What would comedy be without David Brent? Without the employees of Wernham Hogg? Without The Office<\/em>, and everything that came after? Frankly, it doesn\u2019t bear thinking about. And 25 years later, it\u2019s still a TV masterpiece, perfectly calibrated with knockout comedy, heartfelt romance, and everything in between.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n To mark the 25th anniversary, Pilot TV<\/em>\u2019s Boyd Hilton sat down with Ricky Gervais himself to look back on the legacy of The Office<\/em>, and how it all came to be.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n PILOT: When you were making<\/strong> The Office<\/em><\/strong> all those years ago, what were your ambitions for it?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n RICKY GERVAIS:<\/strong> Honestly, I just thought, \u201cMaybe some of the people that like some of the things that I like on BBC Two will like this\u201d. I thought I’d get a percentage of Partridge<\/em> and Monty Python<\/em> and Fawlty Towers<\/em> fans; so while I was the new kid on the block, I thought people would recognise what we were trying to do, and I thought, \u201cIf you like this sort of stuff or if you like Spinal Tap<\/em>, some of you might like this\u201d. I thought we might get a million people watching it on BBC Two, and they might let us do another series. It was never, \u201cThis is going to be a massive hit\u201d. Let’s not rewrite history. The first episode went out on a Monday night, at 9.30pm, on the 9th July on BBC Two, 2001. I remember the first scheduler put it at 10 o’clock, against the second series of Big Brother<\/em>. I went, \u201cYou are mental. You are fucking crazy. We will get killed \u2013 that is our audience, people who work in an office, so will they watch a new series about an office, or Big Brother<\/em>?\u201d So they moved it to 9.30pm.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n When you were writing the first series, did you have any inkling it was going to be something special?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I wanted it to be something special, and the fake documentary thing was a tantalising part of that. We made it seem so real. We put restrictions on ourselves to not break the documentary rules. Later I realised we probably stuck to those rules more than real documentaries. You know how even real documentary crews say, \u201cCan you do that again? We have a camera waiting\u201d, well we didn\u2019t even do that. We invented the mic getting left on and people getting caught out in front of the cameras by accident. So I think the extent to which we took the faux documentary form so seriously made it feel real and special. And you don’t need to change things that much; you don’t need to be ultra-innovative for people to go, \u201cOh, that’s different\u201d; it can be a tiny amount different and seem really<\/em> different. Of course, I wasn’t the first to do fake documentary \u2013 I got that from Christopher Guest and those guys.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Were you confident your performance as David Brent would underline that realism?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I wasn’t a trained actor, and I hadn’t gone to drama college or anything, so I didn’t know any of the rules, but I knew what real life felt like, so I just did that. And that helped make it real. I wasn’t the first to act naturally \u2013 most indie films and arthouse films had very naturalistic acting. They weren’t like Hollywood. It wasn’t the first thing with no stars in it, but that was quite important. In fact, I remember when I was doing [Channel 4 series] Meet Ricky Gervais<\/em>, I didn’t do the second series because I didn’t want to become too famous. I wanted people to watch The Office<\/em> and think, \u201cIs this a real documentary?\u201d, just for the first two minutes, at least.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n But I was very confident with the character. I knew David Brent in my bones. I\u2019d known him for years, from when I worked in a normal job and I\u2019d do impressions of the boss getting things wrong and when we shot our own little Brent pilot in half a day, I went back to where I worked. I worked in an office for nine years, which is where the observations come from, and where the realism comes from. I felt confident because even if didn’t know about set design and locations, I could make sure everything looked authentic and as it did in real life. I was trying to emulate real life. So, all those things came together, and I knew what I wanted to see on telly.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Can you talk about the casting. How easy was it to find those people like Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook and Lucy Davis?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I was slightly naive there because they were based loosely based on people I’ve known or met. I thought I could just find the actor that looked like the person he was based on, but then you’re just restricting yourself. So, the guy who Finchy was based on was pretty close. I mean, we just looked and looked, and we found Ralph Ineson and he was great.