Ricky Gervais talks about Golden Globes hosting gig

Q: Can you tell me a little bit about your upcoming projects.

Ricky: The thing I’m probably most excited about is the thing — HBO launched a 13-part animation in February of the Ricky Gervais Show. It’s animation of the audio books I do with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington.

And, yeah, we might have a new Simpsons on our hands, but this time Homer Simpson is a real life person called Karl Pilkington, the most stupid, round-headed buffoon on the planet Earth.

We were doing some interstitials for HBO this week. They flew over and Karl doesn’t usually do that sort of thing. And he’s being interviewed and they said why should people watch this and he went, if there’s nothing else on. He just said that and they went, right.

Ricky said it’s a bit like the Simpsons, Karl went, it’s not as good as the Simpsons. Got that. I went bigger up Karl, way to go. He went, no it’s no, it’s not as good. He said it’s really good; it’s not quite as good as the Simpsons. And then once they watched the first episode he went well it gets better. He said I say don’t watch the first episode he said I’d come in at Episode 2.

I’m going, I mean, the worst sell I’ve ever seen for a show. I mean unbelievable.

Q: Ricky, do you have a Twitter account? And if so will you be tweeting through the Golden Globes? We’ve seen a lot of that lately.

Ricky: No, I closed down about 38 false Ricky Gervais Twitter accounts. But maybe I’ll do one especially for the Golden Globes, that would be fun.

Q: I think people would love to follow along and see what you’re thinking while you’re …

Ricky: Yeah, but I’ve got an iPhone and I’ve got fat fingers so the spelling mistakes would be horrendous. I’ll say the wrong thing, you know, it’d be terrible. I’d insult the world because I’m trying to do it quickly because I’ve got to go out because I don’t know, someone’s having a fight. Kanye West has jumped up and is wrestled …

Q: The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is kind of a small mysterious group I guess. Do you know any of these people?

Ricky: Yeah, I’d like to say a small mysterious group. That’s like some sort of paganists isn’t it? They’re like (unintelligible) by day, but at night they put on goat heads and walk around caves.

Yes, they are an odd bunch, but I like them. I like them because they’re odd and I like them because they’re eccentric. And I like them because they don’t really play the game, which is nice.

I went to do a junket for them, for Ghost Town, and I walked in and there they were all the same faces, all the same 50 people, some of them in the front falling asleep.

And this Japanese lady she said, Ricky, in this film Ghost Town you play a dentist. And I went, yeah. She went, but surely a gynecologist would be better. I went, what do you mean? She went, well you are looking at teeth but you could look at vaginas.

And I went, that’s the weirdest question anyone’s ever asked me. So that’s why I like them.