Gervais on his podcast animation

Ricky Gervais's world famous and record-breaking podcasts are being made into an animated series for HBO. Andrew Dickens caught up with him to find out what he thinks of his cartoon incarnation.

A: Whose idea was the animation?

R: I don’t know. I think fans had been making them anyway, but this was either HBO or Wildbrain, who the creative house; they’re the ones who are doing it. I popped in on them in Los Angeles and, honestly, it’s like a futuristic sweatshop. Fifty people, one doing my little finger, one doing my left eyebrow, I mean it’s incredible. I remember saying to Karl once, because we’d watched Finding Nemo and he’d liked it and because he’s rarely enthusiastic about anything, I told him that for a second on screen, it takes about a week to create and Karl went: “Not worth it, just get a real fish and poke it with a stick”. He’s so enthusiastic about it. I think Wildbrain approached us to see if we wanted to do it and I jumped at the chance, then I pitched it to HBO and pitched it before they’d seen anything just by saying that Karl Pilkington will be the new Homer Simpson, because in the podcast he goes off on these flights of fancy. It was really important to us that they knew this was a real conversation we had, before animation, that this wasn’t made with animation in mind. So it’s almost like the animation’s been done behind our backs, which gives it a whole new edge really - it’s the first realimation. It’s reality, three blokes just talking about stuff, and then they’ve animated it, so when Karl talks about weird monkey stuff in the jungle it suddenly goes to a dream sequence and we’re characters in the jungle. I don’t know who first said let’s make this it into a 13-part animation, probably Wildbrain.

A: Realimation, did you say?

R: I just made that up.

A: Yeah, that’s good. I’ll make sure you get the credit for that.

R: Of course, I’ll be like that DJ who coined the term rock’n’roll.

A: It’ll be very much like that.

R: I can’t remember his name, so whether that’ll be good.

A: He didn’t get a penny for that did he?

R: No, and it was a DJ who came up with Californication as well wasn’t it?

A: Was it? I just thought it was a Red Hot Chilli Peppers album.

R: I heard a story about them wanting to sue the programme, and then someone came forward and said “You didn’t coin that phrase, I did”, and he was a DJ so they were arguing over who came up with the phrase Californication, but you can be my witness that the first time realimation was said was by Ricky Gervais.

A: Well I’m recording this.

R: November 2009 (laughing).

Continued on the next page