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Gareth was based on a guy I went to school with, when I was 14. I talked about him before in my stand-up. I won\u2019t say his real name, but it wasn\u2019t Gareth. But he was in the TA [Territorial Army], and he’d say things like, \u201cWhen you’re captured by cannibals and they’re boiling you they show you pornographic pictures, so you get an erection and there’s more meat\u201d, and he believed these things. But he was sort of like a sporty, rugger sort of guy who fantasised about getting into the army. So I was looking for someone who looked like they could get in the SAS. And then Mackenzie Crook walked in, and it was even funnier because now it was a guy who weighed about seven stone who looked like a baby bird, talking about killing a man, so it was funnier.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019d met Mackenzie on The 11 O’Clock Show<\/em> and I met Martin Freeman on a sketch show called Bruiser<\/em> and also [Ricky\u2019s partner] Jane had worked with him so I was aware of him. But again, the guy he was based on was actually sort of quite a chubby, Norm-from-Cheers<\/em> sort of guy who would just sit there and make wry comments. He was a bit of a slob. But then Martin came in and did it with much more verve and affection. You look and look and look, and you find the best person for the job, and that might not be who was in your head, but you realise that might be even funnier. And that was true of all of them: we looked and looked and we got down to final recalls, until you go, \u201cThat’s the one\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n They also had to do it like they haven’t learned lines, because it was so important to be naturalistic. Some people thought The Office<\/em> was ad-libbed. And that’s a testament to the actors, making it look like they came up with it off the top of their heads. Everyone gets it now, but to say to actors back then, don’t be funny, don\u2019t widen your eyes, don’t overreact, don’t mumble and so on and they\u2019re like, \u201cYou’re telling me to stop acting?\u201d Well, sort of, yes.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The pop culture references \u2013 like Brent saying \u2018Wassup!\u2019, and talking about his comedy heroes and so on \u2013 felt unusual at the time. How important were those elements?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I think the best observational comedy is always about getting things off your chest. But what I never talked about at the time, and I think rarely since, was that I also wanted The Office<\/em> to be a comedy about comedy, because I grew up loving comedy and sitcoms and I always thought it was a pipe dream to actually make one. When you’re a kid, when you\u2019re a working-class kid, you don’t think, \u201cI\u2019ll do a sitcom one day\u201d, you think, \u201cI\u2019ll watch a thousand sitcoms and love them\u201d. You don’t think, \u201cI could do that\u201d, and I never really thought like that. I think the first time I thought like that was when I thought I could get a good job, maybe I could become a vet or something, but I never thought, \u201cI know what I\u2019ll do. I think I’ll become an international comedian!\u201d And I’ve still never tried to do that. I’ve never had a five-year plan. When I was a comedian, I was already a comedian before I realised I was a comedian. [laughs]<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Did you ever have that imposter syndrome as a working-class guy co-creating your own sitcom?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Yeah, well, well a couple of things there. First, I was 36 or 37 at the time, so, I didn’t think that I was an apprentice or anything. I thought, \u201cHow hard can it be?\u201d I knew what I wanted to see on telly, and I wanted to make a fake docusoap, so I knew what I wanted. It was an easy thing to start with \u2013 it was emulating a documentary style, it was one camera, and I knew how I wanted the actors to act. I also knew that I wasn’t taking someone else’s script and panicking about that; instead, I’d been living with it for two years, and I was in it, so I could control the pace. Also, I didn’t have huge ambitions. I didn’t think, \u201cI\u2019ve got to make this so good that it wins all the BAFTAs and stuff\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Did you feel pressure to get it right because you might not get the opportunity again?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Maybe deep down, but it wasn’t a big risk. It didn’t cost anything. I think the first series was 140 grand an episode, which was a good, standard budget for the time, and it went out in the summer, and no one cared about TV in the summer. As I say, it went out on a Monday night, and no one cared what was on a Monday night! So it was low risk, low pressure. And I couldn’t believe my luck. We didn’t know what’s going to happen. But it didn’t matter. I think the first episode got about 1.5 million viewers. And I was happy with that. And it got recommissioned during the run, or soon after. And then they repeated series one, and it got two and a half million. So that said something. I was conscious of the wave, the turn. A lot of people who had slagged it off started changing their minds. I remember [TV critic] Garry Bushell saying, \u201cI\u2019ve got to say I was wrong about The Office<\/em>\u201d. And that’s when I thought, \u201cThis is happening now\u201d. And what I said earlier about that slight innovation… you suffer from slight innovation, because people go, \u201cWhat’s this? I haven\u2019t seen this before. I don’t like it\u201d. That’s why every romantic comedy from Hollywood is the same as the one before. It\u2019s why before you watch a rom-com they show you the trailer for another rom-com which is the same, assuming you\u2019ll go and watch it. So, you suffer a bit if you make your rom-com \u2013 or your sitcom \u2013 just slightly different, but eventually you overtake that problem.