WATCH: Ricky Gervais on why he'll never complain about being in lockdown

26 April 2020, 12:00 | Updated: 26 April 2020, 12:01

Ricky Gervais talks about life in lockdown

Watch the After Life creator explain to Radio X's Danny Wallace why he refuses to complain about his life during the pandemic.

Ricky Gervais has revealed how he's spending his days during lockdown and why he'll never complain about it.

The After Life creator is known for criticising celebrities during his Golden Globe monologues and he recently blasted stars who complained about having to isolate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Now, speaking to to Radio X's Danny Wallace on The Important Broadcast, he said: "You’ll never hear me complain. Not when there’s nurses doing 40-hour shifts."

Briefly, mocking Gal Gadot's viral video which saw her and a selection of A-List celebrities cover John Lennon's Imagine, he quipped: "I’d like to sing Imagine to you just to show you that I’m just like you."

Asked what he's been doing to pass the time, he said: "The only thing that really was affected in my working life was the fact that gigs were postponed... which is fine. We’ll do those later when people can enjoy it. It’s not the worst thing in the world to have a gig postponed..."

Ricky Gervais reveals "rare" and "emotional" responses he's received from After Life fans

Ricky Gervais explains to Radio X's Danny Wallace why he'll never complain about being on lockdown. Picture: Radio X

He added: "After Life was finished, which was very lucky, and I was starting PR anyway, so I’m probably not any more or less productive.

"I think people think when you write something you get up, you have your coffee, you sit by your typewriter like in the movies, you work and then you look at your watch and it’s 8 o'clock. It doesn’t happen like that. Most of it is admin. I get to think of something when I go for a run or you’re on a transatlantic flight and your brain stops thinking about all this nonsense and you can actually be creative.

"So I reckon my creative bursts are four or five two-minute bursts a day... but if you come up with two minutes, that’s amazing!"

Gervais also talked about the humbling responses he's received for his After Life series since it began.

"Genuinely. I’ve never had a reaction like it," he said. "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."

The Office creator 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.”

After Life 2 is available on Netflix now

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