“I SUPPOSE I FELT GUILTY ABOUT WALKING INTO A
GREAT JOB LIKE THE OFFICE, YOU KNOW? MOST COMEDIANS
SLOG AROUND FOR 20 YEARS BEFORE THEY GET A PART
IN A SITCOM OR A CHANCE TO WRITE SOMETHING.”
spending time in New York City, the world’s primo fondue pot for pop culture. He is characteristically jovial
about his first lead role in a Hollywood film. But this
production is a different pile of string than the TV projects that brought him international fame. The scene at
hand will require several more takes and perhaps some
postproduction magic to coax the hound’s compliance.
Gervais looks anxious as he steps over to view the
footage on a nearby monitor and begins suggesting
how the different takes might be cobbled together.
He catches himself: “Look at me. I’m such a control
freak!” He seems at once excited and agitated with this
attempted transition from cult phenom to movie star.
His TV success has already led to side roles in several
Hollywood productions, but the forthcoming movie
promises to plaster his mug on full-page ads across
America this summer.
36 Arrıve • May/June 2008 • AMTRAK.COM
Even so, maybe it’s the pampered pooch who’s acting the prima donna here. “Yeah, it’s tough,” Gervais
muses. “He was never going to bark and I knew it. He
just wasn’t going to do it.”
A bit more on this point, before we get to chatting at
length about his improbable TV career and emerging
Hollywood trajectory.
“Have you worked with animals much before?”
“Only in porn,” he quips. His deadpan look
cracks open with that signature thousand-watt grin,
the one punctuated by the pointy incisors and the
high, impish guffaw.
It’s an apt moment. Gervais has long frolicked at the
edges of taste, heckling what he calls “broad comedy”
and insisting that he does creative work only on his
own terms. He says flat-out that he doesn’t want any
dummies in his audience. (The misery of selling out to