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was quite a slow burn, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Yeah. It\u2019s interesting that everything I’ve ever loved, I didn’t like much the first time, and everything I loved straight away, I don’t like anymore. It’s like with banal boyband pop music \u2013 you love that tune the first time you hear it, but you hate it in a week, but with a new Radiohead album, on first hearing you\u2019ll be thinking, \u201cWhat the fuck is this? What the fuck is going on?\u201d, but then it gets into your head, you start to love it. All the things I’ve ever loved, I didn’t like at first, from Radiohead to David Bowie to The Simpsons, and The Wire. With The Sopranos, I stopped half-way through the first episode then someone said I should watch it again. So, I watched it again and loved it. I did feel that that was happening with The Office<\/em> on a much smaller scale.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Do you ever think, \u201cWhat if it never got commissioned?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Well, I actually thought, \u201cIf this doesn’t work out \u2013 fine. I’ll do something else\u201d. It didn’t bother me, because it’s only in retrospect when you realise, \u201cOh my god. Imagine if you hadn’t done The Office<\/em>\u201d, or you\u2019d done something else or you took the other job, but everyone can think that about life. There was no master plan. There was no pressure. It was more like, \u201cI just can’t believe my luck, so I\u2019d better do it right\u201d. There was a certain amount of that as well, I suppose because I was a failed pop star 15 years before, so I thought now it\u2019s about hard work and dedication and getting it right. I realised that my mistake when I was trying to be a pop star was, I should have been trying to be a musician. So, I knew this was about directing it, taking charge, doing it right. Whatever happens, it\u2019s about doing it right, so that was my philosophy. I couldn\u2019t believe my luck, so I wanted to get all those things off my chest. I’d been watching telly for 30 years. I knew the character inside out. It’s starts with Brent and then you have to build the backdrop of what it\u2019s like working in an office.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Brent could have been anything. He could have been a motivational speaker, he could have a marketing manager, he could have been an officer in the army, he could have worked in a bank. He could have been anything where he wanted to be famous for being himself. And that was the biggest influence, apart from real life, those docusoaps in the \u201890s when ordinary people got their 15 minutes of fame. And that’s what Brent was like: he wanted a piece of that.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n How important was the romantic element?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Crucial. I think I sort of stole that from the Marx Brothers. When I was a kid, they used to be on late Saturday night and my older brothers and sisters used to get together and have a curry, and they used to watch the Marx Brothers. So I was exposed to these characters and I loved them. I thought they were amazing and I thought Groucho was the wittiest man in the world. And I probably didn’t even get the nuance of him being a loser. Then I read about how they started in Vaudeville and they ran around being insane and funny and all that. Then this producer told them he could make them massive stars and keep all that madcap comedy stuff, but he wanted to put in a love story as well. Because if you are crazy for an hour and a half, people get sick of you. But if you’re trying to get two lovers together, people let you off. So that was the idea, really, that amongst all this madness of David Brent trying to be famous, Gareth being an idiot etc, there were two ordinary people: Tim and Dawn.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The other influence on that was Laurel and Hardy, where you\u2019re either a Stan or an Ollie and I’ve used this forever, because there\u2019s a Stan and Ollie in everything. Sometimes there’s multiples of Stan and Ollie and sometimes they even swap, and Ollie is a staple of comedy: an ordinary guy trying to do something he\u2019s not equipped to do. He thinks he can; Ollie is a bit pretentious; he thinks he’s amazing. Stan is an idiot, and he doesn’t mind being an idiot. It’s the satisfied fool. And so, in our show, among all these fools, there were Tim and Dawn, two ordinary people who knew their lot.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n It felt like a stealth rom-com. Now it\u2019s impossible to imagine it without that element.