Ricky Gervais shares photo of first draft of After Life 3 ep1, says he’s “getting there” with the rest

25 July 2020, 12:00 | Updated: 25 July 2020, 12:01

Ricky Gervais at an After Life press conference in 2020. Picture: Vera Anderson/WireImage/Getty

The creator of the hit Netflix show shared an image of a script with his fans on Twitter this week.

Ricky Gervais has revealed he's started writing After Life 3.

Taking to social media this week, the creator, writer and star of the hit Netflix series - which sees the comedian play widower Tony - shared an image of himself holding a script with the frontpage: "AFTER LIFE 3 By Ricky Gervais Episode 1 (First Draft)".

See his image, which he simply captioned: "Cheers".

Cheers 🥂 pic.twitter.com/PHfzXHsO0E
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) July 23, 2020

When a fan asked if he'd finished the first draft of the whole series, Gervais replied: "Just ep 1. The rest are getting there though."

Just ep 1. The rest are getting there though.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) July 23, 2020

Many of his fans were delighted by the news, with a few begging him not to kill off his pet dog Brandy in the show.

Brilliant! Balled my bloody eyes out at the other two. Just don’t let the dog die! There aren’t enough tissues for that! (This is my boy)! pic.twitter.com/eoiTId7EQL
— Yvie (@YvieCa4) July 23, 2020

Do not, I repeat, do not let the dog die! You are not John Wick, you are not In am Legend’, please, don’t let the dog die.
— Darron [DMfotoNI] 📸 (@DMFotoNI) July 24, 2020

I so agree with you guys, my heart literally breaks when a beloved pet or animal dies on a programme, wow it hurts!
— Trudie Mead (@truanne) July 24, 2020

The second season of After Life was released on the streaming platform during lockdown, and Gervais recenttly thanked fans for making it the most watched UK comedy in the world.

Taking to Instagram, Gervais shared an image with the caption: "I have no Emmy campaign for #AfterLife. No press ads, no billboards, nothing. I didn't have any of those things for the launch either, but fans of the show came through for me as usual and made it the most watched British comedy in the world. And that's better than any award."

See his post below:

View this post on Instagram

Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.

A post shared by Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) on Jul 10, 2020 at 4:01am PDT

It's not the first time Gervais has opened up about the overwhelming response to the series.

Speaking to Radio X's Danny Wallace about the impact the show has had, Gervais revealed that he received over 300 letters in the first week of the first season being aired, and he still gets people coming up to him and opening up about their grief now.

"Genuinely. I’ve never had a reaction like it," he mused. "And I don’t just mean the size of the reaction, as that could be a reflection of the fact Netflix has £170 million subscribers worldwide, which is mind-blowing really when you think about It [...] but it was the emotional response.

"My agent on the first week got 300 letters. Now that is really rare, where people are bothering to write letters, and they were telling their own story, so it wasn’t a tweet, it wasn’t a thumbs up."

Watch our interview with him here:

Ricky Gervais talks the impact of After Life

He added: "People come up to me on the street. Usually it’s, ‘I loved the show,’ or ‘Give it to them at the Golden Globes’ and now they come up and approach me and say, ‘I lost my brother three weeks before I watched it and you think, ‘Oh my god. Everyone’s grieving.

"Everyone in the world is grieving about something all the time and the older you get the more you’ve got to grieve about... And I really didn’t think of it as a document about grief.”