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"FacebookPinterest\n\nFor every wee man with a Napoleon complex, there's a tall bloke suffering the corollary disease of unmerited arrogance. Consider the ludicrous swagger of Stephen Merchant, six-foot-seven Englishman, creator and star of HBO's new sitcom Hello Ladies, about a lonely Brit in Los Angeles who doesn't realize that his romantic game didn't make it through customs. For more than a decade, Merchant has had to crouch into the shadow of Ricky Gervais (five feet eight), his writing partner on The Office and Extras. Now, at long last, it's the big guy's turn in the sun.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\nYou're doing this show sans Ricky. Why?\n\n This was born out of my stand-up show, which is a much more personal ercise. And on a more basic level, Ricky has been in a relationship with the same girl pretty much since they were at college. He's never really been on the dating scene in that sort of sense of the kind of lonely single man. That's not really something he's experienced. And lucky him.\n\nThe American bro can be douchey, but he's not as self-conscious about it as the British lad. Where does that come from?\n\n It probably stems from a time when we were much more obsessed with the outward trappings of class\u2014being well-educated, being well-mannered, being civil and polite. There's always been a hangover of that in British culture. So we're a little bit more crippled by social anxiety. My character is a 14-year-old trapped in a man's body.\n\nAnd not just any man's body\u2014a six-foot-seven man.\n\n When you're very tall, you don't get the choice to be noticed when you want to--you're just noticed all the time. A lot of teenagers used to have earrings or do crazy things with their hair in order to mark themselves out. I wanted to dress down and go unseen. I suppose performing was a good way of owning when people look at you and why they look at you. It's almost as if doing comedy is a way of controlling when people laugh at you.\n\nThat's sort of the Louis C.K. bit\u2014being deeply honest about his real problems.\n\n I spoke to Louis about that. He said he had an epiphany when he saw Chris Rock onstage around the time of his Bring the Pain show\u2014that Chris was up there being honest and being raw. It was a turning point for him.\n\nOf course, being yourself can also be problematic.\n\n I wish people had not taught me that when I was a teenager. A lot of teen movies preach that message: \"Be yourself.\" But when you're a teenager, don't be yourself, because you're a fucking teenage nerd\u2014acne, you're awkward, you don't know anything. Make someone up. Think who you'd like to be and then be them. And maintain that illusion for as long as possible until someone exposes the real you.\n\nSpeaking of the real you: How is it going with your actual love life? Do you have better luck with women now that you've had some success?\n\n In all sincerity, I just feel like I'm being rejected by more beautiful, classier women now. That's the big change in my life."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/the-gqa-stephen-merchant-on-his-new-hbo-comedy-hello-ladies>