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Well, the other thing that I liked about it was that it was arbitrary. When you go to work in an office, you don’t choose the other seven people you work with \u2013 they’re just there. So, it wasn\u2019t ever going to be a zany sitcom but Tim and Dawn make it grounded. They make it matter. The other thing is that comedy is an intellectual pursuit. And unless you see something emotional, it doesn’t really matter. That’s why in sitcoms, anything can happen and it can go back to square one every week. The tricky bit is to change it. And most sitcoms don’t. I remember when the scripts were written, and [producer] Jon Plowman said, \u201cDon’t worry too much about the order they go out in\u201d, and I went, \u201cNo, we have to worry about the order otherwise it won’t work\u201d. And he said, \u201cOh okay then\u201d because he was so used to sitcoms where the order of episodes didn\u2019t matter. Our show doesn\u2019t just go back to square one. And I got that from The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin<\/em>. That’s the first sitcom I saw that was a developing story, and it really, really changed week on week. So all those things, all those tiny little things: you beg, steal and borrow from all the things you loved and hated, and you just put it in the pot.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Was it important to have real jeopardy for Brent represented by Neil (Patrick Baladi) wielding power over him?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Yes. So, here’s my theory of sitcom: you need to be trapped in some way, right? You need to need that job, or you need to be tempted \u2014 so Tim’s there because he likes Dawn. I think there’s always a family element, either literal or in Bilko where the army is his family. And you need an external threat. That can be a nasty neighbour or in Only Fools And Horses<\/em> it’s the criminals or the police who are on to him, with The Office<\/em> it was the Swindon lot but mainly, yes, it was Neil, Brent\u2019s nemesis, a man who was slightly better at everything than him \u2013 slightly younger, slightly more handsome, slightly funnier, slightly more popular.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n You don’t need much. You don’t need a big, convoluted plot, you don’t need to know about paper, or about business, you just need to know that these people might lose their jobs: done. No one goes, \u201cWell it was a shit job anyway\u201d. No, Brent loves the job. It just needs to have some sort of threat. And then you just don’t need to go into too much. You just need to remind people where they are, and I tried to make everything middle: middle management, middle-age, middle England, middle everything. Nothing fancy. And you calibrate everything down. So, you don’t need to have a kidnapping or a siege, or the terrorist attack or anything surreal, or ghosts. So, if anything slightly good happens, it’s really good. It’s a big victory. Same with the romance. Tim and Dawn knew they were being filmed and she had a boyfriend, so they couldn’t declare their love, they couldn’t kiss. Now, just brushing past him or him looking over at her, and, and then the way she looked up: that became massive, because it’s all relative.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n As well as the comedic stuff, it\u2019s also an emotional show from the start, right? In episode one, you make Dawn cry\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Yes, well the scene where we make Dawn cry is a vehicle to show that Brent thinks he’s the life and soul of the party and everyone loves him. And then when the cameras are rolling and he tries to show the camera, it doesn’t work. With Brent, it\u2019s all about the blind spot. We’re laughing at him because of the chasm between how he thinks of himself, and what other people think of him. That was really important and that’s where the talking head bits came into it, so he could say, \u201cThey love me out there\u2026 it\u2019s like Dead Poets Society<\/em>\u201d, and he goes out there and no one\u2019s really bothered. It was the beginning of seeing his narcissism where he\u2019s thinking, \u201cLove me. Give me money and airtime, please make me famous!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I remember watching The X Factor<\/em> and people crying, saying, \u201cI want this so much!\u201d I’m going, \u201cWhat’s that got to do with me? How am I involved? Go and get a job then!\u201d So, it was the beginning of that sort of, \u201cIf people would just know me, they would love me\u201d scenario. Brent wanted to be able to walk into a room and have people say to him, \u201cYou are the funniest, wittiest man I’ve ever met. You’re also a philosopher\u201d. He wanted to be loved. And I still say his worst mistake \u2013 because it was about the workplace and how you act at work as well \u2013 was mistaking popularity for respect. And that’s what’s wrong with selling people this lie of fame. Now everyone’s famous \u2014 everyone’s famous on Instagram. So, everyone’s got abs, and they\u2019re standing next to a boat they don’t really own. And there are people going, \u201cI haven\u2019t got a boat or abs\u201d, and I want to say [shouting], \u201cNOR HAVE THEY! Stop worrying about it!