ABSTRACT
In the penultimate episode of Extras Ricky Gervais’s character, Andy Millman, appears as a guest on the British late-night chat show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. As across so much of the series, performance, cultural value and the role of the institutions, economics and industrial practices of television fame (what I will be discussing as the political economy of television fame) intermingle in the exchange between Millman and Ross that opens the episode. Performance here functions as a complex interplay between Gervais and Ross – both of whom ‘play them self ’ to different degrees. Thus Gervais’s celebrity persona intermixes with the character of Millman – whereby Millman confidently dead-pans answers or cackles at his own wit in the style of Gervais but, unlike Gervais, appear as an emergent celebrity – whilst Ross delivers his lines in the style of his chat show persona, beginning his questioning with a faux concern before delivering a trademark ‘uncomfortable’ or ‘inappropriate’ question for comic effect. Ross, however, must move from the carefully scripted interviews of his own (team’s) writing, to those provided by Gervais. This ‘play’ is evident in the opening exchange, which also points to the economies of television fame:
Ross: A lot of people when they get famous they find a lot of temptation in their way, they maybe drink too much, eat too much … weight can be a problem. You look like you’ve always struggled a little bit with your weight. Would I be right in that?
