Ricky Gervais
Appearances
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Because once you know why David Brent is acting like that, it's so tangible. It's so great that he just wants to be loved and famous. And it's heartbreaking in a hilarious way, yeah.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
It's so funny. It's so funny and sad at the same time that, I think the funniest characters, and obviously in real life, the documentary aspect of it, we like real life is the most dramatic and the funniest. Comedy and fiction can only try to emulate all those things in real life.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
But someone trying to be funny and is successful isn't as funny as someone who doesn't want to be funny and wants to be taken seriously. Right. So... My favourite characters were those people that demanded being taken seriously. So it undermines everything.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Someone being pretentious and then slipping on a banana skin is funnier than a clown slipping on a banana skin because we know the clown doesn't care. He wants to slip on it. So I think when someone wants to be taken seriously or says things like, I am a comedian, That's funny. I remember getting a letter soon after the office, right, by someone writing to get a part.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And the letter started, Dear Mr. Gervais, I am a brilliant actor.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yeah, desperation's funny. Anger's funny. People with no sense of humor is funny. People with no sense of humor is funny. The best.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
So the fact that you're able to make people, you know, double over... Well, that's very interesting because I don't think you need... Stand-up's slightly different. Stand-up is slightly different to fiction in the sense that when you do a sitcom or a film or whatever...
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
You do your best and you try and make the plot work and the characters work and you do all that and then you put it out there and there's nothing you can do about it. With stand-up, you do it every night and the audience, it's more like evolution by natural selection because they choose the bits for you. It's more like a science because it either works or it doesn't.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And by the end, you've got a perfect thing that works every night to everyone around the world because it's tried and tested. They've chosen it for you. So that's slightly different. So what you don't want with stand-up is an audience to feel sorry for you because you haven't got time. You don't want that. No, you don't want that. No, because it's the purest desire.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Because jokes are more of an intellectual pursuit. You don't really need a context for jokes. Again, because they work or they don't. A joke can sort of work on the page. You can read a joke and it still works. You don't need someone telling it. Obviously, you add to that. I think my favorite stand-ups do add to that. They've got a context. They build character.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, that's just because it's another character and you commit to it. And that evolves as well.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
No, but you can because, like, by the time humanity came around, I'd sort of hit that sweet spot where the audience had known me for 15 years. So they knew what I was doing. They knew the irony. They understood the nuance without me having to explain it. So I could come out and hit the ground running. The important thing is this. Behind the scenes, right, I think with particularly stand-up is...
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Traditionally, it's a low status thing. We're a court jester. We go out there with the other peasants and we tease the king, okay? And everyone knows what comedians earn these days. So I can't really go out there and pretend to be struggling, right? I think that would be nauseating and dishonest.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yeah. So I keep my low status in two ways. One, I invite them behind the curtain. I say, what, you think it's plain sailing, do you, being rich? Well, look what happened to me when I met so-and-so, or first time I took a private jet, they thought I was the cook. So I do all that, right? And the other way I do it is I talk about things where I'm worse off than them.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I talk about being fat and old and in pain and going bald and... Do you know what I mean? Being hated by the press.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
No, I started before The Office, but I only started in about 1999, I'd say, was my first try. Okay.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yeah, I have to go out there and I want to be the one that says the wrong thing. Whatever the current regime is, I have to say the wrong thing. I have to go against the grain, which is why it was hard for the last sort of few years. You know, I didn't realize half the people would agree with those things on face value. So irony was put in danger recently.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
out well that's the thing you know um you do have to find the funny but you have to go for it and you have to be able to play and that's the problem again with today as well because i've done shows that i'm trying stuff out and it's been reviewed and i'm gonna go well that's mad You can't do that. You can't do someone who's just started a painting going, it's rubbish. I haven't done it yet.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I've just done the back. You know, it's crazy. So you have to fight against that. And I try and keep politics, explicit politics, out of comedy because I think If you're relying on the audience agreeing with you and getting a round of applause, it loses something comedically. I want my jokes to be liked. I don't care whether they're right wing or left wing or whatever, right?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Because the joke either works or it doesn't. And it actually shouldn't matter. It's meaningless anyway nowadays, left and right wing. It's a meaningless term.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
but i think it's important that you evolve but not with those reasons you don't evolve because it might be taken the wrong way you don't evolve because you might be bullied by a reviewer you don't evolve because you want everyone to like it that gets you nowhere when did that happen for you because that's a certain uh fearlessness that i think you have to achieve you you can't i'm sure there was part of you when you're much younger that you didn't have that right
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I've probably got more fear now, but you have to fight it. You have to be... You have to know that art is being brave. It is being brave and putting it out there. Because you've got more to lose now, right? Well, it just makes me angry. It makes me angry if people don't get something or... So...
