RICKY Gervais has revealed he spends just eight minutes a day writing his hit Netflix scripts. The comic says he doesn’t labor over scenes or sit for hours procrastinating at his London home when it comes to penning his award-winning series Afterlife. Ricky, 59, explained: “I potter around, I have more than one thing on […]
RICKY Gervais has revealed he spends just eight minutes a day writing his hit Netflix scripts.
The comic says he doesn’t labor over scenes or sit for hours procrastinating at his London home when it comes to penning his award-winning series Afterlife.
Ricky, 59, explained: “I potter around, I have more than one thing on the go, so my attention span can be eight minutes at a time.
“I look at it like this – if I am writing a script and I have got six months to write, I only have to come up with a couple of minutes a day.
“That couple of minutes on screen is an afternoon’s filming.
“And because I am writing it for me to direct it everything is a bit quicker.”
He said it does sound “lazy” but his new routine has actually taken the pressure off.
He told the Mirror: “It has sort of been a revelation. I am very relaxed now about everything I do.”
Ricky recently shared some good news for the millions who follow his work — he has a new TV show in the pipeline.
The Afterlife creator says he has agreed with Netflix that once he’s finished with the next series of the morbid comedy the streaming giant can have first dibs on his three untitled projects.
He revealed: “I’ve got it down to three totally different ideas and Netflix has already bought it because I told them I want to end After Life now and so they said, ‘OK, we want the next thing’.
“We will just start with the next thing, same deal. But I don’t know which one I’m going to go for. I can’t even think about it yet.
“I have got the outline of three completely different sorts of sitcoms and shows.
“One of them is a sitcom. One is probably more sitcommy than anything I’ve ever done.
“I don’t know what to do because again it will be three years of my life and then you go, ‘Oh, I wish I did the other thing’.”
After Life was such a smash hit for Netfix that it managed to convince Ricky to pen a third series.
He admits it would be much more straightforward to just keep going with the story of downbeat local newspaper reporter Tony, but he wants to challenge himself — despite the fact he could retire tomorrow.
Speaking to Jim and Sam on SiriusXM in December, he said: “It would be so much easier to do a fourth series of After Life, which is the same with all my shows.
“Starting again it’s hard but it’s more exciting, artistically.”
Asked what the plot of his new work is, he added: “I can’t tell you anything about it in case someone rips it off.”