\u201d [laughs]<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The scene where Tim takes off his mic when he and Dawn go into the room and we don\u2019t know what they\u2019re saying, did you write dialogue for that?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Yeah, that was all written, all planned. I remember one of the producers saying, \u201cYou might need an alternative shot \u2014 this might not work.\u201d So, I just thought \u201cWell, it definitely will now, I\u2019ll make sure of it\u201d. And it worked great because it’s a tiny moment. Tim saying, \u201cShe said \u2018no\u2019 by the way\u201d. But because everything was quiet and there was digital silence, it made it big. I think that’s another thing that I’ve always tried to do is to make the ordinary extraordinary. If you start with the extraordinary, you’ve got nowhere to go and then anything can happen. I remember when I was a kid I watched Superman<\/em>, and as soon as he could go round the earth the wrong way and go back in time I thought, \u201cWell that’s it!\u201d There was no point watching after that.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMilligan, Cleese, Everett,<\/strong> Sessions<\/em>****\u201d: Did you have different options for that line?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I think John Sessions asked David Baddiel if we were taking the piss. But we weren\u2019t taking the piss. There is a certain amount of bathos to it but only because those are absolutely revered people and whoever you say next will be funny. And the reason I chose \u201cSessions\u201d was because the word itself \u201cSessions\u201d is funny \u2014 it\u2019s a great name to say. I wanted him to know that. Sometimes it was just fun, saying things like that, for example Brent listing the local towns: Burfield, Tadleigh, Winersh. He\u2019s saying these ordinary things like they’re meaningful because to him they are.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Brent\u2019s dance: do you remember actually thinking about putting those moves together?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Yes I do. Again, it was something I used to do to get a laugh. I used to take the piss out of those dancers you\u2019d see on variety shows on TV, like the Wayne Rogers Connection, and when I saw them, I would just think, \u201cWhy would you ever do that? Why would you ever dance like that?\u201d And I just thought it’d be funny to do that, to be this man thinking he is a good dancer, and then you have to work back from that and the more you work back and put structure around it, the funnier it is. And what better than for Neil to do a really good dance, and then Brent panic and think, \u201cI’ve got to show them. I will do anything. I will do ANYTHING!\u201d And it’s not a joke as such, but it’s such a climax to a man desperate to win. Same as him saying \u201cI think there’s been a rape up there!\u201d That is not a punchline to a joke. But when you realise what context it’s in, it’s really funny. He will say that in a roleplay, just to win the roleplay, and there was never meant to be a winner, but he had to win the roleplay, so he came up with that!<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n And that scene, that whole thing came up because I used to have to do management training when I worked in an office. And the first couple of years we would have a professional come in, like Rowan in The Office<\/em>, and we\u2019d all sit around and do these really good things. But then there were cutbacks, and they said they were going to do their own management training that year. So some of the managers got together and they tried to do it, and they couldn’t. I remember me at the back with someone watching these two other managers do it, and they did a role play of a complaint at a hotel. And this is what they did: The first one said, \u201cRight I\u2019d like to make a complaint,\u201d and the other one said, \u201cI don’t care. Why don\u2019t you get lost?\u201d Then the other one says, \u201cI’m never coming here again\u201d. Then they said they were going to show the right way to do it. And one of them says, \u201cWell, what seems to be the problem, sir?\u201d \u201cThis isn\u2019t working.\u201d \u201cOh well I\u2019ll change it right away sir and can I give you a free night here?\u201d \u201cYes, thank you very much.\u201d And I’m thinking that\u2019s not always possible! You could just give them a thousand pounds! So what you\u2019re saying is, \u201cDon’t be an arsehole.\u201d Is that what you\u2019re saying? We laughed about that amongst ourselves, and it must have just gone into my brain and then 10 years later I\u2019m using it in the training day episode.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n What was the editing process like?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n It was key, particularly because we were shooting a fake documentary. The Office<\/em> was coming in at 45 minutes each episode, and with the first series it broke my heart that we had to lose 15 minutes. Now I relish it. Because I know what’s left is good. There was this old ad for John West salmon which went, \u201cIt\u2019s the salmon John West rejects that makes John West salmon the best\u201d! And I remember thinking, \u201cYes if you throw away all this stuff, even if it’s good, that means what’s left is even better\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n What did you learn while you were making<\/strong> The Office<\/em>****?