Name: Ricky Gervais Compares The American And British "The Office" | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-06-02T19:50:44.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ricky Gervais Compares The American And British "The Office" | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ricky Gervais Compares The American And British "The Office" | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-06-02. Transcript available.

our next guest uh created and stars on the very funny british comedy series the
office
its second season premieres october 12th on the bbc america cable network
ladies and gentlemen
say hello to ricky gervais thank you so much for being on the program oh my
pleasure my pleasure
yeah enjoying your time in new york do you get over here often uh no but i'm i
really love it
i love new york and uh strange place really in what sense well i only got here
yesterday
and the two big sort of news stories on the tv and in the papers on the radio
were two separate
incidents unrelated um people whose pet tigers had mauled them that's right
one of those sea freed and roy one and then one here is uh tiger bit him see in
england
we don't keep tigers as pets
we keep we keep cats but they're much smaller
yeah yeah yeah tigers are these domesticated see the clue domestic cats
tiger domestic cat yeah fine that's all you know so it's it's the damage see a
tiger's so big it can
do so much damage right where it's a domestic cat but you go is that will i
lose the arm the doctor
goes forget it yeah tiger that's gone the thing is with the domestic cat um is
that it sort of treats
you as like a mom or a dad the tiger treats you more as lunch that's right so
you have to always be on
your guard that's my advice as an outsider all right well thank you very much
but sometimes it takes the
viewpoint of an outsider to know where you're going wrong exactly right apart
from that i think it's
brilliant but it's the pet thing it's mad it's really mad now uh do me a favor
tell us a little bit
about your your background and uh what what you've done with yourself here to
four and uh and how you
came up with the idea for the character and the show and so forth wow um my
background uh i suppose
i just had a normal sort of working class upbringing you know in a town just
outside london my dad was a
labor and mom was a housewife and uh i got what you'd call a scholarship to go
to university so sort of
uh that and it's funny actually because um i went to university to do uh
biology and uh i changed after
a couple of weeks because there were nine o'clock lectures yeah and so i did
philosophy seven hours a
week so uh and my mum was very proud though that i got university and uh when i
was there in my third
year i actually got into music and um i got a record deal and a publishing
content as a singer-songwriter and
i went home one day and i broke it to my mum that i wasn't going to follow the
academic route and she
was she was disappointed and uh she said why i said because i want to be a pop
star she said pop star is
another word for junkie absolutely and i actually said that well it's a really
good deal that the record
deal is worth about a hundred thousand pounds and she didn't drop a beat she
said mick jagger bought
his mama house in wales and then did the music part of it work out for you of
course not
no that was over as quickly as it began right um so then uh i got a normal job
failed musician got a
normal job and that's i mean that's where the office comes from but i was
actually a um i worked my way
up i thought i think i started off as a receptionist and i got an assistant
manager's job and i did some
training and i became a middle manager and i was a middle manager in an office
for seven years which
is which is the office you know and that's is like like you say that's how you
develop that
absolutely absolutely i mean and even the office was based on your experience
the old office yeah we
even built it to look a bit like it and um and and tell tell people who maybe
have not seen the show
about your character how do you describe him i described him you heard how i
described him but that yeah
that i mean he is a buffoon some people um when it went on england were saying
he's the boss from hell
and i don't think he's that bad i think he's just a bit of a saddo you know he
wants to be loved like
we all do and he's a bit of a life and soul of the party and um he's just he's
just confused sort of
popularity with respect and he's just he's free falling and he's sort of clutching
at straws and
you know and he thinks he's gonna get a game show out of it because there was a
spate of these
reality games and he just thinks he's you know he's the office clown and he
wants to he wants to get
on tv like us yeah like the interesting the thing that you notice early on
about watching the show is
there's absolutely no work being done in the office there is no productive
activity in the office
whatsoever and that's just fine with everyone well i remember learning when i
did the thing that's the
thing about um uh brits because uh we try and avoid work you know see in america
no no you're you're told
that you can become the president of the united states and we're told you don't
want to do that
sort of like you know i remember i remember i spend all my time trying to avoid
work it's so much harder
now i really work hard now i want to get it done because you know i'm doing
something that i enjoy
but then i remember working out that if you walked around with a couple of bits
of paper
you could be either on the way to the photocopier or the way back but i walked
about nine miles a day
it's ridiculous let me let me talk about the uh you did six the first season
you're going to do six
you've already produced for the second season yeah and then that's more or less
it is that right
i think that's a fantastic idea because each one of them are are so good and i
think if you were to do
right year after year after year maybe the product so you think it's integrity
it's laziness
i had to have a lie down after six yeah well 12 i really really struggled i'm
actually though
the people want me to do sort of more live dates but the term stand up scares
me right you know it's
nice that i'm sort of lounging yeah you know so uh no 12's enough now will
there be an american version of this show
uh yeah we hope so yeah that's that is happening and and you you will be
involved in that you will
not appear on that no no um yeah um i suppose they're giving me some sort of
executive producer
credit right what does that mean yeah um
now are you worried that the american version will be as good as your version
um i want it to be as good it'll be different uh you know uh it's not my baby
it's not like you
know the the office i'm glad it's out in america that you know the english one
because you know
i did that and it's exactly how we wanted it to be the american one will be
good but different it
has to be different and that's not just a case of changing tap to force it and
things like that
you know i'm sure that i want there to be relevant observations i want the
people of america
to say the same things about this as brit said about ours like i know a man
like david brent or
that's like my office and i imagine it's but it's going to be difficult to cast
somebody as good in
that role as you are in the role you know oh thank you yeah
i think the problem will be casting someone as attractive um
they've said they've said brad pitt i said he's 40. yeah that's right um johnny
depp
you know someone said a journalist asked me um i said what do you think the
main difference will
be between the english and the american version and i said better teeth
well perhaps
and um and and are you surprised at the the great reaction to the show in this
country
uh yeah well i i hasn't sunk in i don't really know i've got a few sort of
reports here and there
but um you know it's it's what's what people have sent me and stuff but uh i
don't know i don't know
how big it is it's it's a huge success in the great britain of course isn't it
uh yeah well yeah
great britain's only that big though isn't it if you came there you could own
it
you could be the mayor of great britain within a week the mayor yeah uh and and
how did that change
your life all of a sudden you you go from a guy nobody knows to a guy everybody
knows and everybody
um yeah well it was strange people because i came from nowhere because i've
done a normal job so
i suppose the first the strangest thing was the journalists the first time
around asking me
sort of questions and i sort of i did everything because i was flattered and
not i didn't want to
sort of appear aloof and some of them were just banal questions what kind of
stuff well there was
there was one i did um and it was like those fluff pieces and they ask you it's
like my london and
what you like and then and it was stuff like uh i remember one journalist said
um uh if your house
was on fire and you could only save three things what would they be and this
was towards the end of
the evening i was just it was just so and i went um my cat i've got a cat uh i
said my salamander
i've got a pet salamander i was thinking so and i went three she went yeah i
said uh one of the twins
yeah and uh she she said okay and then and then a couple of months later i'd
interview with another
journalist and she said what are your twins names and i said why does that say
well you said i said
what you think that i'd save a cat salamander and then one of the twins so you've
got to be so
careful i learned you've got you know they just take your word for it the uh
the the second season
here in the united states premieres october 12th on uh bbc america and and uh
it is all available on dvd
the first season is available on dvd i believe now yeah i think that's out
today so if you've not
seen any of them you can you can catch up and watch them and watch them in any
order it really
doesn't make any difference they're all just great and standalone as a very
entertaining pieces of work
pleasure to meet you thank you very much good luck to you and i hope you come
back