'I don't care, and I don't need to care...' Steve Coogan not fazed by people trolling him on social media
Steve Coogan said he does not care if people are criticising him on social media.
Steve Coogan does not care if people slate him on social media.
The 59-year-old actor-and-comedian - who is best known for playing the tactless TV-and-radio presenter Alan Partridge - immediately dismisses any criticism that is fired at him because Steve thinks that is the best thing to do.
He told the new issue of Radio Times magazine: "A family member told me recently, 'Loads of people are slating you on social media.' It was the first I'd heard of it. I was walking the dog.
"I don't care, and I don't need to care.
"Anything I have that's bothering me, I secrete it and post it under the door of whatever I'm doing, whether it's Partridge or drama.
"It's a far better way."
Steve - who, in 2023, played Jimmy Savile in the BBC One docudrama series The Reckoning, which explores the career and sexual crimes of the disgraced TV presenter-and-DJ, who died aged 84 in 2011 - has worked in showbusiness for almost four decades.
And Steve thinks actively trying to be popular would destroy his career.
He explained: "I see lots of people looking at how they're depicted in the media and thinking, 'Oh they want that. I'll be that then. Tell me what you want me to be and I'll be that.'
"They look around and ask, 'What can I say that will annoy the least number of people, and be liked by the largest number of people?'
"It's that simple, and that can change from week to week depending on what's in the air. If you were being kind, you'd call it being mercurial and, if you weren't, there are a load of other words.
"That's really unhealthy. At one point they had something. It might keep your career going for a few years but it's a fool's errand. We just ignore the noise and do what we think is good, which is not fool proof but a better way to go."
Steve accidentally dressed himself like Partridge - a presenter on the fictional radio station Radio Norwich - when the star reprised his incompetent alter ego for two seasons of BBC One's This Time with Alan Partridge, which ran from 2019 until 2021.
Steve - who has played Partridge since 1991 - said: "During the last TV series, I went into the trailer to put Alan's clothes on and I was wearing a shirt that was identical to the one they had hanging up for Alan.
"I don't mean similar, I mean same pattern, same label. It was the same shirt.
"I still had to take my shirt off and put his on, just for my own sanity.
"Then, at the end of the day, I took it off and put it back on the hanger.
"I needed to do that to reassure myself there hadn't been this moment of singularity where the Venn diagram becomes just one circle.
"I like to think it's still a figure eight, at least."