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n It was a learning process and I’m still learning, I’m still trying other things, but what I’ve learned that never changes comes down to: what are you telling us? With all the innovations, with all the technology, Avatar<\/em> and CGI where anything can happen, what doesn’t change is one human being telling another human being what sort of day they’ve had. That will never change. What’s important is character. It\u2019s character every time. The advice I give to new writers is: show me who are we watching. I need to love or hate this person within five to 10 pages. Just let me see him get up and make breakfast \u2014 don’t say a word, just let me see him get up. How does he look at a letter? How does he look at the dog? Who is this this person? Why are we watching?<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n **What was the atmosphere like on set?**I might have mucked around and been really annoying because it amused me [laughs]. But now I will say, if I’m the one that corpses and fucks my lines up and mucks around, it does lighten the atmosphere. I think having a miserable set is not worth it. I don’t want to win awards for the best show ever, where it was the worst experience of my life. Because real life is still more important than a sitcom. So I wanted to enjoy every minute. I demand that it’s fun. Everyone else would probably say, \u201cIt was a fucking nightmare \u2013 he ruined my best takes!\u201d The actors make me laugh, and people would say, \u201cWhy did you laugh \u2013 you wrote that line\u201d. And I say, \u201cYeah but they did it really well!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n So yeah, I would cough just before someone\u2019s take and ruin it. Even though I admit it was for my amusement to put them off and make Martin Freeman angry, I still say it made the day better. And we came up with something that we wouldn’t have otherwise. There’s a little bit of alchemy, just before a take or at the end of the take, where that little moment might make it funnier. So yeah, I’m still a big fat annoying child, because I can’t believe my luck. It’s still the best job in the world, so why would anyone complain?<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Was Finchy created to show Brent isn\u2019t<\/strong> that<\/em><\/strong> bad?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Yes, that’s exactly right. You think Brent’s a bit of a twit, but he’s not a bully, he\u2019s not a nasty person. He just wants to be one of the gang. He doesn’t hurt people. He only hurts himself. And that was very important. I correct the people who say, \u201cSo what’s it like playing the boss from hell?\u201d I say, \u201cHe’s not a boss from hell. He is a bit confused. He wants to be loved. He’s been told that being famous will sort it all out. He\u2019s quite a sweet guy, really. I’d have a drink with him\u201d. I wanted people to know that, but it takes a long time, because he was in charge, and that’s what’s funny as well. I think you have to be trapped in a certain way, in a sitcom and it has to be either literal, like you’re in the army like Bilko<\/em>, or you’re in prison like Porridge<\/em>, or you\u2019re economically trapped or emotionally trapped like Steptoe & Son<\/em>. When I was a kid, I thought, \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t he leave home?\u201d Well, he\u2019s got to look after his dad. You don’t realise that until you\u2019re older. So you’ve got to be trapped. That’s why you’re there.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n How much pressure did you have over the second series?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n We did feel the pressure about what to do for the second season. And I remember thinking \u201cWell, we didn’t know what to expect for the first, so we shouldn’t know what to expect for the second. And don’t just second guess anyone. Just do something else, just do what you think you like, not what you thought they<\/em> liked, because you\u2019ll get it wrong\u201d. It was easier to write series two for the cast because we knew what Martin could do and what Lucy could do and we could work in their physicality, putting things in about their hair and the way they walk, and it was fantastic.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Why do you think it resonated so much?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I think there’s lots of reasons why it resonated. I think it resonated because everyone has that sort of day. What\u2019s that saying? \u201cDrama is real life with the boring bits taken out\u201d. Well, I was more fascinated with the boring bits being left in. What do you do with the boring bits? The boring bits are watching a clock and talking to people you wouldn’t really want to talk to. That’s funnier to me than having a great day. You know, all those little things. You know when you watch Friends<\/em>, Chandler\u2019s making great jokes, and everyone’s laughing. What happens when someone’s not as funny? What happens when you think you’re funny, and you do a joke and no one laughs? Let’s have a look at that vacuum. I’ve never been one to be embarrassed but I’m embarrassed for other people. If I’m in a group of people and we’re all laughing, and someone makes a crap joke, and no one laughs, I want to go back in time. I want to go, \u201cWhatever you do in a minute, don’t do that joke, please.