When you talk about rock bands and they say, “I like their early stuff, I like their first album, I like the stuff when no one knew who they were,” that can be stifling, that kind of cool position to take. I think Steve Carell took some of the DNA of David Brent and spun it into its own thing. And the character’s different but does have some of the traits, and that’s exactly as it should be.

Playboy: In October, you’re kicking off your stand-up show Steve Coogan Is Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters. Are you looking forward to getting back to live theater after 10 years?

Coogan: I’m terrified and excited. Part of the reason I want to do it is because sometimes I look at some of the stuff I did 10 years ago and I couldn’t quite believe I actually did it, so I sort of want to prove to myself that I do know how to do that stuff. Especially as you become isolated from the audience, because when you’re working TV and movies, you’re always processing your work through a series of middlemen who, by necessity, are there to get what you’re doing to the audience. But it means that you’re removed from the audience, so going out live, it’s like buying wholesale. It’s like a warehouse, a comedy warehouse, where you just do it direct to your audience, and it’s you and them and it’s immediate and it’s live and the fact that it’s not recorded gives it kind of a magic—the ephemeral quality of it makes it magical. Each night you perform the show, it’s there, it happens in front of that audience and then it’s gone, it’s just a memory. That’s really great. There’s something fantastic about that, something pure about that.

Photo by James Trevenen