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
That makes me work harder to still get the same joke out there and everyone like it and be able to defend it and sleep at night, which I always have done. There's this myth that I go out there and I say what I want and I don't care about what people think of me. That's just not true. It's a hell of a challenge to... I do love it when you do say at the end of it, I don't care. Yeah, of course.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I love that. And that's marketing. And you have to be militant about it. You have to act like you don't care. But actually, you know, it annoys me when any sort of someone thinks, that you've done this or you've gone too far. Or I want to go, well, I've worked that joke for a year with like hundreds of thousands of people. You've thought about it for three seconds and you've got it wrong.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
There's lots of walls. Wow. Wow. I nearly laughed a couple of times when I was waiting.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I think because reviews now are so fast and people don't think there's no nuance on social media. Like 10 years ago, like 20 years ago, if someone complained about something, it would make me think, I'd go, oh God, you know, really? Now someone says I'm offended. I go, yeah, of course you are. Everyone is, it doesn't matter.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I know. People even understand that and they still fall for it. They still think, no, this is different. I did a tweet when I was doing the warm-up for this new show. I said, guys, are there any things I should never joke about? And, of course, everything people said was funny. Everything people said was funny. This disease, this thing.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
One person said losing two children, which I thought was just an amazing thing to tweet. Just an amazing thing. As opposed to one? Yeah. It's so specific.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Because it amplifies it. You know, Twitter is like reading every toilet wall in the world, okay? And when you look at it like that, you shouldn't ever be offended by anything on Twitter.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, that's the other thing as well. It's like I'm offended when a comedian says sorry. Right. Because it usually means they've got a film coming out or something.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yeah, all in. But in retrospect, did it all wrong. I was in a band- Because I loved those songs, by the way. Thank you. It was very fast. It came and went very, very quickly. And I think you only know about it now because I'm famous for something else and those pictures and videos pop up on Jimmy Fallon.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
So like anyone else in every generation, I think it was- Yeah, I found it fascinating because I was pursuing the same thing and I also then went into comedy. Well, OK, so it started at college and we did a demo tape and we got signed and we did two singles and then we were dropped. And it was like it started and finished within a year. And that was it. Wow.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
You know, I think even if it had been a success then in 1984, whatever it was, it would still have been over quickly.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
It would have certainly been, you know, we started with the sort of the hair and makeup and synth pop. But this is the mistake I made. The mistake I made was I wanted to be a pop star and I should have wanted to be a musician. And when I started doing this, I realised that, you know, I consciously and militantly called myself a writer-director.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
So people didn't think that I just wanted to be on telly, because I didn't. And I came to it very wary. I came to this very, very wary. Not because of the music thing, but because of, I think, the press in England. And I never revere fame. I've never asked for an autograph. I've never been impressed by seeing a famous... And I thought that of myself.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I thought the people I admire, I admire because they've done something absolutely brilliant. My heroes are like scientists and things like that.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I feared fame. I didn't sign that deal with the devil, make me famous and you can go through my bins. In fact, I probably feared it too much. I was probably too minute that now I'm sort of chilled and it's fine.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
To a certain degree, yeah. But the other thing is, it's a bit ambiguous when you're an actor, isn't it? Because I think you're allowed to really want to be an actor because it's fun and it's great and it's interesting and it's better than most jobs. Without saying, I want to be famous. I think it can be... Because if you're a successful actor, you're probably a famous actor. Right. Thank you.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And certainly there was easier routes to being an actor than actually writing and directing a sitcom for three years. There's easier routes. In fact, it annoyed me once when the office broke and it seemed like I was just famous overnight without all the work. Someone on the red carpet said to me, what advice would you give anyone else who wants to be famous like you?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
It just really annoyed me. Like that. Like there's such easier ways to be famous than actually writing a sitcom from scratch. Right, right. You know what I mean?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I think the offers have dried up because it's been no for like 10 years that I've usually been busy. And you start off and you're flat. And I remember... I think the second episode of The Office had gone out in like 2001. And my agent got a call from a studio making this movie and they sent me the script. And I said, what part am I? And they said, the lead. And I said, it says here he's 26, right?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And I was 39 at the time, sort of 40. And they went, we can change that. And I thought, okay. And I said, I think you need, I said, who's going to go and see this? No one knows me. And they went quiet. And I went, you need John Cusack.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
