The Student Pocket Guide | Ricky Gervais interview
Ricky Gervais recalls how he greeted Samuel L Jackson on the first day the Hollywood A-Lister rolled up on the set of his exquisite new sitcom, Extras.
"Samuel L Jackson walked in to absolute silence _ crew-members bowed their heads in respect," recollects Ricky, who with Stephen Merchant co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in Extras.
"Then he stooped to tie his shoe-lace. It seemed like it took about thirty seconds. I thought, 'I'll take a chance here,' and said to him, 'I'm surprised he ties his own shoelaces'. There was a pause, before Samuel replied, 'I'm slumming it today'. And that was it _ we were away!"
This delicious anecdote is typical of Ricky's sense of humour. This is a man capable of finding comedy in the most unexpected places. The undisputed master of the double-edged response, he has raised irony to an art-form.
Today, I am in the lucky position of being treated to a one-man command performance by the exuberant Ricky. The actor, writer and director, who as well as his two acclaimed sitcoms, Extras, and the multi-award-winning The Office, has mounted two sell-out stand-up tours (Animals and Politics), produced two best-selling Flanimals books and co-hosted a hit Xfm radio show, is the hottest property in British comedy right now.
If you still need convincing, just get a load of some of these stats. The Office is the BBC's biggest comedy export of all time. Overseas sales of the Slough-com about the woefully self-deluded boss David Brent have grossed more than 30 million pounds and been sold to 80 countries around the world.
Ricky jokes that "I can't wait to see a dubbed version. Brent speaking Japanese or Spanish or whatever will be amazing. Freelove Freeway in Chinese? I'd buy it."
This figure does not even include DVD sales _ which amount to very nearly 4 million copies worldwide _ or change-of-format deals, such as the NBC remake which got 9 million viewers on its second season return last week.
As you can see, Ricky has reached such a height of popularity that if he chose to, he could sell a broadcaster a series consisting entirely of him reading out from the telephone directory.
Dressed in a red T-shirt marked "Kronk Boxing Gym", dark blue tracksuit bottoms and trainers, Ricky is prone to leaping to his feet to bring an anecdote to life. He doesn't need a script, either. He is a naturally funny man, and two hours in his presence is filled with rich and sustained laughter. In short, he makes for immensely exhilarating company.
He starts by emphasising how proud he is of the new Extras DVD. "We put an awful lot of work into it," stresses the performer, who is also soon to be seen in an episode of The Simpsons that he has scripted, and in For You Consideration, the latest semi-improvised movies _ about the Oscars _ from the master of that art, Christopher Guest (This Is Spinal Tap, Best in Show).
"DVDs cost at least £15," Ricky carries on. "It's a big outlay, and you're going to want something for that. So we want people to feel that they are getting value for money. We don't want people to say 'that's a rip-off.' We want them to say, 'wow, we got something extra there _ it was really good'."
To that end, Ricky adds, "we have made a whole new hour-long programme for the DVD, with interviews and a twenty-minute package of out-takes. It contains a lot of hand-held behind the scenes material that you wouldn't normally see. It's showing viewers the A-Listers in their natural habitat.
"We've also got a section called 'Looking for Leo,' where Steve and I find out that Jude Law can't do the show and we spend an hour in a hotel tipsily trying to get through to Leonardo Di Caprio as a replacement. It's like Laurel and Hardy _ two bumbling idiots failing miserably to achieve their aim!"
Extras has already been a roaring success in this country _ it averaged a superb 4m viewers an episode and was immediately re-commissioned by the controller of BBC2. It also proved a smash hit when it debuted recently in the States on HBO, the channel that also broadcasts Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and The Larry Sanders Show.
The Los Angeles Times described Extras as "excruciatingly funny . The series is deeper than you expect. Unlike most, if not all American TV shows, Extras accepts sadness as a condition of life, not a transitory effect to be obliterated in a fourth act blizzard of good feelings, but something that can only be kept at bay. That awareness is what pushes it towards greatness." Newsday, meanwhile, simply called it "hugely entertaining."
In the series, Ricky stars as Andy Millman, a man who brings new meaning to the word "unfulfilled." He packed in his bank job five years ago in order to try to make it as a movie actor. However, he has wound up only with a series of non-speaking parts.
He prowls around the studio muttering to his best friend and fellow extra, Maggie (Ashley Jensen), about how he "coulda been a contender" if only he had been given the breaks accorded to the stars on his movies, Jackson, Ben Stiller, Kate Winslet, Patrick Stewart, Ross Kemp, Vinnie Jones and Les Dennis.
