Ricky Gervais has opened up about casting Mackenzie Crook in The Office, revealing he didn’t look anything like how he originally envisioned the character of Gareth.
Acclaimed sitcom The Office aired on the BBC from 2001 to 2003, and spawned international spin-offs, including the long-running American version.
In the U.S. version, Steve Carell took the role of the boss that Gervais had originally played, while the character of Dwight Schrute (played by Rainn Wilson) was created as an Americanized version of Gareth.
During an appearance on actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett’s podcast Smartless, Gervais said that he originally had a very different type of actor in mind to play Gareth after basing the character on a school friend.
“Gareth was based on a kid I went to school with when I was 14 or 15,” said Gervais. “He was in the territorial army, and he spoke like [Gareth]. This is a true quote of this guy, I won’t say his name. He said: ‘When you’re captured by cannibals, and you’re in the pot and they’re cooking you, they show you pornographic pictures so you get an erection and there’s more meat.”
Gervais also recalled teasing his friend with outlandish lies, similarly to how Gareth and Dwight are teased in The Office.
“As a joke, I was talking to him once when we were a little bit older and I told him that if you get a crab drunk, it walks forwards,” recalled Gervais.
“He came back off holiday with his parents and said: ‘You’re talking s***, Gervais. I did it to a crab in my beer and he just walked sideways still.’ So Gareth was based on him.”
Asked by Bateman how he came to cast Mackenzie Crook in the role, Gervais said he was originally looking for an actor with a more athletic build.
“This guy was quite a sporty guy, he played cricket and football, he was big,” explained Gervais. “I was looking for a guy like that, who could talk about killing a man and all this. When Mackenzie Crook walks through, and he’s about seven stone and looks like a baby bird, it was even funnier.
“Because suddenly he’s talking about: ‘I could kill a man, yeah, if I was in the jungle’ and you’re thinking: ‘No, you definitely couldn’t survive. You’d be eaten by a lizard immediately.’ So there were surprises.”
Gervais recently released his new stand-up special, Mortality, during which he revealed the joke he cut from the Golden Globes over fears that it was racist.