for this and they sort of went okay well thanks for the call and in my head I was oozing integrity and they were going what a guy but actually they probably went what a fucking idiot who do you think he is turning down a lead movie he's not going to get up That's interesting. And so it was no because I was busy. It was no all the way.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
The first one that I said yes to, because I read it, the first one I read, actually, Jane would read them and say, no, no, no. And the first one I did that I thought, if I don't do this, I'll never do one, was Ghost Town. And it just, I was reading it and I was laughing. I thought, this is me. Yeah, I loved it. This is written for me. And so I did it and I loved it.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
But it still doesn't feel like mine. I've done loads of things. I've popped up in things. I've done the Golden Globes. I've done this and that. But if I say, what have you done? I'd list, you know, three or four sitcoms, a couple of movies, and my standup. That's what I'd say was mine.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yeah, now I don't even, I say no to everything because I'm sort of busy. But when I'm working stuff out, yeah, I run things by, if I go for a run and I've got an idea for a routine, I come back and I say, what do you think of this? And she says, please don't do that. And I know it's good. I know.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, the thing is, I didn't invent the genre. In fact, my biggest influence, I think, writing it, that was someone else's work, was Spinal Tap, which is a fake documentary. That's just... I mean, no-one owns fake documentary. I suppose what was different, slightly different about it, was that it was... We left the boring bits in. Like, David Brent made bad jokes and no-one laughed.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I wanted that... I want to explore that gap, that social... Because that's the worst thing for me. I don't get embarrassed, but I get embarrassed for other people. If we're in a group and someone makes a bad joke and no one laughs, I just want to go back in time and go, right, do it like this. Let's do this again.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
What you've done so well is... Anyone listening, Arrested is short for Arrested Development. It's a TV show. He just... He leaves off the last word. It's just that we haven't got... There's limited time. I've worked out that if we said Arrested Development every time, it'd be three months of our life.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, that to me is the comedy. Someone doing something weird is one part of it, but it's how does it fall? What's the fallout of it? That's what's always interesting to me. And again, I learned that from Laurel and Hardy. So Stan doing something stupid was funny, but it affecting Ollie was the joke for me. That's what comedy, some comedy didn't have before that. There was no fallout.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
No one got hurt in the wake of someone doing something ridiculous. Like people would be acting and they'd be saying stupid things, but they'd be acting like he'd said something normal. And so you have to react to that.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, that's another very good point because that's why, again, David Brent was the boss. And so he shouldn't have been acting like that. He should have been the grown-up, but he was acting like the child. So again, the big thing there was men as boys and women as adults, which again, I think is reflective. But again, Laurel and Hardy did that.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Laurel and Hardy, they were children and their wives had to catch them doing naughty things. Who was it that said steal from the best? And I certainly have in, um, you know, Lauren Hardy and, and, uh, Chris Guest and those guys.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I'll, uh, I'll go and watch, um, Arrested. Arrested. A scandy noir serial killer or spy thriller on Netflix or Amazon Prime or Walter Presents or BBC4. I want European or Middle Eastern or South American drama. I've just found now that with all these subscriptions, I can find the best dramas in the world. Why don't you be in one?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Because I can't speak any languages. And also... What about English? I'll see my favourite thing, right? This scanty drama. It's like series three and suddenly an Englishman or an American pops up and I go, oh, fucking hell. They just ruin it. Yeah. They just fucking ruin it.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
It might be one of the best programs ever. Me too. It's amazing. Another one as well. There's only one thing that might even be better than that, and that's The Bureau. Have you seen it, Le Bureau? Of course. It's incredible. It's incredible.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Amazing. Have you seen, oh, The Twelve, another Belgian thing, The Twelfth. The Twelfth.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, that's... So, okay, to quickly answer, I get up, I have a coffee, breakfast, we go for a long walk, which is habit now. We get that where we used to do that when we were allowed to go out one hour in lockdown. With dogs, cats?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, our cat died at the beginning of lockdown. We just got a new one.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
No, we go for a walk. I go for a walk, an hour's walk. I scruffle dogs.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
No, I absolutely love dogs. I love all animals. I think to me, all animals are unconditionally perfect and beautiful. I agree. The only animal that I think you can ethically keep is a pet, a domesticated animal. But I love all animals. But the reason I don't have a dog is... We travel too much. And a cat, you can have a cat sitter. It doesn't care, okay? A dog, I can't stand the dog.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
