STACK #146 Dec 2016

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the world’s changed behind his back. It’s about contentment, really. Is the thing you’re looking for really the thing you want? Why don’t we just cut out the middleman? Brent thinks that being famous will make him happy, whereas he should just start with being happy. It’s probably not – fame is what has made things go wrong in his life so far. That’s what the film’s about. I just think that works better with 90 minutes, so you can really get embroiled and think about it. The reason I left it this long is because there had to be a reason, there had to be a difference. As we’ve seen today, the world is very different from what it was 15 years ago; it’s a really different world. How did you feel about returning to the role? You know what, it was like putting on a pair of slippers you forgot you had, and they just fit perfectly and they feel great. I can play him in my sleep but I had to change him a little bit as

Brent thinks that being famous will make him happy, whereas he should just start with being happy

they sympathise with David Brent this time around, and how much pathos there is in a middle-aged man who’s got one last shot at fame. And by fame, he’s really going for happiness. He just thinks fame will sort it out for him, and of course it won’t. It was nice to put that together in a movie as opposed to just a TV special. I wanted to ask you why you decided to make it for the big screen as opposed to a TV or Christmas special?

Because of the ambition, I think. It can be seen on TV, it can be seen on DVD and everything like that, but I wanted to make sort of a classic British movie and it not be just another episode of The Office . That’s why it had to be sort of 15 years later, so enough had happened for it to be a movie. The bigger theme of it – it’s still a bumbling middle-aged man who’s trying to do things he’s not equipped to do, and that’s the comedy. He still says excruciating things and there’s faux pas and all that. But the bigger arc is how

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