At 42 years old, Steve Coogan seems as if he’s been around a lot longer than he has. He’s a comedy icon in the UK due to his TV creation Alan Partridge and, recently, the quietly brilliant Saxondale, and genre-bending film work with director Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story). His recent Hollywood forays  — a starring role alongside Jackie Chan in the Disney bomb Around the World in 80 Days, cred-lending bit parts in Night at the Museum and Marie Antoinette —?have been more tentative, though his indelible turn in the new summer hit Tropic Thunder suggests he wouldn’t be afraid to go out in a blaze of glory should the situation call for it. As adept as a leading man as he is a comic fall-guy, Coogan gets to be both — in a weird way — in Hamlet 2, the unhinged new satire written by South Park principal Pam Brady (see review). EYE WEEKLY got him to analyze it all during a recent Toronto visit.

It falls to you to play Hamlet 2’s Dana character with a lot of heart, yet hold him up for total ridicule. You’ve played buffoons before, but you haven’t necessarily had to make them likeable.
None of those characters were vulnerable like this character. That’s what made this a challenge. The reason I was interested is that you have to care about him in order for the movie to work. You do start out laughing at him, and then you start to empathize, and by the end you start to see things through his eyes. It had to be more than just funny. Clever and funny weren’t enough. There had to be an emotional truth to it.

With so much going on, did you feel you had to try to hold things together with the character?
[Director] Andy Fleming was very good with that.?He’d say, “Don’t try to be funny at this moment. Just try to feel sad.” That’s not second nature to me —being a comic, I tend to be more controlling. I’m glad he did it because it gave the film an emotional core.

As much as Dana wants to satiate his own ego, he also has this naïve desire to do something for his students.
He’s naïve but he’s not cynical. He’s not a post-modern person. He believes in something in a pointedly unfashionable way.

Is he a pre-post-modern character in a post-modern film?
That! Although that sounds incredibly pretentious that’s absolutely right! [Laughs.] The film is much more knowing that he is. He’s more innocent. What I like is that as spiky as the comedy is, underneath that it’s life affirming. It’s not driven by contempt.

It’s interesting that before Hamlet 2 you’d just done the second season of Saxondale, whose lead character is likeable and is driven by contempt.
Actually, just before Hamlet 2 I’d done Tropic Thunder and also a series called Sunshine for the BBC —?a three-part dramatic comedy written by the guy who did The Royle Family, with lots of emotionally real stuff and me as a garbage man who’s a gambling addict. But I’m very proud of Saxondale. In Britain, the audience was more used to me doing bite-sized, immediately gratifying comedy like Alan Partridge. Saxondale is richer, more dynamic and rewards investment. We wanted a character who was bang on the money sometimes,?very perceptive, and then the next moment he’s disconnected. He’s easy to relate to.

Is there another Winterbottom movie in the works?
Definitely. He emailed me today. We constantly discuss what we’re going to do next. We’ll discuss four totally different ideas and we’ll do one. He’ll start shooting before he knows which idea it is. He’s the only person I know where I don’t mind not knowing what I’m going to do.