-Our first guest is a two-time Emmy winner starring in
the third and final season of his popular series,
"After Life," which is on Netflix now.
Here's the always entertaining Ricky Gervais!
[ Cheers and applause ]
Ah! Look at Ricky Gervais!
Come on! -Hello.
-You look good, buddy. You look happy.
-Well, yeah, I'm drinking beer.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, good, that's probably what it is.
Are you excited about the new year?
Here we are in January 2022.
-Yeah. Yeah, I'm really excited. Yeah.
What do you mean? Why? Well, yeah.
-Last time we talked about you getting into shape
and you said that -- -Yeah.
-Yeah, you said you're kind of not doing that anymore.
-Well, I am. I decided to --
I did try to get in -- I have been working on my body.
And traditionally, you know, you're meant to sort of gain
muscle and lose fat, but I went the other way.
[ Laughter ]
So I've managed to bulk up but with putting on
eight pounds of pure fat around my middle.
[ Laughter ] I was worried I was getting
too svelte and too handsome,
and I was worried it would interfere with my comedy,
so I went that way. -Smart.
-So yeah, I'm looking great.
I'm in great shape, the shape being a sphere.
[ Laughter ] But I'm in great shape, yeah.
-I heard this -- I don't know if this is true or recent --
but did you throw your back out?
-Yeah, it happens once or twice a year.
This time it was tying up my shoelace.
It's ridiculous.
So, I go down, and I feel something go and that's it.
It's from an old injury that I did about 30, 35 years ago.
Me and Jane, we didn't have any money.
We'd saved up for a little holiday.
We had a week in Italy, okay?
So we had a hotel, but it had a tennis court, and I love tennis.
And the first day, I was playing this sort of coach there,
and I was sort of showing off, right?
To show I was trying to win, right?
So I did this -- -The tennis pro.
-And my back went, and I pulled my vertebrae apparently.
And I was screaming in agony.
There was a crowd looking, "What's up with that guy?"
They couldn't speak English.
They took me to the room, right?
I laid on the floor of the hotel, right?
And I was on the floor in agony for like --
I say three days.
At one point, one of the staff --
she wasn't a doctor or nurse.
I think she was just on reception.
She came up and injected me with something.
Just stuck a needle in my ass. [ Laughter ]
I don't know what it was,
but I was in such pain, I went, "Yeah, whatever."
Right? And then, so --
I was sleeping -- I wasn't sleeping
'cause I was in agony -- but I was --
I remember for like three days,
I was drinking beer out of the mini bar.
So drinking a bottle of beer,
and then I couldn't get to the toilet,
so I was weeing in the empty bottle, right?
And Jane was sort of emptying those out
and bringing me a new one.
And at one point Jane picked up one bottle and said,
"Can I leave that for a while? It's still warm."
[ Laughter ] So that was our holiday.
-I can't believe she's still with you.
I can't believe she's still with you.
Unbelievable. -No.
-Ricky, do you consider yourself a hypochondriac?
-Yeah. No, I am.
Along with everything else I've got.
Along with all my other illnesses,
I'm also a hypochondriac, so that just adds to it.
Yeah, I am. And the thing -- I don't worry about stuff
until I wake up and I could have --
Like, I'd find a spot, like, or a sore throat.
And the first thing I do is Google it, right?
And the first five things, I go, "Oh, that's fine, that's fine."
Then I push my luck and I scroll too much
and it's like some rare disease that you definitely die of,
and I think I've got that.
And I say to Jane -- She goes, "Go to the doctor,"
and that makes it worse.
And I don't go to the doctor.
I just have all of these ailments that I just --
I try and -- I just want to get better.
Or you know -- it's too much -- I'm too busy.
It's a boring hour, isn't it,
going to the doctor, an appointment.
If there was a doctor in my basement,
I'd be down there every day.
I'd be going, "What do you think of this?
What do you think of that? Is that bad, right?"
-Where do you think you got it from?
-I don't know. My Nan was like this.
For the last 20 years of her life, my Nan would say things
like, "Oh, I'm not long for this world."
You know, and, "Oh, I won't see this Christmas."
But then one year she was right.
[ Laughter ] You know what I mean?
So, I remember when I was a kid, my gran was --
We were watching on the news.
There was a prison riot in London.
-Mm-hmm. -And all the prisoners were
on the roof, and they were smashing it up and setting fire
to it and throwing tiles down at the guards
and they couldn't do anything.
And it was on the news. We were watching it.
And my gran went, "Oh, they should be locked up."
[ Laughter ]
-Yeah, it's a prison riot. They are locked up.
That's fantastic. She's very funny.
I want to talk about your show, "After Life."
This is the third and final season,
and I loved the last two seasons.
It's a beautiful show.
-Thank you.
-It's heartwarming.
It's the number-one show on Netflix.
-Yeah, it's crazy, I mean --
-That's fantastic. [ Cheers and applause ]
-Every year it just got bigger and bigger and --
I mean, that's the beauty of Netflix,
that people are joining the party all the time.
But the main thing about it was the emotional response.
Like, people would come up to me after the first season --
people would come up to me on the street and say,
"Oh, I lost my brother the week before."
"I lost my partner," "I lost my mother."
And you sort of realized that everyone was grieving,
so I thought I should treat that with respect
and that's why he doesn't just snap out of it.
I mean, it's a dark subject, it's a dark, sad subject,
but people -- I think they like seeing something of themselves
on TV they haven't seen before, even if it's the bad bit.
And people would say to me, "Oh, that was me.
That was me after I lost my wife," or something.
And I just -- It's been lovely, the response.
And it sort of created a little club as well, like on Twitter,
people helping each other and telling their own stories.
And that's been the best thing about it for me.
I should say it's a comedy.
It's very out there and funny.
It's just about a guy who's lost his wife
and he's trying to cope, and one of his main coping mechanisms
is that he's angry and says anything he wants
because he doesn't care about the consequences
because at the beginning, he doesn't care about living.
So that's the funny bit -- he just, you know,
he bumps into people and just says what he thinks of them.
-I mean, it's very, like you said, it's a dark subject,
but it's also very -- there's a hopeful message to this.
-I think it's uplifting, and I think that's the big theme.
It asks the big question,
"If you lose everything, is life still worth living?"
And the answer is yes.
You just got to find something to do.
And he tries everything, and it doesn't work.
He tries drinks, drugs, violence, insults.
And what he realizes is that the real superpower is kindness,
and that's where he finds himself.
-His purpose.
-He can help others, you know, and he sticks around --
Even though he's in pain, he thinks he can make the world
a slightly better place, so that's the big message, yeah.
-I think I read somewhere that they just donated
a bunch of benches around --
-Oh, yeah. They put these sort of --
One of the big sort of iconic scenes in "After Life" is
I meet an older woman in the graveyard,
and she's grieving, and we become friends.
And it's about the kindness of strangers,
because they're in the same boat and she's lost her husband.
And she really helps him.
And so they've donated these benches,
called Benches of Hope,
because it's a line from the show --
"hope is everything" --
and they've dotted them around the country
so people can go and sit and think about stuff.
And, yeah, it's sponsored by a charity as well.
-I thought that was so cool.
[ Applause ]
Keep going, buddy.
We love you. I want to show everyone a clip.
Here's Ricky Gervais in the new season of "After Life."
Take a look.
[ Air horn blows ] -Aah!
-[ Laughing ]
Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh!
Maybe life is still worth living!
Oh, my gosh.
-That's not funny, actually. That could have --
-Well, I disagree.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-That is funny.
Ricky Gervais, everybody!
Season three of "After Life" is on Netflix now.