Stephen Merchant on how porn brought him to LA

Stephen Merchant reveals his vision for female characters in an exclusive interview with HuffPost Live: ‘My approach is to try and present female characters as being flawed and pathetic in many ways, and as laughable and as absurd as men are and that can sometimes mean that they’re as cowardly and embarrassing. Because to me it’s, are they funny' And what makes them interesting' And what makes them flawed' And that’s true of any comic character. So I don’t know if we set out to try and subvert in that way but just to approach women as something to laugh at, just like men are.’

‘It seems odd to me that every female has to be this empowered woman. You know, it’s like sure, but most of the people I meet, that’s not what’s funny, it’s about their flaws and ambitions and desires and shortcomings and the things in between the way they present themselves to the world. That’s what seems funny to me.’

Stephen reveals what brought him to Los Angeles for the first time: ‘The first time I went to LA was to interview Porn Stars. It’s the dream gig, you could say. I interviewed Ron Jeremy and a woman called Devon and I remember saying to her, because Devon is a place a lot of people go holidaying in the South West of England. And I said to Devon the porn star, I’ve spent a lot of time in Devon, I can imagine there’s a lot of guys around here who could say the same thing. She had no idea what I was talking about. So that was my first experience of LA and it was a bit unsavoury. I felt like a had to take a lot of cold showers. Just rocking in the shower… what have I seen.’