Ricky Gervais (‘Humanity’): ‘Perfect plan’ to win Emmy involves Dave Chappelle [Complete Interview Transcript]

Ricky Gervais embarked on his first stand-up comedy tour since 2010 this past year, titled “Humanity.” The special dives deep into political correctness, freedom of speech and “offense culture,” as well as his trademark commentary on religion. “Humanity” was released on Netflix earlier this year, so it is now eligible to be nominated at the Primetime Emmy Awards. Though Gervais has 23 Emmy nominations and two wins, “Humanity” would give him his first trophy for stand-up comedy.

Gervais recently spoke with Gold Derby senior editor Matt Noble in a web chat about the themes of “Humanity,” his feelings on Donald Trump, and his plan to win that third Emmy. Watch the exclusive video above and read the complete interview transcript below.

Gold Derby: Ricky Gervais, seven years since your last standup special. What brought you back?

Ricky Gervais: I always considered standup the second and third job I did, but doing “Humanity” changed all that. Now I think it’s my main job. I feel that I’m a standup comedian who does the odd bit of TV and film now. I do love the fact that outside my own morality, I can say what I want. And this particular show was more about freedom of speech and offense culture and people misunderstanding jokes, the difference between the target of the joke and the subject of the joke. It was all about that sort of thing that’s been getting worse and worse, I think. The good thing is that I left it seven years, because your first special is your whole life and then you’ve got a year to do the next one, and I think the world has changed more in this past seven years than any other seven years in my life, so it all came together to make it my favorite show, my favorite tour and my favorite special. That is because I think it’s my best, but that’s so subjective and that’s not for me to say, but I do think it’s my best, but I can certainly say objectively that no one can argue with, it is my favorite.

GD: What makes it your favorite?

RG: I don’t know, lots of things. I approached it differently. My first four tours I sort of wrote like a writer and then practiced it like an actor, and this I just walked out onstage with a few things written on the back of my hand and I did more warm-ups. It was much more of an evolution. That’s the other great thing about standup and the difference between standup and writing TV and movies is, when you write a TV show or a movie, you do your best guess, you try your hardest and then you put it out there and that’s it. Whereas with standup, you can evolve it every night. They choose your best bits. So it becomes evolution by natural selection. The audience makes it better every night. You put the bits in they laugh at, and so soon, you’ve got the perfect hour that works everywhere ‘cause people are the same basically. It’s less like an art form and more like a science ‘cause it either works or it doesn’t and you know it’s worked or not. If they laugh, it worked. I can’t wait to do the next one.

GD: A lot has changed in the past seven years, the role of comedy now. How do you approach the state of politics?

RG: I try and keep politics out of comedy. Not because I think I’ll lose half the audience. That’s never worried me. I think if you’re relying on the audience giving you applause ‘cause they agree with you, that loses something comedically. That’s just rallying, and I don’t like it from either side. I don’t like that preachy, “We’re right, aren’t we?” I get around to politics. I don’t do Trump bashing and stuff like that. In my private life, I am more political. I was never interested in politics, but I think everyone is now. I can’t wait for him to get up and tweet, on a personal level. But I do try and keep it out of comedy.

GD: What’s your favorite Trump tweet?

RG: You know what, this is what’s impossible. Any one of his tweets 10 years ago would be mad. It would make the front pages. It would be the maddest thing that had happened that year, but he’s done a thousand. The paradigm shift, I don’t know where to start. The fact that he’s tweeting about shows that have annoyed him or having a go at a citizen… see you’ve made me get political. But I’m not getting political because I don’t think it’s anything to do with his politics. I don’t think he’s political. I think he’s just a crazy man-baby narcissist who’s a troll who somehow found himself in the White House. It’s like it’s a bad ‘80s movie. It’s like two billionaires made a bet in a country club. They said, “I bet I could make the biggest buffoon in the world the president.” “You’re on, George. Should we say a billion dollars?” It’s like it’s the worst ‘80s movie (laughs).

GD: So Ricky, what of the “Humanity” standup special was maybe the bit that saw the most evolution or was the hardest bit to work through and just get right?

