NEW YORK — Andy Millman is fed up from all the compromises he’s been forced to make on his new sitcom, “When the Whistle Blows.” All the network meddling, all the dumbing down, the idiotic wig he’s made to wear — enough is enough!“I want to do something that I’m proud of,” Andy proclaims to the show’s full cast and crew, “and I won’t be proud of shouting out catch phrases in a stupid wig and funny glasses. I want to do what I want to do — otherwise I’ll hate myself for the rest of my life.”

Of course, when told by the producer he can take a hike, Andy swiftly surrenders.

“Th-this can be good!” he stammers sheepishly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say.”

More than funny, the scene drives home an important issue for Ricky Gervais, who not only plays Andy on “Extras,” but also co-wrote and created this brilliant comedy series returning for a second season on HBO, Sunday at 11 p.m. Bermuda.

Fortunately, there’s a big difference between Gervais and his “Extras” alter ego.

“It sounds very smug,” says Gervais, not sounding smug at all as he surveys his career, “but I didn’t compromise myself. I would rather work in a bar than do something I wouldn’t be proud of.

“I want everything I do to be successful, but at no cost,” he adds, grinning at his stubbornness. “I don’t want to change one word just to get an extra million people.”

The great thing (for Gervais and his audience alike) is, he gets away with it.

Decidedly not compromising himself, the Reading, England, native leveraged a not terribly promising background as philosophy geek, rock musician, talent booker, fringe radio host and TV gadabout into comic heights six years ago. With his partner Stephen Merchant, Gervais hatched “The Office,” a workplace “mockumentary” that became the most popular sitcom in British TV history before spawning NBC’s Yank edition, which features Steve Carell as the terminally embarrassing office manager played by Gervais in the British original.

Along the way, Gervais, now 45, has followed his comic bliss with other projects, including a role in the new Ben Stiller film “Night at the Museum,” several standup tours, and even an ongoing series of much-downloaded podcasts cleverly titled “The Ricky Gervais Show.”

“Extras” is his latest effort for TV, with Merchant on board as both co-writer and as Andy’s agent in a delicious portrayal of a wild-eyed, grinning nincompoop.

During the first season (aired in fall 2005), Andy was stranded in show-biz obscurity as a film extra, his workdays spent on London shoots helping fill the camera frame with his unnoted presence.

Now, in the new cycle of six episodes, Andy is flirting with actual success — yet still feeling marginal. Even scoring with “When the Whistle Blows,” Andy is doomed to be scared, unfulfilled and looked down on.

No wonder. “Andy hasn’t really elevated himself up the ladder,” notes Gervais with a blast of his infectious schoolgirl giggle. “Andy’s just gone to the bottom rung of a different ladder.”

This is wickedly borne out when Andy and his makeshift entourage crash a chic London bar: Another patron, pop superstar David Bowie, takes him down a few rungs with an impromptu musical rebuke.

“Pathetic little fat man!” croons Bowie for the whole room to hear. “He sold his soul for a shot at fame! Catch phrase and wig, and the jokes are lame.”

Mind you, in the real world Gervais isn’t fat, just endowed with a relatable, doughy physique. Also: Glamorous people like David Bowie clamour to work with him. (Orlando Bloom, Daniel “Harry Potter” Radcliffe, Ian McKellen and Robert De Niro are other luminaries popping up as themselves on this season’s “Extras.”)

Meanwhile, other than the purposely lowbrow jokes larding “When the Whistle Blows” (which is glimpsed on “Extras” in fleeting excerpts), Gervais’ waggery is anything but lame.

“We have a simple rule,” says Gervais. “If we both don’t love an idea, it doesn’t go in. So what you’re left with is, everything in `The Office’ and everything in `Extras’ we both love.”

Now blessed with stardom, critical acclaim and coolness cred — he’s a guy Andy Millman would love to hang with — Gervais insists that he never sought fame, nor does he embrace it now.

“I live a very, very normal life,” he says. “I walk to work. I walk back from work. I’m at home at 6 o’clock, in my pajamas watching television.”

So how, then, did a chap who claims “I’ve never been insecure” come to mine his comedy from hollow self-esteem and bloated egos?

Just making use of indigenous material, he replies.

“I’m not in the Third World starving. I’m not in a war zone. So the worst thing that happens to me every day is that a waiter’s rude. Outside of health cares, what do we worry about every day? In a nice, safe, middle-class environment, what have any of us really got to worry about?”

Stars are a whole other matter. They get to be more vulnerable than anyone.

“Then, even the press can ruin your day. It’s not a report back from the doctor: `You’ve got a week to live.’ It’s a newspaper story: `You’re smug and fat.’

“Until I was famous, I never knew I was fat,” says Gervais, cackling at this phantom threat. Doing otherwise, he knows, would be a compromise.