Ricky Gervais, speechless, is gazing longingly
into Leonard’s eyes. Seated in a plush armchair, his face
within intimate range of Leonard’s, all he really wants
is for Leonard to bark. Just once. This is a genuinely
awkward moment for Gervais, the celebrated British
actor-comedian who has made an art of playing characters prone to terribly awkward moments.
Leonard is being played by a pampered performer
named Jazz, a Great Dane supposedly trained to deliver
on cue. But the hound with the Hollywood gravy train is
gazing right back at Gervais without so much as a sniff.
After a moment, he lets loose a floppy tongue and pants
a couple of times. He is going way off script. Everyone
on the set is holding their breath. The stone-faced
Gervais normally loves to improvise, but this time he’s
baffled. It’s hard to decide if the impasse between the
two is hilarious or weird or a fair bit of both.
It’s mid-December in Brooklyn, and Gervais is hard
at work on the final day of shooting for Ghost Town, a
romantic comedy due in theaters later this year. Alongside actors Greg Kinnear and Téa Leoni, Gervais stars
as a misanthropic dentist whose near-death experience
leaves him with special powers of perception—and
caught in a wacky love triangle reaching beyond the
grave. This is rather a departure from the kind of material with which the comedy whiz made his mark—two
acclaimed mockumentary TV series, The Office and
Extras, which sent up workplace and celebrity inanity
by way of brutally funny satire.
Although it’s been two months and a rare long stint
away from his home in England, Gervais says he loves