\u201d So I do like honing in on the shittier bits of life \u2013 the boring bits, the unfunny bits, the say-the-wrong thing bits, the failure \u2013 all those things excited me a lot more, and I still say that about stand-up. No one wants to hear what a great day you’ve had; no one wants to see what a great holiday you had. They want to know he got drunk and had a fight with the air steward!<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Did you get many notes from the BBC?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n We really didn’t. Just little things. I remember thinking whenever I walked into the BBC or on to the set, that I had a big flaming sign on me saying, \u201cGet away, get away from me!\u201d and I think that’s because I was in my late thirties and I was thinking, \u201cJust let me fail, just let me fucking fail, right?\u201d I remember the first meeting with [producer] Jon Plowman after he\u2019d seen the little demo video we made of Brent. He really liked it but he had one question: \u201cIf David Brent is so bad at his job, how has he kept it?\u201d And I said, \u201cLet’s have a walk around the BBC, shall we?\u201d And he laughed and said, \u201cGood point\u201d. And that was it. I think that was the only note. There was a time when we were in the edit and I was told \u201cOh they didn’t like this\u201d, and I said, \u201cOkay, send it back to them with a note saying, \u2018How’s this?, but don’t change anything\u201d, and the reply came back saying, \u201cThanks \u2013 much better.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n What is your favourite episode?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n I think it\u2019s episode four [\u2018Training\u2019]. So much came from that episode. A lot happens. Tim blurts out his love for Dawn, and he can’t take it back and now everyone knows. Brent goes ballistic to be the centre of attention: he gets the guitar out and Freelove Freeway came out of it. \u201cWe used to have a political reggae song called Equality Street\u201d was an ad lib on the day, and then when I did 10 years of Brent for Comic Relief, I thought, I should write that song. And that became the seed of Life On The Road<\/em>. So a lot came from episode four. I love David Brent being a failed musician as well, which touched upon my own history of being a failed pop star.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Did you always have in mind that you\u2019d stop at two series and then have that emotional climax of the Christmas specials?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Well, I’ve always written the first series like it could be the last. Just in case, because you never know. I could get hit by a bus. So we could have concluded it there after one series and it would have been a very short-lived sitcom. But no, I always wanted to do two series. I knew that Fawlty Towers<\/em> was the most highly regarded sitcom in the world, and it had done two. I know there are great sitcoms that have done 300 episodes, but they’ve got 24 producers and 92 writers, and I never wanted to do that. So when it came to our auteured, cottage industry of a show, 12 episodes was good, and I always thought the Christmas special was a bonus. But I knew that would be it. But I think it’s a good template. I don’t think it has to be that way. And I think a certain amount of it is because I want to do something else. You don\u2019t want to hang around too much, because people think they want a fourth series or fifth series, but they don’t know what they want, really. And I think it is easier is with 50 people involved, but I don’t think you can keep the interest or the quality up much over two or three series.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n How big a moment was Brent telling Finchy to \u201cFuck off\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n It was big because of how small the world was. How many times do you tell people to fuck off \u2013 like once a week. It’s not a big deal, but it was for Brent because Finchy was his hero, his abusive hero. So it was massive. Then Brent met a girl who said \u201cBe yourself,\u201d and it was a big victory because Brent suddenly thought, \u201cBe yourself? That\u2019s interesting! That’s an interesting concept!\u201d Tim and Dawn: that’s the biggest. But again, not particularly big in filmic terms. When you think of people getting shot to death in The Godfather<\/em>, people going into space, we just have this girl deciding she’s leaving her fianc\u00e9. But in our world, that\u2019s massive. And we don’t know what happened. We don’t know they live happily ever after. Because no one knows. And I got that from two films really: one, ![\"The](\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/the-office-at-25-ricky-gervais-looks-back-on-the-iconic-series-that-changed-comedy.jpg\")
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