In one scene, Andy fumes that he missed out on a leading role in a period drama and in a fit of pique compares Kemp, the actor who pipped him to the part, to Zippy from Rainbow. He is seriously _ and hilariously _ bitter and twisted.
Ricky recruited these seriously stellar names on the strength of a pretty formidable calling-card: the two series and Christmas special of The Office.
This classic body of work scooped no fewer than six Baftas and two Golden Globes, and Ricky's central character, David Brent, the excruciatingly un-self-aware man who viewed himself not so much as boss but as "a chilled-out entertainer" and who executed the wonderfully naff, MC Hammer-styl-ee dance, has already passed into the annals of comedy legend.
Andy is clearly a man who is deeply uncomfortable in his own skin; he is very far from where he wants to be. Like all the best comedy characters _ think of Basil Fawlty, Captain Mainwaring or Alan Partridge _ he is undone by a fatal flaw: a terminal lack of self-awareness.
"Andy has a huge blind spot," confirms 44-year-old Ricky. "He has to, or the show wouldn't be funny. In all comedy, there has to be crisis. Andy's is that he's left his job to become an actor, but he's going nowhere, he's playing with the B Team.
"His resultant blind spot is that he doesn't view himself as he views others. He criticises other actors for being pretentious, but doesn't recognise it in himself when he crawls up to directors."
Ricky, who recreated Brent's dance to the delight of a global audience of five billion at Live 8, continues that for any comedy to work, the central character has to be flawed in some way. "If he's not, then you're dealing with a writer _ i.e. me _ who's written himself a cool part, and that's revolting!
"But in Extras," Ricky continues, his self-deprecation gene kicking in, "I'm not the romantic lead. Other characters call me 'fatty', and we've cast tall actors opposite me, so I look like a jumpy little fool. I have bad make-up and bad clothes. Don't worry _ Andy Millman is no hero!"
Andy may not be a hero, but Ricky's performance nevertheless underscores the often underrated deftness of his comic acting. "I get fed up with the notion that you have to wear six different wigs and do six different accents to be funny," he argues.
"The other day, my friend Paul Whitehouse was teasing me. He said, 'you're just a one-trick pony.' But how can you be a one-trick pony when you write, direct and star in a series? I'm at least three trick ponies! In Extras, we've sacrificed the 'six wigs' approach for realism." And, boy, has it paid dividends in terms of absolute plausibility.
Despite Andy's obvious flaws, Ricky asserts that the series is not a broadside aimed at the entire thespian community. He breaks into a smile, as he jokes that "Steve and I are not leading a mob up to the castle with pick-axes and burning torches _ 'those actors have got fast cars and swimming pools and everyone recognizes them. Get them!' No actors were harmed in the making of this series."
But what the sitcom does send up is those who believe that instant celebrity will provide an answer to all their woes. "Just being famous is nothing to be proud of," declares Ricky, who recently won a Time Out gong as the funniest man in London. "What are you famous for? Were you in Hollyoaks or did you find a cure for cancer?
"In the past, in order to become famous, you'd have to sell your house, say goodbye to all your loved ones and move to New York for years on end. Now all it requires is 28p to apply to Big Brother. Now to get on TV, all you have to do is drop your trousers and shout 'I'm a party animal!'"
Ricky, who lives a quiet life out of the spotlight in central London with the partner he met at London University, TV producer Jane Fallon, expresses his bewilderment about those who are addicted to the limelight.
"Some people are so desperate for fame, they buy every publication every day, and if they're in two papers on a Monday, they have to be in three papers on the Tuesday and four on the Wednesday. It's like a drug."
He reckons that Extras' sceptical attitude towards the fame game becomes more relevant by the day. "Fame is getting more and more sought after _ even though everybody knows Andy Warhol's line about everyone being famous for fifteen minutes. They've seen how fame eats you up, but people just don't learn that lesson. They think, 'I'll be different'."
Ricky closes with a very pertinent question in these celebrity-obsessed
times: "what's the best that can happen when you go on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Back on The Telly? How much do you need to be on television to let millions of people see you having an enema? 'What did you do today? Oh, I pleasured a pig on national TV. Did you video it? It's something to tell the grandchildren!'"
And with that, Ricky Gervais lets out one last, long, infectious laugh.
Interview by James Rampton
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