RG: Well, because I use irony quite a lot that can confuse people. So I’m dealing with very contentious issues and so you want people to know clearly what the target is from the subject, but you don’t wanna make it so anodyne and so safe that everyone gets it, because you’ll lose the bite. You’ll lose the satire. You’ll lose the irony. It’s that balance when you’re dealing with those very emotive, the most emotive and contentious issues in the world at the moment. That’s what I go for, and I do it for a reason, ‘cause I don’t want comedy to safe and anodyne and all cozy. I wanna take people through a scary forest and I want to come out the other side in the sunlight and they go, “Oh, that was good.” It’s like, we don’t wanna go to the gym, but when we go to the gym we feel good about ourselves so I do want them to have a little bit of a workout. I do want their conscience to go through a little bit of trauma. Things remain taboo when we don’t talk about them, and I think anything that adds to discussion, even if people are angry about it. When someone says “I’m offended,” I wanna go, “Well, why?” And sometimes they say, “Well, you shouldn’t talk about that.” And I go, “But why? We’re talking about it now. Why shouldn’t you talk about it?” And one of the big central things in “Humanity” is that people get offended when they mistake the subject of the joke with the target. There’s no subject you shouldn’t joke about. It depends what the joke is.

GD: What’s the danger in comedy, do you think, if there are things people can’t joke about?

RG: It’s the end of free speech. It’s a slippery slope. I have rules. I think there are rules, and I’d say that political correctness started off as a good thing in a certain sense that we don’t wanna alienate people. We don’t want people to be uncomfortable for things they can’t help. That was why in England, political correctness came and kicked out the old guard. It kicked out the outspoken, racist comics, sexist comics. But then it gets to the point where people do the, “Well if I can’t talk about that, then you can’t talk about…” So it gets very, very childish, and let’s not forget, political correctness isn’t the same as actual correctness. There are some things that I think people muddy the waters, ‘cause they try and close down an argument. Personally, a big taboo, less now obviously, but a big taboo for me growing up was you should never make jokes about religion. And I was thinking, “Well yeah, you should. It’s an idea. It’s not a person. You can ridicule ideas. They don’t have human rights. But people give ideas human rights to close you down. And so that’s the bad side of political correctness. People think you can’t joke about, well you can. It depends what the joke is. so that’s the tricky bit for me, is that everyone understands what I’m doing. Luckily, as a comedian, you can make a show about anything, so I made a bit of a show about the difficulty of being a comedian and joking about the things I wanted to joke about. I think comedy at its best is getting things off your chest, as long as you’re the butt of the joke, too.

Because I deal with honesty and truth, I always wanna be honest and true. Traditionally as a standup, we’re meant to be a loser. We’re meant to be a court jester, an idiot, punching up. So we have to have low status. I can’t go out there and pretend that I’ve had a bad day ‘cause I couldn’t pay the rent. So I’m honest about that. I keep my lower status in two ways. I invite them in. I think, “What, you think it’s brilliant being rich and famous? Well this is what happened to me on my private jet.” So I do that, and I exploit that spoiled, privileged, they know I’m joking which is good. So I sort of embrace that. And the other way I keep my lower status is I talk about things that money doesn’t help, and that they’re better off than me. They’re younger than me. I’m gonna die first. I’m fat. I’m going bald. I feel ill. So that’s how I keep my lower status. You can’t be above the audience. Even if you’re pretending to be ironically, you can tease them but if the audience really think you think you’re better than them, you’re done. You’re finished.

GD: Yeah, and you talk there a bit about truth and how important that is and how important is challenging and things like that and in the special you’ve got a bit where you talk about how being popular is more important these days than being right or disagreeing with someone. Who’s your favorite person to disagree with?

RG: That persona is a persona. I really want peace and quiet. I don’t want any conflict. I try and rule it out of my life. And again, that’s difficult for a comedian ‘cause I haven’t got any… there isn’t a struggle. I’ve never really had that struggle so you have to create it, so what I go for is that I’m spoiled and lucky and ungrateful and grumpy. You sort of have to create your own demons when you haven’t really got any. But again, it comes down to being honest. I never make up a story of hardship.

GD: You’ll say, “I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t have said anything but I did.” And then in the end you talk about how from growing up and your brother and stuff, that you’ve taken from that that you just need to find the funny in things, you just need to make the joke and even though there’s all these instances where you probably shouldn’t have said anything, finding that laugh, finding that humor is more important than leaving something unsaid.

RG: I think so. Even growing up, my friends, the first thing that you’re attracted to in a mate is that you’re funny, being funny. I don’t feel uncomfortable with any difference, anyone who’s different. Except if they haven’t got a sense of humor. That scares me. To be locked in a room with someone without a sense of humor, that’s really scary! But yeah, growing up it was about having a laugh and I do think you’ve gotta go to your grave having laughed every day. That’s what it’s all about. I never even considered this a job. I’d be doing this anyway. Everyone I knew growing up was making jokes and being funny. In fact, the funniest person everyone knows is their friend. It’s not a professional comedian. It’s their mate or their dad or their granddad or their uncle or the next door neighbor. Because it’s about real life.

GD: I myself go to church but I find that the people who can’t take a joke about that sort of thing, it shows some insecurity in their faith that they can’t laugh at it.

