Sometimes it's not easy to tell David Brent and Ricky Gervais apart. Ricky may have officially called time on The Office, which introduced us to his most famous creation, 13 years ago but there's still a little bit of Brent within him.

Ricky may have a bit more self-awareness, he may be cleverer and he's certainly more successful, but sometimes he goes on very Brent-like rants.

Talking about his latest project Special Correspondents, a film he's made for subscription-only channel Netflix, he says, 'I'm only trying to please me, really. I think it's a disservice to the public to try to please them or second-guess them. If you try to please everyone, you please no one particularly. If you're really ruthless and you try to please yourself, and if you're your own worst critic, which you should be, then people will be grateful you did it your way.'

Talking about his latest project Special Correspondents, a film he's made for subscription-only channel Netflix, Ricky Gervais says, 'I'm only trying to please me, really. I think it's a disservice to the public'

Ricky, 54, has always enjoyed being in control of his projects. Originally a band manager for acts including Suede, he found fame in 2001 with Stephen Merchant on BBC2's The Office, which the pair both wrote and directed together.

David Brent, played by Ricky, the deluded manager of a Slough paper company, was the stand-out star of the show which became a globahit. Ricky and Stephen's next project Extras, in which Ricky played a slightly less deluded wannabe actor called Andy Millman with Stephen as his useless agent and which boasted a number of big- name actors sending themselves up in cameo roles, was highly acclaimed too. But as Ricky has taken increasing control - executive producing his own work as well as writing and directing it and often without Stephen - he hasn't quite been able to replicate that success.

The two TV projects that followed Extras, Life's Too Short with dwarf actor Warwick Davis and Derek, in which Ricky played a care worker at a home for the elderly, divided critics while the two films he wrote, The Invention Of Lying and Cemetery Junction, were hardly memorable.

But Ricky insists he's not bothered about criticism. 'It doesn't bother me, I don't care,' he says. 'If you get your own way and it turns out the way you wanted it to then you're bulletproof; I don't care what happens to it. I've made my thing and I'm moving on to the next thing.

'I'd rather people loved it than hated it, but the more famous you get the more people love you and the more people hate you. If you're doing anything that isn't anodyne and watered-down then you will polarise people. And it's good to polarise because some people are smart and some people are stupid.'

Ricky says there was a 'feeding frenzy' among Hollywood studios when his agent put out his plans for Special Correspondents, based on a French film about a radio journalist and his sound man

Of course, retaining control is much easier if the hits keep coming, which is why working with Netflix, which refuses to give out viewing figures, was appealing. Ricky says there was a 'feeding frenzy' among Hollywood studios when his agent put out his plans for Special Correspondents, based on a French film about a radio journalist and his sound man who are unable to reach a warzone so make up all their reports from a hideout above a restaurant across the road from the radio station.

He went with Netflix, which has produced hit shows including House Of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, because they gave him a big budget and total freedom to do exactly what he wanted. And because Netflix has 81 million subscribers but only a minimal amount of new content, he knows his film will get watched.

'Netflix will see the return of the auteur,' he says. 'Where you can make the movie you wanted to make. With 81 million subscribers there's no middleman at the cinema having to make those compromises to make it more commercial. The important thing is I was left alone.

'I've always done my own thing but usually to get that luxury I'd have to go to fringe channels. I'd go to BBC2 not BBC1, or Channel 4 instead of ITV. Netflix is the best of both worlds - I'm left alone and the sky's the limit when it comes to how many people might watch it.'

If you try to please everyone you please no one

The result is a surprisingly gentle and old-fashioned caper starring Australian actor Eric Bana as big-headed journalist Frank Bonneville with Ricky as his sound man Ian Finch. 'It's a human story about how it's always tempting to take a short cut,' he says of the two men who tie themselves in knots after one lie spirals into another one until they become front page news and have to stage their own kidnapping. 'And taking the short cut is tempting. Sometimes we exaggerate or don't own up to the truth because we fear it. We worry about what people think of us. It's character-driven like everything I do, but it's also the most ambitious thing I've done. It's like I've gone to big school; it's got a plot and twists.'

Ricky Gervais and Eric Bana discuss their new film Special Correspondents at AOL Studios in New York

It's also got a bona fide Hollywood star in the shape of Hulk actor Eric. 'I thought he'd be this brooding thespian with his shirt open and everything,' laughs Ricky. 'I thought that would be great but then I found out he started out in comedy and he's a twit like me. I didn't know he was an idiot in real life.'

Like much of his work there's a satirical element; Ian Finch's wife Eleanor, played by Vera Farmiga who was Oscar-nominated for her role opposite George Clooney in Up In The Air, becomes a celebrity because her husband is missing presumed kidnapped, and starts to milk it for alit's worth. 'Nowadays there's no difference between fame and infamy,' sighs Ricky. 'It's better to be known as an absolute idiot than not to be known at all. There are people now who live their lives like an open wound and their reward for it is fame. It's all about that.

'Eleanor thinks she deserves to be famous and that will sort everything out. You see these talent shows where people say, “Oh, I want this so badly” as if we're supposed to think, “OK, if you want it so badly we'll vote for you.” Who gives a f***? It's all singers - we're going to run out of doctors because everyone wants to be a singer.'

But there's also an old-fashioned element to the film which is more slapstick than much of Ricky's previous work. 'It's a throwback to Laurel and Hardy,' he says. 'It's like a grown-up comedy from the 1940s. You don't get films like Double Indemnity from 1944, with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, any more. I don't make my characters tell jokes. It's the situation that's funny. I think things like anger are funnier than clowning. Somebody who wants to be taken seriously, they're funny already. If you desperately want to be taken seriously and then your wig blows off, you're finished. But nothing can embarrass me; I am an idiot.'

Ricky reprises his most famous role as David Brent in the film Life On The Road, out later this year

He says he was keen to make something totally different to most comedy films of today. 'A lot of comedies now are gross-out lowest common denominator films, and that's because they want everyone to go to the cinema on the first day or it will be taken off the screens,' he says. 'That means everything is homogenised and very safe. The audience know what they're getting, but it means the film-makers don't take chances any more. Films are made by committee and focus-grouped to death. They're the same as the film you saw last month that you liked.'

Never one to baulk at annoying people, Ricky provoked the anger of his neighbours recently when he decided to build a gym and swimming pool in the basement of the north London home he owns with his long-term partner, the novelist Jane Fallon. The couple, who've been together since they met at University College London in 1982, split their time between London and New York, where they have an apartment.

He won't be needing either soon as he's about to go out on the road with his first stand-up comedy tour in six years. Describing it on Twitter he says, 'I may have just written my most offensive stand-up routine ever. Could go well. Could end a lovely career. It's the not knowing that's fun.' It would have to be very offensive to beat the four times he's hosted the Golden Globes since 2010, at which he managed to insult everyone from Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie to Bruce Willis and Madonna.

And he's also returning to David Brent with a feature-length film called David Brent: Life On The Road. In the movie, which will be out later this year, Brent is a sales rep for a cleaning products company called Lavichem, still based in Slough. He decides to cash in his pension in one final effort to become a rock star.

Ricky, whose first career was as a not very successful pop star with the band Seona Dancing, is even bringing out an album to go with the film's release in August. 'I'm a frustrated failed musician,' he admits. 'Which makes this great because I've got a get-out clause.'