Ricky Gervais: I'm trying to get 'cancelled' with new stand-up show Armageddon
Ricky Gervais has said he wants to get "cancelled" for his new stand-up comedy show.
The star of hit Netflix sitcom After Life is calling his next live tour Armageddon and joked he is treating it like the end of his comedy career.
Gervais told Heat magazine: "I’m treating it like it’s my last one ever. It won’t be, but I want to put everything into it. I want to try and get cancelled. No, I just want to go all out there.”
He added: "It's about the end of the world and how we’re going to destroy ourselves for lots of reasons, whether it’s media stupidity, or the actual end of the world."
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The 60-year-old star of The Office has said many times that he believes no subject should be off-limits when it comes to jokes.
He told Wall Street Journal magazine recently: “There’s no subject you shouldn’t joke about. It depends on the joke. As a journalist, there’s nothing you wouldn’t write about. It depends on your angle, right? I think a lot of this pious offence comes from people mistaking the target of the joke with the subject.”
“You can joke about anything, but it depends on what the actual target is. If you use irony and people see that at face value and think you’re saying one thing but you’re actually saying the opposite,”
Gervais has previously said that 'cancelling' jokes is a matter of free speech.
He told Yahoo UK: “Freedom of speech is not being free of any consequences, it’s being free of prosecution, and no one should be prosecuted for a joke. Now your employers might have something different to say, but a joke is a joke.”
The Extras star went on: “What does annoy me is the hypocrisy of depending on whose side that person. The merits of a joke and principle in general should not be swayed by whose side that person is on politically... Either jokes are allowed or they’re not, you can’t pick and choose what’s okay to joke about.”
Meanwhile, Gervais recently admitted he won't rule out making another series of his hit comedy After Life if the money is on the table.
The comedian had said the new third series of After Life would be the end of the show, but pushed on whether it was absolutely the last he told BBC Radio 5's Headliners podcast: "Well, I can't say that. I can't say that about anything."
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He added of making another season: "It is tempting. And it makes no sense to end it, It makes absolutely no sense.
"It's the most popular it's ever been. You get paid more as the seasons go along. It makes no sense at all other than I think it's the right decision artistically."
Gervais famously ended his sitcom The Office after just two series and a Christmas special, only to revisit the character of David Brent again 10 years later in 2013, and to make a spin-off movie in 2016.
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