Ricky Gervais on wanting fame for the wrong reasons, David Brent and a near-religious experience

Ricky Gervais is at home in London, wearing a “Tonight Show” T-shirt, showered following a round of exercise and settled with a beer. There’s no reason not to believe he’s actually at home: He’s visible via the magic of Skype video. But having just seen “Special Correspondents,” the movie he adapted, directed and starred in, there might be cause for doubt. In it, Gervais and Eric Bana play radio journalists faking “on location” reportage from Ecuador by recording their broadcasts from their home city. Via Skype, Gervais talked with The Envelope about “Correspondents,” why he wants to revive “The Office’s” David Brent and the art form he, as an avowed atheist, gets religious about.

“Special Correspondents” is a remake of a French film from 2009. Why that particular project?

I never know why. Usually I’ve got a backlog of 10 ideas and you dabble. I like the basic premise – I’m obsessed with truth, lies and honor and what normal people do sometimes to get away with stuff and make a name for themselves. I think people expect all my stuff to be spiky and edgy and cruel, which is odd because the only example I can think of is the reception of me at the Golden Globes. But things like “The Office” and “Extras” – they’re all romantic comedies.

That’s interesting, because most people seem to characterize “The Office” as being a comedy about awkward situations and delusional leaders. The proto-”Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

I never get embarrassed for myself. I get embarrassed for other people. It wasn’t until I saw “Curb” that I got a taste of my own medicine – I kept going, “I can’t watch.” The places [Larry David] goes, particularly in relationships and faux pas, are remarkable. If you took the cringey bits in “The Office” and left out everything else, that’s “Curb.” If “The Office” is a meat sandwich, “Curb” is just the chunky meat.

A lot of your work does have – as you put it – this spiky element, but it also seems to suggest that we’re all delusional or hypocritical. Is that far off?

When comedy is saying, “We’re all idiots,” that’s fine. We are all idiots. Honor is another obsession of mine, that and living a good life. As an atheist, that’s all we’ve got. I don’t think I’ll be rewarded in heaven, so I’ve got to be rewarded here and my reward is being a good person. I like playing with that, and I put that in all of my work. I take the audience through a scary forest with all these taboo subjects and they come out and realize it’s all right, there’s all these things they didn’t know they could laugh about.

You’re bringing David Brent back for the theatrical release “David Brent: Life on the Road,” and he’s using his life savings to pursue a music career on the side. You had a pop career for a time – ever regret giving that up?

I did it wrong – I wanted to be a pop or rock star; I should have wanted to be a musician. I’ve done songs for David Bowie [for “Extras”], I did a song on “The Simpsons,” for Elmo, for “The Office” – but deep down I know it doesn’t count. I’ve got a get-out-of-jail-free card about my songs – if they’re crap, I get to say they’re crap songs by David Brent.

So why now for Mr. Brent?

People would rather be famous for being awful than not be famous; this carries that burden. David Brent was the early model of that. Now you’ve got possibly the next president of the United States who’s like that: There are people who are like, “The world is for me.” So now David’s the underdog, and he thinks this “documentary” is like [Martin] Scorsese following the Rolling Stones around. There’s nothing more fascinating than real life. Deep down I know humanity is a terrible screwed up evolutionary mistake, but art is still the most amazing thing. Art is human beings’ greatest achievement.

So if the world was ending and you could only save one form of art, what would it be?

Music is the greatest art form; there’s nothing like it. I can look at a painting and say, “That’s amazing and beautiful,” but it’s almost a craft. Music is like they downloaded an emotion. And it’s natural – birds sing. It means something. My best days are when I’m mucking around in the studio – it’s the closest thing I get to a religious experience.

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