Cover story
Comedy spree is the ultimate fit for irreverent ‘The Office’ star
Among highlights at this year’s SF Sketchfest is a tribute to talk-show host Dick Cavett.
SF Sketchfest celebrates improv, stand-up, sketch, film and TV, which makes it a perfect fit for Ricky Gervais. The 56-year-old has dabbled in all of that and then some, coming to comedic prominence as the creator and star of the British sitcom “The Office” and leaving a searing mark in the U.S. as the hilariously irreverent host of the Golden Globes.
This year, Gervais makes his SF Sketchfest debut as the 18-day comedy festival devotes a night in his honor, just one of eight tribute events dedicated to comedy trailblazers.
Gervais broke through in the early 2000s with “The Office,” a faux documentary, in which he played a fameseeking paper-company supervisor who often played to the cameras filming life in his office. It inspired the long-running NBC adaptation of “The Office” and also helped launch the careers of Steve Carell, John Krasinski and Mindy Kaling.
But Gervais is quick to give Christopher Guest due credit. Gervais says he had admired Guest since seeing his 1984 rock parody “This Is Spinal Tap.” Which makes it even more appropriate that SF Sketchfest’s tribute to Gervais is in conversation with Guest, master of the “mockumentary.”
“What is amazing about it is it went full circle, because (Guest) called me up. He had watched (the British) ‘The Office,’ and the first thing I said was, ‘You did it first. I got it from you,’ ” Gervais recalls. “He has been a good friend for years now, and a mentor.”
Gervais will be in town for the SF Sketchfest tribute Jan. 23 at the Castro Theatre and for two non-Sketchfest shows Jan. 24-25 at the Masonic. The latter come toward the end of his 130-date “Humanity” stand-up tour, which are recorded and will be released on Netflix later this year. The tour, he says, will keep him from attending this year’s Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday, Jan. 7.
First-time host Seth Meyers no doubt will navigate the topic of the current Hollywood sex assault/harassment scandals skillfully. But it would have been interesting to see what Gervais — once criticized for being too “mean” at the Globes — would do now that Hollywood’s mask of decorum has been ripped off.
“It’s funny, because it had always been (nonsense),” Gervais says of criticism he faced for pointed jokes when he hosted the Globes from 2010 to 2012 and again in 2016, quick to let loose his famously unguarded laugh during a phone call from London. “I was teasing the most privileged people on the planet about their public behavior.”
His current stand-up shows briefly mentions the latest scandals as they are topical for the “Humanity” tour, the title of which comes from “me moaning about the state of the world from the most privileged
position possible,” Gervais says. But he admits he carefully constructed the show’s material so it will “be universal and timeless, and still work in 10 years.”
That’s why in the past year — in the wake of Brexit and President Trump’s election — he has talked about politics in private. Onstage, “I try to keep politics out of it,” Gervais says. “If you are relying on the audience agreeing with you, it loses something comedically.”
Not that his act pulls punches. “If you did a list of terrible things you shouldn’t joke about, that’s my set list ... famine, the Holocaust, everything,” he says.
“If someone is the butt of a joke, I have to be able to stand in front of them when I meet them backstage and tell them why it is OK. I want my jokes to be accurate and my targets to be fair.”
Netflix reportedly paid $20 million for the “Humanity” stand-up special, and Gervais earns a bundle from his Sirius XM radio show “Ricky Gervais Is Deadly Sirius.” He also executive produces and appears on the new ABC game show “Child Support,” on which he interviews children as part of the game.
But at the end of the day, Gervais says he would rather do stand-up than anything.
“It flipped around . ... I was a writer, director, actor, and stand-up was something I did when I could,” he says. But nowadays, he likes the immediate connection to an audience, and the control of his schedule.
Plus now, several tours in, “I am finally good at it,” he says.
“It takes practice. This is a revelation to me, because I am a huge idiot.”
“If someone is the butt of a joke, I have to be able to stand in front of them when I meet them backstage and tell them why it is OK. I want my jokes to be accurate and my targets to be fair.” Ricky Gervais