JUST SOME ‘FAT LITTLE BRIT’
Ricky Gervais is realistic about who holds the power — and it’s not him
After Life Streaming, Netflix
“Are you the guy who asked me if I used heroin?” says Ricky Gervais, as we almost shake hands then think better of it. I confess I was. He shakes his head in disbelief. “I’ve taken it up since then, of course,” he laughs, miming a newly acquired junk habit.
It’s early March when I meet the comedian in central London to talk about the second season of his hit Netflix sitcom After Life, with coronavirus still just a dark, distant cloud on the eastern horizon.
That reference to heroin was sparked by the talk we’d had the year before about the first season of After Life, in which his character, Tony, tries the drug to escape from the grief he feels over the loss of his wife, Lisa (Kerry Godliman), to breast cancer. I’d like to say that Gervais was on irrepressible form on both occasions, but the word just doesn’t have enough hyperbole to give a true picture of the 58-year-old in person.
At various points in this second meeting, he will: a) leap up to demand that we perform a role play in which I act out a viewer offended by a scene in the new season about a burly 50-year-old plumber who insists on identifying as an eightyear-old girl; b) get into a bizarre argument over comparisons between his brilliant and wildly offensive Golden Globes speech and Sacha Baron Cohen’s scathing attack on Facebook, which will end with Gervais saying “I hope you f-----g die ... I’m just being honest, mate ...” laughing maniacally, then adding, “no offence”; c) accuse me of having wasted the interview talking about the BBC, Harvey Weinstein and women’s lavatories.
The latter’s not entirely fair. I have over the course of an hour tossed him the odd hot potato, assuming that with his characteristic “I don’t care” attitude, he will toss it quickly back, with added chili. But this former philosophy student has a way of chewing things over that makes a yes or no answer surprisingly unforthcoming. “I don’t care about these issues,” he says.
What we mostly talk about, though, is After Life. It was set up as the perfect vehicle for the two most conspicuous sides of Gervais’s comic persona: his absolute joy in giving offence and his sentimental side, so evident in his 2012 sitcom, Derek. Yet it has evolved into a rather sweet ensemble comedy, with a cast of misfits reminiscent of classic sitcoms.
In the first season, for the bereaved Tony, life has so lost all meaning, so he decides to say what he really thinks to people, however shocking.
As for those oddballs — such as the lovable sex worker, the socially challenged letter carrier and Tony’s less-than-scintillating colleagues at a time-warped local newspaper — they’ve gradually taken over the show. And Gervais, to his credit, as writer, director, star, has just gone with it.
“People look at (a character) like Brian (the bitter, abandoned husband played by comedian David Earl) and go, ‘That’s weird.’ Because they’re used to American TV series where everyone looks like Brad Pitt and George Clooney. But, actually, most people are more like Brian. Those people are all normal — normal people on TV look freakish.”
That image of “normal” extends to the central love story in After Life, between Tony and the woman he has lost, played out in video clips. He accepts their closeness is modelled on his own relationship with his partner, author Jane Fallon, to the extent that he will include things they have actually done together.
“The thing about (Tony and Lisa) is that it was a real relationship,” Gervais says. “They were best mates. They f---ed around and got drunk together. They didn’t have to have romantic dinners and buy each other diamond rings and cars. That’s nothing.”
There’s also an enjoyable tip of the hat to Ever Decreasing Circles, the 1980s sitcom about an illicit flirty relationship between Penelope Wilton’s married Ann and her neighbour Paul (Peter Egan), to the misery of hubby Richard
Briers. Gervais has cheekily introduced Egan as a wealthy love interest — called Paul — for Wilton’s widow Anne in the new season. “I think Ever Decreasing Circles was the most underrated sitcom ever,” he says, “it’s a genuine grown-up rom-com.”
Currently, he’s at home in Hampstead, playing badminton and table tennis with Fallon, and livestreaming regularly to his 14.2-million followers, chatting away with a beer. Lockdown doesn’t seem to be too onerous to him — “you won’t hear me complain, not when there’s nurses doing 14-hour shifts,” he says, as he mocks “multimillionaire entertainers” who moan about being sad because “they’re not on (TV).”
There’s an oddly man-of-thepeople quality to Gervais, which comes out when asked where he gets the nerve to target Hollywood’s power elite at the Golden Globes.
“I’m not beholden to anyone in the room,” he says. “I don’t care what a director or producer thinks of me, because I’m a director and a producer. I create my own labour. And why are they going to get annoyed about some little fat Brit? I mean, I’m not powerful.”
“Well, you obviously are because millions of people watch you say it,” I suggest. “But they’re not powerful,” he insists. “I’m speaking up for the millions of people who aren’t powerful.”