Ricky Gervais Says Englands Full Of Losers.
Posted on 31. Dec, 2008 by CSS in Comedy, Entertainment, Movies, Quoting
English funnyman Ricky Gervais is promoting the DVD release of Ghost Town, and sat down for a phone interview with CNN to talk class, English humor, and misanthropy. Gervais riffs on the differences between Americans and Brits, and makes a few sweeping generalizations about his countrymen.
“Ghost Town” earned generally good reviews and a decent box office upon its late-summer release, with the Boston Globe’s Ty Burr comparing Gervais to a Hollywood legend. “Someone once said about W.C. Fields that he had the rare ability to despise amusingly. I can imagine no greater compliment than to say that Ricky Gervais seems, at his best, like a young Fields,” Burr wrote.
That kind of misanthrope is the furthest thing from the Gervais of the phone interview, an engaging man who answers questions with patience and thoughtfulness. Asked why British actors play socially unpleasant roles so well, he ponders the question, makes asides to how often British actors play villains and “bumbling fops” and soon offers a disquisition on the differences between British and American culture.
“I think we play the loser well because England’s full of them,” he says. “We celebrate our losers, we celebrate our underdogs, we celebrate those people — [and then] we build them up and then we don’t like them anymore. Whereas Americans celebrate success. Americans are brought up to believe they can be the next president of the United States. British people are told it won’t happen to you. It sounds like a generalization, but it’s true.”
-From CNN.com
