Ricky Gervais' Extra-Special Star Power

The encore Christmas special for the British television comedy Extras, debuting Stateside this Sunday, is a dissonant and satisfying coda to the acclaimed series starring comedian Ricky Gervais. Wickedly funny and at turns surprisingly dramatic, the feature-length special follows the further travails of the self-absorbed, wannabe actor Andy Millman (Gervais). After gaining commercial success with a lame-as-hell lowbrow TV comedy in Season Two of the series, Andy has slid deeper into his obsession with fame and fortune. He drifts away from his sweet but mopey pal Maggie (Ashley Jensen), and dumps his bumbling agent Darren (played by Stephen Merchant, Gervais' longtime creative partner). Andy hires a slick corporate agent who couldn't give a crap about artistic integrity — and neither could Andy, apparently. All he really wants is a star turn in a Hollywood film. He plummets to a humiliating new low to boost his profile, signing on for a stint with a bunch of inane D-listers inside the locked-down house of Celebrity Big Brother.

The Hollywood-minded finale of Extras comes at a fitting time for Gervais: He has in fact just wrapped work on his first starring role in a Hollywood feature film. On Tuesday, at the conclusion of two months spent in New York shooting Ghost Town (a comedy due in theaters later next year), Gervais is doing a scene with a Great Dane. Unfortunately, the dog refuses to bark on cue; it's as if he's just snacked on Quaaludes back in his kennel. After four or five takes and some useless coaxing by the dog trainer, Ricky Gervais the Movie Star seems to be getting royally pissed off.

OK, not really. "I think he's probably a writer," Gervais tells me in his best deadpan, eyeing the docile hound. "He's on strike." Gervais then busts into that impish guffaw of his — having a laugh, as it were, on behalf of all those abused Hollywood scribes who've been out howling on the picket lines since early November.

Gervais is a damn dedicated writer himself — as with Extras, he also penned and directed the meticulously crafted hit series The Office, along with partner Merchant. (Gervais starred in that series as well, as the pitifully self-inflated office manager David Brent.) The comedy duo's masterful portrait of workplace banality, insecurity and barely repressed depravity became one of the most successful shows in U.K. history, and gave rise to the popular American version starring Steve Carell.

The Office and Extras landed Golden Globe and Emmy awards on Gervais' shelf, but it was perhaps winning a Grammy that he once dreamed about. "Music is still my first love, more than film or comedy," he says. Long before TV stardom, back when he was a student in London in the early 1980s, Gervais was part of a pop group called Seona Dancing. Their songs blipped briefly on the U.K. charts and reportedly lit it up with teens in the Philippines, of all places. "You don't really talk about your failures, do you?" Gervais laughs.