Ricky Gervais

This interview originally appeared in the MIPCOM 2012 issue of World Screen.

 

The Office is one of the most successful British comedies of all time. Created, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the series was shot as a mock documentary following the daily lives of a group of office workers. Gervais zeroed in on human foibles, social faux-pas and the trappings of ambition, conceit and self-importance.

 

WS: What were your goals for The Office?

GERVAIS: I wanted The Office to be a study in body language. I noticed that people talk much more with their bodies and their eyebrows and touching their mouths and touching their hair than they do with what they’re saying. Often there’s a huge juxtaposition with what someone’s saying and what his body is saying. I wanted to explore that with David Brent. I’d say that was The Office’s main innovation. Everything else has been done before. The Office wasn’t the first fake documentary. It wasn’t the first thing to have a group of flawed characters acting like they weren’t flawed. Film has done that for ages, The Larry Sanders Show did it. It wasn’t the first thing to have no stars. It was probably the first to have them all in some degree at the same time. It was probably the first sitcom that explored body language in comedy. The big secret about The Office that no one has ever picked up on is that it was the first sitcom that was about comedy. Everything came down to what was funny, what was acceptable. The thing about comedy is that it’s turning a societal norm on its head. It’s someone acting wrongly and people reacting to it. Gareth saying something stupid is one thing, but cutting to Tim looking straight down the lens, that’s another. That gets a laugh. That’s as effective as a laugh track.

 

WS: Can comedy illustrate truths about human nature more clearly than drama?

GERVAIS: Yes, it can, because it’s not beholden to certain structures. It can certainly do it quicker. And it can certainly do it more viscerally. It can do it with feeling. A laugh is there—bang. You can laugh before you realize why you’re laughing—something hits you. You find yourself smiling. You don’t mean to laugh or smile, you just do. It comes back to truth.

 

In The Office the main themes were men are children and women are adults. I see that men never grow up. Men’s egos run away with them. And we can’t help it, it’s sort of part of our hardwiring. We do have a little bit of alpha-male-ism. But what’s funny is the alpha male is usually to protect the tribe from danger, it’s not to be used to win at Trivial Pursuit or cards. That’s when it’s funny, when the male ego competes with a child, or when it’s in charge of something, like David Brent. That’s why we couldn’t really take him out of the office, because if you’re in the pub with David Brent, he’s off-duty, he’s bound to get drunk and have a laugh. If they jump the shark and suddenly take the sitcom to Spain, he’s allowed to be a brat when he’s drunk on holiday jumping in the pool. He’s not meant to be a brat when he’s in his suit and tie, he’s meant to be in charge. Because he was trapped within that, and that’s what all sitcoms do. In sitcoms, you have to be trapped, literally, like the prison comedy Porridge [a British sitcom from the ’70s], or Sergeant Bilko in the army [in the ’50s comedy The Phil Silvers Show], he’s physically trapped. Or a family comedy where they’re emotionally trapped, like Roseanne—she can’t ever leave the kids. David Brent was trapped by his own ambition. He couldn’t get away from that camera. He was like a moth to a flame. He thought it was his way out. That was about the new ambition in society now, fame.

 

WS: Fame has been a recurring theme for you.

GERVAIS: The Office came out of me watching a lot of docu-soaps where normal people became famous overnight and they had their 15 minutes of fame. What was funny for me was the second 15 minutes, what they did to hold on to fame. Nowadays, that second 15 minutes is a profession. Now there are people who will literally do anything to stay in the news. There are people under 30 bringing out their third or fourth autobiography. Really? There’s no difference between fame and infamy now. [After The Office came] Extras, a clear study of celebrity and being body-snatched by fame. Life’s Too Short is probably the most gruesome face of it because The Office reflected those quaint docu-soaps of the ’90s with normal people getting their 15 minutes. Life’s Too Short was about that second 15 minutes, where being a celebrity is now living their life like it’s an open wound to get another 15 minutes. Now there are these celebrity shows like Celebrity Rehab—why would you do that on television? Going into celebrity spa having enemas! I don’t know where it’s going to stop.