The dog doesn't understand. They have an emotional intelligence beyond some people. I can't bear that I have to travel so often with a dog.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
No, we have people look after it, don't we, you fool? LAUGHTER
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
No, Jane, Jane, Jane... She needs you. I'd like to think Jane needs me.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I'm working on my body now. That's why you can't see my hands.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And that's ready before sort of workshopping and, you know, and all that. And I've basically cast it in my head and that's ready to go. We're filming in April. So I feel like I've got to fill the gap. I can't do gigs at the moment. Again, that's ready to go. In fact, all my gigs this year have been postponed until next year. So I do that after I film. So that's ready to go.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, luckily, when you're still doing stuff about, you know, Hitler and famine. Uh-huh. AIDS. Sure. It's pretty fucking timeless. Evergreens. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
We'll always... Luckily, we'll always have killer diseases and fascism. Yeah. So keep this going.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I will have to change it slightly. I will have to. I think depending on what happens, because I think if a vaccine comes in, I think people will want to forget it. And so... It wouldn't be timeless. And if I was doing it now, I'd start with it. In fact, I did a couple of little warm-ups when we were doing social distance gigs. And I started off again. It's great to be gigging.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I haven't gigged this year. The last normal time was Christmas, wasn't it? That was the last time with friends and family. And we didn't have a traditional Christmas. You've got to move with the times. We might be cultural. We had bats. We had a load of bats. Oh, you ate bats. So I started off. Oh, shit.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Print. Oh, you have to categorize it. You have to categorize it. I mean, who makes me laugh? Are there people who the way that they... Larry David. Yeah. I think... Larry David is underrated. I know he did the biggest sitcom of our generation, but I think Curb Enthusiasm, 10 series of Curb Enthusiasm. And the quality just hasn't changed.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And he's remarkable and he's brave and he's funny and he's a great performer. He's fearless.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yeah, I think he's the all-round comedic creator of the past 25 years.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Chris Guest, probably the biggest single influence on me as well. both his style, a friend, and a mentor. Because I knew no one in the industry. And when the office went out, Chris Guest called me. He said his wife had seen it and said, you've got to watch this. And he loved it. And I could see why. He must have seen his influence in it. But he called me up and just said, I don't want to say it.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And I was blown away, of course. And then we became friends. And then I'd call him when I wanted advice. I remember an early film I did. They wanted to do one of those screenings where 40 people give you notes. And I said, I don't want to do it. And he said, why would you? He said, if you're letting them edit it next time, why don't you write it with them?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And then he told me a story that the director of Rain Man did one of those things. And his favorite comment was, I enjoyed the film, but I was disappointed that the little guy didn't snap out of it by the end. And so he'd given me those little nuggets to fear TV by committee. And he's just lovely and he's still funny.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I remember he asked me once, he said, we'd just be mucking around like, you know, idiots, like kids. And he said, if we're suddenly not funny and no one finds us funny... how will we know? And I said, who cares? Yeah. Who cares? We're laughing. Yeah, for sure.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I think you hone it and hone it. You keep folding the samurai. You keep honing it and what you like. And what I like is no interference and only doing things I absolutely love. So I want to do less and less and just more of the thing that I absolutely love. And that's come down to, I suppose, if I'm doing sitcom, it's just doing the... And no compromise. No compromise.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Oh, you mean angrily honk? Yeah, sorry. Americans honk just anything. If an English person honks, it's like an affront. It's like people get out. But in America, it's just like you honk for anything. Right, yeah. It's like you've really devalued the honk. Especially in New York. You've devalued the honk.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
with no compromise here and stand-up is already there really there's already no compromise with stand-up I think stand-up is like just about the purest art form outside the novel where what you think is what you can say and it's what they hear and that's pure because even with something like Afterlife you know I get final edit I do it all but there's still 60 people involved.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
You still have to go, they have to give it to someone and they still have to go, we put it out on this day. Whereas stand-up, I say, I want to do this venue on this day, sell the tickets, the tickets are taught, I go up, I'm doing this, this is it, goodnight. And I did it. And every single step of the way is absolutely as I wanted it. So it's more and more, how do I get to that?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And I've always known that the most important thing is being sort of happy, really. I've always tried to cut out the middleman, just wanting to be...
