Ricky Gervais while promoting his COVID-delayed comedy special SuperNature on Tuesday joked about wondering if the upcoming Netflix show would be ‘out of date’.
The 60-year-old English comedian during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was asked if had to change jokes due to a long touring break because of the coronavirus pandemic.
‘It was always evolving. There was a thought, ‘Will this be out of date?’ And then I realized that when you’re dealing with, you know, famine, AIDS, cancer, Hitler, those dudes are evergreen,’ Gervais quipped.
Netflix special: Ricky Gervais while promoting his COVID-delayed comedy special SuperNature on Tuesday joked about wondering if the upcoming show would be ‘out of date’
‘Yeah, so they’re not going to, they don’t date,’ he added.
‘There is no audience that isn’t going to love that,’ Colbert, 58, said.
‘Boo! Not Hitler! It was a long time ago,’ Gervais said facetiously while laughing.
‘Get over it!,’ Colbert added while also cracking up.
Pandemic project: The 60-year-old English comedian during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was asked if had to change jokes due to a long touring break because of the coronavirus pandemic
Good times: Colbert cracked up while interviewing Gervais on the CBS talk show
Colbert noted that people have to know they will be forced to deal with offensive subjects at one of his shows.
‘Like, you don’t go to a Ricky Gervais concert for just feel good,’ Colbert said.
‘No, they do feel good, and the aim is to make them laugh and they do laugh, but they know that I deal with taboo subjects. But I deal with taboo subjects because I want to take the audience to a place it hasn’t been before and there is a tension,’ Gervais said.
Evergreen comedy: ‘It was always evolving. There was a thought, ‘Will this be out of date?’ And then I realized that when you’re dealing with, you know, famine, AIDS, cancer, Hitler, those dudes are evergreen,’ Gervais quipped
‘And I think people get offended when they mistake the subject of a joke with the actual target, and smart people know you can deal with anything, particularly when dealing with something like irony,’ Gervais.
The Office creator said that he explains irony at the beginning of his new show.
‘Humor gets us over bad stuff. That’s why I laugh about terrifying bad things. You know, that’s why comedians are obsessed with death because, you know, it gets us through. …It’s an inoculation to the real things that are going to happen,’ Gervais said.
Taboo subjects: ‘But I deal with taboo subjects because I want to take the audience to a place it hasn’t been before and there is a tension,’ Gervais said
Gervais started working on SuperNature in 2018 and Colbert also asked how long it usually takes to put together a show.
‘Well, I do like 40 or 50 or even more warm-ups, and then I go on tour, and I might do 150 gigs. So I’d done the warm-up, I started gigging the end of ’18, through ’19 and it stopped the end of February, and started again in July ’21, and I finished it,’ Gervais said.
Gervais also said the show was titled SuperNature because he tries to ‘debunk the supernatural’.
Pandemic delays: Gervais started working on SuperNature in 2018 and Colbert also asked how long it usually takes to put together a show
‘I don’t believe in anything supernatural. I believe that anything that exists is by definition part of nature and is explainable. If not now, but then eventually,’ Gervais said.
‘And SuperNature, because I think that nature is super enough. I don’t need angels and unicorns, I’ve got the duck-billed platypus,’ Gervais said.
‘It’s pretty strange,’ Colbert said.
SuperNature title: ‘I don’t believe in anything supernatural. I believe that anything that exists is by definition part of nature and is explainable. If not now, but then eventually,’ Gervais said while explaining the title of his upcoming Netflix special
‘It’s a fact. I do actually talk quite a lot about animals. I’m fascinated by animals. The duck-billed platypus is a monotreme and it produces eggs and milk. And I say, it could make its own custard,’ Gervais said.
‘It also produces its own poison from a fang at the back of its leg. So it could be a poison custard,’ Colbert added.
‘A poison custard, that’s your next novel,’ Gervais quipped.
SuperNature will be available on Netflix on May 24.
Animal lover: ‘It’s a fact. I do actually talk quite a lot about animals. I’m fascinated by animals. The duck-billed platypus is a monotreme and it produces eggs and milk. And I say, it could make its own custard,’ Gervais said
