So how is the new Little Britain different from the original U.K. series?
Matt Lucas: The old show: set in Britain, filmed in Britain. All British charactersF. And furiously purports to be a look at British life today. There are no historical parodies. There's no movie spoofs. All the sketches are set today. So this new show is entirely set and filmed in the States. And what this purports to do is look at the differences and similarities and celebrate the differences and similarities between the British and the Americans. So what we did was, we took a whole bunch of our British characters from Little Britain and brought them over to America. They're all over for various reasons. That's probably about two thirds of the show's characters—the other third are new, predominantly American characters. For instance, Daffyd, who claimed to be the only gay in this small Welsh village, has gone to a university in North Carolina and proclaims to be the only gay on campus. Vicky Pollard, who was a teenage delinquent kind of terrorizing Britain, we hear she went to America and tried to burn down one of the rides at Disneyland, so she's now at a boot camp for juvenile girls in Utah. Sebastian, who was the prime ministerial aide, has become the prime minister and has developed a crush on an Obama-style president. And so it goes on. Some have less of a story. Like Marjorie Dawes, who runs the "Fat Fighters" class in Britain—she's just decided there's so many fatties in America, she's coming to the States. Emily Howard, who says, "I'm a lady," we just plopped her in the States with no explanation. She's just there. She was always strange and always different, so why wouldn't she be in America? So Lou and Andy, you know the chap in the wheelchair and the guy who looks after him? They're on vacation in America.

David Walliams: What we should say, actually, is that the show is designed for an audience who has never ever seen it. So although we've taken our characters there, you don't have to have seen it before to have it work. There's a danger to thinking it's some kind of a sequel to something. We've decided, in a way, for it just to be a new show. But obviously we wanted, and HBO wanted, the characters that worked well in Britain and made it successful there.

What was the genesis of the show's American characters? Did you come over here and observe us in our natural habitat?
DW: We just sort of followed our comic instinct. Now we've broadened the show out into being American characters and British characters. Like we've done an astronaut, Bin Gordon, who was the eighth man on the moon and won't let anyone else forget about it. That's a character we couldn't have done in Britain. We've got a cutesy kind of mum and daughter who say, "I love you more than rainbows."

ML: "I love you more than chocolate milk."

DW: "I love you more than bunny rabbits."

ML: "I love you more than blow jobs."

DW: The daughter's got this really weird foul mouth. And you don't know where she's picked it up from. She's only about 7 or 8 years old. Those sorts of things we couldn't have done in England because, you know, they're American characters. You can't really think, What would Americans love? or anything. You just sort of think, What do we find funny? And hopefully it will be understood by an American audience.

ML: But you have to stay true to your British characters as well, and not say things that they wouldn't say just because it's designed for American viewers. But that's all right because the world is smaller than it was. We watch the same shows and download the same music, so Vicky Pollard would know who Jessica Alba was. And British audiences know who Jessica Alba is. We didn't sell out the character. So actually it was interesting because we knew who Rosie O'Donnell was. We knew who Donald Trump was. We share a great deal more than we might have 25 years ago. Thanks to the Internet.

DW: The challenge I think we have is keeping in touch with our Britishness, which, obviously in American, makes us quite unusual and, you know, unique in some ways. But also making it relevant to an American audience. There are other British comedians that have done very well recently, also on HBO: Sacha Baron Cohen with Da Ali G Show, Ricky Gervais with Extras. And yet neither of them pretended to be American or radically changed what they did. They just kind of followed what had already been successful for them, and developed that, and shared that with an American audience. We're sort of more following that kind of model.

Which comedians or shows influence you?
ML: I do love Andy Kaufman very much.

DW: I love Will Ferrell. He really sort of parodies masculinity. He's done lots of sports movies and stuff. And he's found this really new way—I don't think it's been quite recognized—of spoofing masculinity and what it means to be a man. Especially physically. He's kind of big. In Anchorman when he starts doing the weights, "1001…1002…1003" and all this kind of stuff. Macho-ness, I think, is a brilliant thing to spoof. I love watching him.

ML: I'm looking forward to seeing the Steve Coogan movie Hamlet 2. It's like his first big starring comedy movie in America. It's one of his first, like, pure comedy movies starring him. I really love Jim Carrey. I think he's brilliant. And Borat was the funniest movie in the past 25 years, without a doubt. I mean, it was the funniest thing since Spinal Tap—a true comedy classic. It was just genius. You see the cinema drop with laughter, and disgust—which is wonderful. And hear as many groans as laughs, which is great.

DW: Yeah, I've always been drawn to comedy that has that device to it. You know, like in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life—there's projectile vomiting and exploding and stuff. I've always been drawn to that. You forget the controversy that Life of Brian created. People were actually saying, you know, this film should be banned. Councils in England banned it so you couldn't see it in certain areas. And certain countries banned it as well. Like some European countries. So we enjoy the naughty things as well. Like "Bitty," the sketch about the guy who's in his mid-20s still breast-feeding, and the audience laughs, but they shriek in horror as well. I've always liked that. And Bubbles is a brilliant character Matt does with a fat suit. She's actually seducing people. She's a big, huge lady with a giant fat suit. It's very outrageous because Matt appears naked as a woman. But yeah, so we've always been drawn to that sort of thing.

Speaking of the controversy with Life of Brian, sometimes you guys have characters that are handicapped, elderly, or different ethnicity. Do you run into problems here in the overly politically correct U.S. that you maybe didn't in England?
DW: Well, we had to think a bit, because the mind-set is actually similar. A word like "Oriental," for example, is actually quite a commonly used word in England, and it's not in any way deemed offensive. So it's just interesting, because not all the same rules apply. Certainly I'd say race is something where it's sort of different. Like in Little Britain in England, Marjorie always picks on this woman from India and claims not to be able to understand what she's saying. But it's sort of different in America because there aren't so many people from India.

ML: There isn't such a presence. Just like there isn't going to be a Mexican presence in the U.K.

DW: Yeah, so we had to negotiate our way around those sorts of things. But hopefully the show is done with warmth and affection. As much as we take on these targets that are a bit dangerous, like, oh, we have got a guy in a wheelchair, but you know he doesn't really need the wheelchair. It's not about the disabled. It's about this one guy who's pretending to be disabled.

ML: We're not making any comment. We're not ever inferring that old people in wheelchairs are con men or anything like that. We're just saying that this is a cheat. This is a guy who's using his friendship.

DW: I think people often mistake it and say, you know, we're trying to make a big point about everything. As if Sacha was summing up everyone in Eastern Europe with Borat. I don't think he is. He's just created a funny character.

ML: Characters are idiosyncratic. They're individuals.

The quality of the makeup is amazing. It must give you guys a lot of flexibility. You can literally be anyone.
DW: Yeah, we've been incredibly lucky to work with people who are able to help our vision, in a way.

Did the same team from the U.K. come to America with you?
DW: We couldn't really, but we worked with some really good people here who could come up with new things. And almost sort of re-create some of the things we'd already done.

ML: We're lucky, you know. We always believe in surrounding ourselves with great people and listening to them, taking their guidance.

Finally, tell us something revealing about yourselves.
ML: I became addicted to frozen custard in North Carolina. I absolutely adore it. And David likes to drink Pimm's. And Americans don't seem to know what Pimm's are. He's baffled many waiters ordering Pimm's in bars.

DW: Matt's got a beautiful dog, chocolate brown Labrador named Milo. And Matt's lost a lot of weight.

ML: 32 pounds.

Congratulations.
ML: Thank you. It will be back on next time I see you.