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Ricky Gervais is ready for Netflix’s “Alley Cats.”
“I hope you like cats. And swearing,” he told the audience at Annecy. The viewers serenaded him before the screening of the first two episodes, singing Happy Birthday.’
In the show, the comedian and creator of “The Office” and “After Life” decided to turn his attention to British feral cats. Gervais explained why he wanted to try his hand at animation.
“Many reasons. I don’t have to do hair and makeup, or get up early. I can just sit in a chair and do this forever.” Also, cats are “perfect creatures.” “They are so independent and so tiny. They think they are lions,” he laughed.
“But it’s a sitcom. I don’t even like the term ‘adult animation,’ because it’s a family of cats – just like in a sitcom. It’s recorded very differently to average [animation]. We were in a room at the same time, firing.”
“You write it and then you just play with it. It’s just fun. There are no restrictions.”
The hilarious new series had the audience in stitches.
“Sometimes I would think: Can we do it?!”
He also wanted the actors to keep things real when voicing the characters.
“I told them: ‘Don’t be ‘funny.” Everything is realistic – apart from the cats talking. Think of them as people, sitting on a couch and watching TV.”
Looking at a photo of the team at work, he said: “They look like a posh orchestra, but they are about to say ‘cunt’.”
Gervais also treated the audience to his very first drawing of one of the cats, Gus. They still “left his attitude.”
“Sitcom is about the characters. if you love them, you watch them do nothing. I could watch Homer Simpson read something for hours. I told everyone: ‘If people will love these cats, we’ve done it’.”
He added: “The fact that someone is animating that absolute drivel is already funny.”
“I don’t know how we fucking did it. It came out not only as I wanted it in my head, but it seemed… easy. It was fun! There was one thing we had three goes at – there’s dancing at the end, and we had to figure out what’s the best way for these cats to dance.”
“You don’t have to do much to make it slightly different.”
It was a “big learning curve” for Gervais.
“I had to learn fast and kept everything in my wheelhouse.”
He also talked about using “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” by The Smiths in one of the scenes.
“My favorite bit in the craft is: How can I get emotions across?”
He noted: “This song is so existential and uplifting. Everything I’ve done is slightly existential and it’s exaggerated with cats, because they have such short lives. Then we had to get permission, so I had to write a nice letter to Morrissey.”
“I like pathos. With any fiction, you create your own heroes and villains as a roleplay for your soul. I’ve never been interested in ‘oh, that was a great dolly shot.’ Do I believe the actor? Do I care about these characters? Everything you do, there’s got to be a bigger picture. Otherwise, people don’t care.”
Death is present in the show, “on purpose.”
“I want people to want them to survive. I just want them to love the cats,” he noted.
“I should also say how great Netflix is, because I want a second season. They commissioned it based on: ‘There are cats and they swear a lot.’ ‘What happens?’ ‘Nothing happens’.”
The show is “very British,” but only “on a trivial level.”
“‘The Office’ was supposed to be British, too. We put a stapler in jelly – in the French version it was cheese. It translates. I’ve always written about humanity. I like being honest about it. Drama hides a hero’s flaws; comedy exaggerates it. It says: ‘We are all idiots.’ I love humanity and I love bringing that out.”
