makes something soon.

34:26Wow, that's so interesting. So then ultimately, do you just have to have pure faith in you and your own material? You have to think it's worthwhile. Well, what you try and do, I guess, is build up stuff that is as bulletproof as it can be. It's like, well, I've done this enough times that 70 % of the time it works. So that's the best you can kind of hope for. But it's tricky. I mean, I remember Eddie Izzard early on saying, with stand-up, you need to walk to the edge of the precipice and be brave enough to step off. And that's very hard to do, particularly when you're well known. Because when you walk on stage, there's an audience anticipation that you're going to be funny.