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I'll show you a story that sums it up I think we must be in that 1971 I was like 10 in school and there was a big there was a big thing in the early 70s where a lot of um unskilled or semi-skilled workers were getting money to go on oil rigs so you had carpenters that they were suddenly going to oil rigs and where they were earning like 50 quid a week they were earning like
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
You know, 500 quid a day on these oil rigs. It was a big thing. It was a big thing in the paper. I remember the teacher doing a thing to the class saying, OK, kids, what would you do with the money if you could earn 500 pounds a day? And it went round and the kids were saying, I'd buy my mum a house, I'd buy a car, I'd buy a horse. And it came to me and I said, I'd work one day a week.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And I remember just thinking, that would be amazing because I could have the other six days.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And man. But it's not scary. It's the thing that you do it. I think driving a car is scary because I can't do it. But when you realize that you've got that safety net for the first, you go out there and you try stuff out. And if it's not working, you don't put the tickets on sale. Right. I've done 50 gigs before I sell out a real gig and I know what it's going to be like.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
It's going to be the same as the, you know, I mean, the scary thing is, you know, recently the scary thing is, uh, you know, this council thing being canceled. If you say the wrong thing and suddenly, you know, Netflix can take you off their platform or, you know, um, So that's the scary thing.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, you can't. You can't because you don't know. You could be the most woke, politically correct stand-up in the world at the moment, but you don't know what it's going to be like in 10 years' time. You can get cancelled for things you said 10 years ago because you don't know what it's going to be like in 10 years' time.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
The thing is about this, I think the misunderstanding about cancel culture is, you know, some people think that you should be able to say anything you want without consequences. And that's not true because we're members of society and people are allowed to criticize you. They're allowed to not buy your things. They're allowed to burn your DVDs and they're allowed to turn the telly off.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Take it right back. So a hunk is like the finger or something. What the fuck are you doing? Hold on.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
What they're not allowed to do is to bully other people into not going to see you. Or there's some people that are doctors, who are great doctors. They're getting fired from a hospital because of a bad joke they made on Twitter. And I go, well, that's not relevant to what they do. Right. I don't think what's being cancelled. It's having no platform, isn't it? And what can they do to me?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Because I've got this now. Who's going to cancel me? Twitter? YouTube? If I have to, I'll go to Hyde Park and stand up on a bench and shout shit.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, that's the other thing as well. If you don't break the law, people just cannot buy your material. Whereas some people get cancelled because they've actually broken the law. I talk about this in my new stand-up about what is being cancelled and I suppose that's a scary thing because it's a real consequence. Right. No one looks at the argument anymore.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
They look at who's saying it and they make their decision. There's no nuance. And some of it's down to politics, some of it's down to social media because it's too fast. It's way too fast. As I say, 20 years ago, if you were offended by someone on television, you got out a pen and paper and you went, dear BBC, oh, fuck, I can't be bothered.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Now you fire off a tweet and that tweet goes on the fucking news because someone else argued with it. So it's... It's this road rage. It's things happening too fast that you can't take back. And people dig in and people want to be heard. People want to feel that they had an effect. It's why people heckle a comedian. They want to feel they were there. I was here. And so now people are heard.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yes, an idiot stands next to a genius on Twitter and it looks the same. It's the same font and exactly, yeah.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, exactly. And it comes back to what we said at the beginning. Just because you're offended, it doesn't mean you're right. And in recent years, we've had this thing where people would say, my opinion is worth as much as the next person's. And that's true. But recently, we had my opinion is worth as much as your fact. And that's simply not true. Now people are offended by facts.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
People now know that when I do happy birthday, Earth, 4.6 billion years old, I'm having a go at fundamentalists. And they know. They go, why are you having a go?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yes, forsooth. It was a mead, sire. Look at that. God, that looks good. It's a beer.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
You said that sort of that idea of people being offended or online or on social media was the equivalent of running down to the town square and... Oh, where people... Yeah, I do it in Humanity when this woman's arguing with me, getting offended by a tweet. Like, I was tweeting them. Like, I'm just tweeting. I don't know who's following me. That's like going into a town square...