RG: No, it’s true. I imagine half my audience were religious. But they know I wasn’t laughing at them. I was laughing at a particular person’s attitude. I’ve always said a bad person is a bad person, and no god has ever changed that. There’s good Christians and bad Christians and there’s good atheists and bad atheists. It has nothing to do with whether you’re a good person, it’s just a personal thing. I’ve also said, I’ve always made the distinction between I have no problem with spirituality at all. And I have no problem with religion until it starts saying, “And God told me that you’re a bad person.” It’s when it’s used as the stick to beat people with. And also, when I have a go at religious people, I know that that’s a 1% example. I don’t go for general people who happen to believe in God. I go for a guy who hopes on Twitter that I’ll be raped by Satan, you know? I know that’s an extreme. I know that 99% of Christians, they don’t wish that upon atheists (laughs).

GD: Look, at the end of the day, if God’s real, I think he can take a few jokes from you.

RG: Exactly, that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? And I say this to fundamentalists who try and kill people ‘cause of blasphemy. I go, “If God’s all powerful, he can take care of that stuff himself! You don’t need to help out an all-powerful god!” (Laughs.)

GD: I think some of us Christians can have thinner skins than God probably does. Anyway Ricky, you’ve been nominated for 24 Emmys. You’ve only won two of them. What’s the one that you’ve lost that you would’ve most liked to win?

RG: What have I won for? Oh. Most of the awards are either for show, like writing and directing or acting. I’ve never won a major award for a standup special so I would’ve loved to have won one for that. But you know what? It’s nice to be nominated, particularly the Emmys ‘cause it’s by your peers so that’s lovely, but it’s crazy to take it too seriously. And I never have. In fact, I pretend to take it seriously when I win, to annoy people (laughs). Yeah, I’d like to have won one for standup.

SEE Over 200 video interviews with 2018 Emmy contenders

GD: You’re eligible this year for your standup special so who knows what’s gonna happen?

RG: There’s so many though! Basically Netflix own standup comedy now. I’ve got tough competition, I think. Dave Chappelle could be nominated four times, ‘cause he’s put out four specials (laughs).

GD: That’s his strategy to win. He’s like, “If I can get all the nominations…”

RG: That would be cool. What I’d like is for him to be nominated four times, but I win it with my one nomination.

GD: That’s probably a good path for you ‘cause the big Dave Chappelle fans won’t know which special to vote for!

RG: He’d split the vote, wouldn’t he? He’d split his own vote. It’s a perfect plan (laughs).

GD: You need to be campaigning for Dave Chappelle.

RG: I reckon it’ll be Dave Chappelle, a couple, Chris Rock, who else has had one? Oh, someone else just dropped one. Was it [John] Mulaney just dropped? He’s the latest, isn’t he? I don’t know him. Is he on “SNL?”

GD: He wrote for “SNL” at some point.

RG: I haven’t seen him. I haven’t seen his but I’ve heard good things. I shouldn’t be mentioning all the others.

GD: Yeah, what are you doing? You’re not into politics enough, Ricky. The good politicians just say “my opponent,” they don’t use their name. “My opponent says this.”

RG: Yeah, exactly. I love comedy. I love watching other comedy. When I see another comedian get grief, I’ve never got that schadenfreude. I’d never weigh in. Even comedians I don’t rate I’d still defend them. If someone was saying to me, “Oh, he’s rubbish,” I’d go, “Well, he’s not rubbish, you just don’t like him.” I know how hard it is. People take comedy so seriously. You think religion is… people are angry if they don’t like you. They’re angry if they don’t like a comedian. They don’t even want the comedian to carry on being successful. They don’t want him to play at the other side of the world. They just want him to stop doing comedy (laughs).

GD: Well Ricky, thanks so much for chatting with us today about “Humanity” and comedy and Emmys, and all the best with “Humanity.”

RG: Do all Emmy voters watch this?

GD: I imagine so.

RG: Tell them to vote. At least get me a nomination, ‘cause that would be my 25th nomination.

GD: Yeah, there you go.

RG: Carry on the cruel joke. They’ll nominate me and then get me to L.A. and say, “And the winner is, Dave Chappelle.”

GD: There you go, voters. It’s in your hands.

RG: Nominate Ricky, but make sure Dave Chappelle wins.

PREDICT the Emmy nominees and winners now; change them until July 12

Be sure to make your Emmy predictions today so that Hollywood insiders can see how their TV shows and performers are faring in our odds. You can keep changing your predictions as often as you like until just before nominees are announced on July 12. And join in the fun debate over the 2018 Emmy taking place right now with Hollywood insiders in our television forums. Read more Gold Derby entertainment news.

SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions

More News from GoldDerby

Loading