Ricky Gervais is responding to critics of material in his latest special, which includes a description of young cancer patients as “baldy” as well as a derogatory term for having disabilities, saying in a recent interview that they’re “hecklers” who are “faux” offended.
A teaser for the Emmy and BAFTA-winning comedian’s new show Armageddon, which is set to release Christmas Day, previews a section of his special focused on his work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In it, he jokes about how he approaches talking to young cancer patients who request him.
“I’ve been doing video messages recently for terminally ill children — and only if they request it, obviously. I didn’t burst into hospitals and go, ‘Wake up baldy!’ Watch me twerking on TikTok,’” he said. He adds that Make-A-Wish is “great, and they give these dying kids they’re like one wish. If it’s me, I always say yes, and I always start the video the same way. I go, ‘Why didn’t you wish to get better? What, are you fucking r—— as well?’”
Immediately after, Gervais states he’s never actually said that to any Make-A-Wish child. “These are all jokes, OK? I don’t even use that word in real life, the R-word. ‘You just used it, Rick.’ Yeah, in a joke. That’s not real life, is it? I’m playing a role,” he said in a mock conversation. “‘You sounded pretty convincing.’ Yeah! Because I’m good.”
Gervais goes on to compare his work as a comedian to that of other performers, like actors, while again using the derogatory term. “You wouldn’t go up to Sir Anthony Hopkins and go, ‘Saw you in Silence of the Lambs. You a cannibal, are ya?’” Gervais said. “‘No, I was playing a role.’ ‘Seemed pretty convincing. Yeah, he’s good, and I’m good.
“Imagine if I came out here and did things not very well, so you knew I was joking,” he continued. “That’d be fucking r——.”
This week, Gervais tweeted a content warning about the material in the wake of its release. “In this show, I talk about sex, death, paedophilia [sic], race, religion, disability, free speech, global warming, the holocaust, and Elton John. If you don’t approve of jokes about any of these things, then please don’t watch. You wont enjoy it and you’ll get upset.”
The clip featuring the criticized material was released three weeks ago, and has since sparked a Change.org petition requesting Netflix remove the bit from Armageddon. It has garnered over 12,000 signatures as of publication and was launched by a parent of a child with cancer, who writes that they “can’t comprehend how a writer or anyone at Netflix could greenlight such appalling content.”
“The recent skit by Ricky Gervais on Netflix, where he refers to terminally ill children as ‘baldy,’ is not just disrespectful but also deeply hurtful,” the petition reads. “The sheer disrespect and disgust in Ricky Gervais’s jokes about asking a terminally ill child, questioning ‘Why they didn’t wish to get better?,’ and resorting to derogatory language are infuriating. This is not only unfunny, but deeply offensive.”
Speaking to Nihal Arthanayake of BBC Radio 5 Live’s Headliners podcast, Gervais addresses the petition, while also encouraging people to not watch if there are topics they don’t like. “It’s sort of like a reaction. They don’t analyze it. They feel something. That’s what offense is,” he said while discussing the petitioners. “It’s a feeling, you know? That’s why it’s quite meaningless. Because what’s your argument? What do you want me to change?”
He also points to how reactions to a special can shift once the material has left the circle of a live performance full of paying audiences, to a larger platform with a broader audience, like a streamer or a news outlet. “That’s the other thing. I can play to a million people, I won’t get a complaint,” he said. “As soon as it goes on Netflix or as soon as someone writes up a joke that says this is offensive, people go, ‘Oh, that’s offensive.’ They haven’t even heard the joke. They weren’t there. Ignore them. They don’t count. They have no effect on me. They don’t count. They’re hecklers.”
At one point in the interview, Gervais said 99 percent of the criticism he faces is “faux” offense from people who “want to be heard” and would “go the other way if it meant getting noticed. But he concedes, “people are allowed to be offended.”
“They’re allowed to hate it. They’re allowed to not come to the show, but it’s not going to stop me doing what I love, and I’m not going to stop it at the expense of all the other people who love it. No one has to watch this,” he said.
For the comedian, part of the outrage his jokes face stems from people who think “a joke is a window to the comedian’s true soul.”
“It’s just not true. It’s a joke. No one thinks that with puns. These things didn’t really happen. Two blokes didn’t really walk into a pub. A chicken didn’t really cross the road. Just because I deal in realism and taboo subjects, they think I mean it more than I would if I was doing a silly playground joke,” he concludes. “I’ll pretend to be right-wing, I’ll pretend to be left-wing. Whatever’s funniest for the joke — the routine — to get my point across.”
Gervais adds that audiences get offended about different things, and he can’t “survey” thousands of people about “the one thing I shouldn’t joke about.”
“I’d have nothing left, so you’ve just got to do your best,” he tells Arthanayake. “I can defend it if I have to. I don’t think I’ve ever done a joke that I can’t defend. I could explain it. But I’ve just got to stop explaining it because I think we’re over it.”