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
and seeing a message that says guitar lessons. And you go, I don't fucking want guitar lessons. It wasn't to you. People jump in the way of a bullet and say, why are you shouting at me? And people have done that on purpose. They've tried to give ideas a human right. That's why. So if you criticize Christianity, people say, well, why are you criticizing Christians? And I go, I'm not.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I'm criticizing the idea or I'm, you know, I'm discussing an idea. It's like me getting offended where someone hates maths and it's not mine. Maths isn't mine. It's a, it's a concept. It's an idea. So, but anyway, this is for our, this is for our nine hour podcast.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Will and Mitch, we always invite you, but you're always having a
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
body wax or something yeah hurry out here please or i'll come see you there don't make like you don't know me when i call you you'll never come to england i want to go what did you call it leafy where do you live will's been here will will calls me up and goes i mean i'm around the corner i go what he calls me up he's here all the time back and forth between samurais and yeah
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Guys, and remember, well, you tell the other guys, if anyone asks, is he in the SAS? No, he's just a comedian. Right. Okay. Got it. Got it. Okay.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
LAUGHTER I mean, there's a three-word description. LAUGHTER I don't know of any other drink that's got three words already to really specify what it is.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Sorry, are you saying Indian in the real term, the subcontinent of India in Asia, or what you call Indians, which are Native Americans? Just what you arrogantly called Indians.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yes, I think so. I think it was probably something equally racist in British colonial history, yeah. So we said, we're having that. This is Indian Pale Ale. It's ours now. It's ours now. I don't, I honestly, we've gone into rounds beyond my knowledge of what I'm drinking. All I know is it's 5% alcohol. It's 6 p.m. That's all I need to know.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yes, it is. I mean, are you only good for about 20 minutes? Is this an intervention?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And that's all natural. People say to me, hey, you on the juice. I go, fuck you.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
No. It's a shame this is only audio, because they can't see me. They can imagine. I'm posing at the moment, and my fake tan is dripping off me.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Exactly, yeah. I do work out every day. I try to. It's getting harder and harder. And I probably shouldn't be because everything is absolutely fucked on me now. I've got two sprained ankles, which is terrible. I still run on. No, terrible knees. I can't bend without them cricking. I've got a bad back. My shoulders are fucked. I've got tennis elbow.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yeah, I'm like, yeah, yeah. Hand to hand. Yeah, I'm punch drunk.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I've had no work. I don't have two body waxes a day. Wait a second.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
He's only 52. Is he telling the truth, Will? No, I won't be 52 till January.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
from the front Ricky do you have a place in LA or do you only live in England I've got a place in New York I've had it for a while actually but especially this year I've spent most of my time in Leafy Hampstead Will's been here it's beautiful it's a great spot and you live next to the vicar I do yeah who's that
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
It's just a vicar. He said the vicar, but it's a vicar. There's thousands hiding next to one of them.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Listen, this podcast is, I mean, it's like I'm teaching you lot English. I say a sentence and then I have to explain it. I mean, we spent three minutes on what's Indian pale ale. It's not that important. What's a vicar? Fucking hell.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I have. I couldn't believe my luck. I was a huge fan of Teen Wolf. Sure. Two. Two? Oh, I haven't seen two. No. You're not...
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, I think it was lucky the format allowed me to do that with a fake documentary because I was emulating something. I was trying to emulate a very ordinary man who wanted to be famous. So it was easy to not be a trained actor doing that. Do you know what I mean?
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
It was an impression I used to do of like bosses and stuff. I worked in an office for like 10 years. So it was like a Frankenstein of people I'd met growing up. And you suddenly and I was always I was always the idiot. I was always trying to make people laugh. And, you know, I was that guy. I was sort of that guy without ambition or rather without without nerve. I think I'd lost my nerve.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
I'd just been a failed musician after like five years of trying. I got a normal job and then I worked my way up to sort of middle management in an office like that. In fact, the little pre-pilot that we shot, I went back to the office I used to work in And I used mates as extras. And I just ad-libbed around this character showing off to the camera.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And the seed of that was we had 10 years of these quaint docu-soaps in the 90s on British TV. The new big thing was docu-soaps. We had one called Airport. We had one called Hotel. We had one called Liner. And it was just normal people filmed, and they'd become sort of stars for 10 minutes.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And of course, nowadays, they become stars forever and make millions. But then it was, that was their 15 minutes of fame. And, you know, you wheel them out. So it was ordinary people wanting to be famous.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Yeah, there was usually a narration as well. But we didn't do that. But there was often, it was things like, the cement for the swimming pool is late and they have to open in an hour. It was stuff like that.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
Well, that's the greatest. That's incredible. I mean, that's still going. Yeah. Yeah. But that really is beautiful social commentary. Sure. These got watered down, you know, and then people would be doing them because they think, well, I could be famous. Everyone says I'm a laugh. I'll go on there. And it's like, there was suddenly too much, you know? So then it was people trying to be famous.
SmartLess
"RE-RELEASE: Ricky Gervais"
And so that's what I picked up on with Brent, that he was a bit sad, he was forgotten, and he thought, now's my chance. And if it wasn't a fake documentary, it wouldn't work.