Ricky Gervais may be best known for creating hilarious, heartwarming, awkward and award-winning shows like “Extras”;, “Derek”; and “The UK Office”; (or, as Gervais jokes, “”The Office’ as we call it in the UK”) and making celebrities clutch their pearls as host of The Golden Globes, but long before he was doing any of that he worked in radio and it’s a world he revisits in his new film, “Special Correspondents”;, which begins streaming on Netflix on Friday.
“I miss it. I haven’t left radio behind. I think I’ll return to it after all this,” the funnyman tells ET Canada during our exclusive set visit in Toronto. “That’s my retirement,” he jokes. “Ricky Gervais FM. Just me getting up, constantly mic’d live. Just going about my day. Like the “Big Brother’ of radio.”
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Retirement is probably a long way off for Gervais. In addition to working on a David Brent movie (more on that below) the comedian also wrote, directed and stars in “Special Correspondents”;. The comedy tells the story of a super suave radio journalist, played by Eric Bana, and his techie who, after their plans to travel to cover a skirmish in Ecuador fall through, fake their field reports from a room above a restaurant in Queens, New York.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Gervais says of his casting, “we should swap roles and Eric Bana should play the little fat nerd and I should play the romantic lead!” Bana is definitely handsome, but with dramatic roles like “Munich”; and “Troy”; on his resume, he might not be the first actor you think of to headline a comedy. But Gervais says Bana (who did actually did comedy in his native Australia before making it big in the States) is the perfect choice.
“I like people with a depth of acting,” he says. “If you get a really good actor, they can do everything.”
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Well Gervais certainly does everything on “Special Correspondents”; and he calls the project his “most ambitious” to date.
“I’ve directed before, I’ve directed “The Office’ and “Derek’ and other movies but this one’s got a lot more scale,” he explains. “It’s not just two people sitting down chatting being funny… there’s escape sequences, there’s fights, there’s proper action scenes.” And because Ricky Gervais is involved, likely a lot of laughs as well. Watch more with Gervais below.