Geek Chic
Belfast Telegraph
26 November 2004

'The Office' made him Britain's most famous nerd. Now Mackenzie Crook is starring with everyone from Al Pacino to Johnny Depp, and Kate Winslet to Keira Knightley. He tells Nick Duerden about his curiously brilliant career.

He walks into the room at London's Dorchester Hotel all wide-eyed and wary, as if unsure whether he should be here at all. His introductory, "Hello", comes out as little more than a whisper, and is so h-h-hesitant that your heart immediately goes out to him. Mackenzie Crook will tell you himself that he is twitchy by nature and rarely at ease in public, so the hour we spend together is a pronouncedly awkward one, me feeling increasingly guilty in my role as inquisitor, him squirming in his responses, the majority of which fizzle out into silence as he studies the floor for inspiration that just won't come.

In the flesh, he is pencil-thin and looks less like Gareth Keenan, the character he played so beautifully in The Office, than he does a nervous schoolboy, albeit a well-dressed one. Today, he is done up in a pinstripe suit, a pair of earrings, and some lovebeads that hang tight against his neck. As he sits on the overstuffed sofa, he asks whether I mind if he smokes, before very carefully rolling his own. Unfortunately, the nicotine appears to do little to calm him and, once finished, he places both hands under his thighs, then entwines his feet around one another. And there he sits, wrapped up in all manner of private anxieties.

"I actually, um ... I don't mind these kind of things," he says, in reference to our chat. "It's better than ... well, than TV interviews." He looks up, pale and gaunt. "I don't ... you know ... I don't perform well in TV interviews."

Last week, Crook appeared on Richard & Judy to plug the DVD release of last year's The Office Christmas specials. It was, he says, torture.

"I thought I was doing my best at concealing it, but Richard clearly picked up on it, because the next day he said, on camera, that he'd never seen such a nervous character in his life." There follows a painful pause. "That was ... that was nice of him, wasn't it?" Slow-motion agony passes across his face, and it's awful to bear witness to. "Sitting on a couch on live TV facing Judy - Judy Finnegan ... well, it's difficult. Not only didn't I know what to say, I wasn't sure there was anything to say in the first place. It's different for somebody like Ricky [Gervais]. Ricky could entertain you all night long, but me - well, I'm not particularly funny in real life."

A room-service trolley full of sandwiches arrives. Crook, momentarily animated, picks his way through the tuna, the egg and the ham.

"They look nice," he says, a few minutes later, his mouth full, "and you think they would be, this being the Dorchester and all, but they're, you know, they're not."

Mackenzie Crook turned 33 this year. Until recently, he was just another jobbing stand-up comedian, forever travelling the length and breadth of the country's university circuit making, he says, "gradual steps up the ladder" but waiting for the big break that, in truth, he wasn't sure would ever come. As a child growing up in Kent, he first wanted to be a graphic artist, but when, at the age of 18, he failed to secure a place at art college, he suddenly felt very lost indeed. And so the one-time Pizza Hut employee turned to the only other thing he felt mildly competent at: writing comedy sketches.

"I was never the kind of stand-up who just faced an audience with nothing to hide behind but a microphone," he says. "I suppose I ... I lacked the confidence for that. And so I tended to hide behind a bunch of characters instead. But I did OK at it, I made a living - just not a particularly healthy one."

I ask him to tell me his favourite characters, and he names two: Charlie Cheese, an old-school, end-of-pier comedian, and a hapless teacher called Mr Bagshawe, whom he says may one day enjoy a resurrection. It was at the Edinburgh Festival in 1997 that the dreamed-about big break finally arrived. Bob Mortimer saw his one-man show, and was convinced he'd be great on television. Intermittent appearances on sketch shows followed, as well as a role in a film called The Man Who Fell In Love with a Traffic Cone. When I tell him I've never heard of it, he says, "Good", and looks palpably relieved.

And then, in 2001, he landed the part of Gareth Keenan in The Office. While he rightly credits its success to the script, whose genius lay in its subtlety, its pathos and its very dark edges, Crook shone in his role as the geek, a man whose pudding-bowl haircut spoke volumes about the person hiding gawkily beneath it. Running for just two series, the programme made stars out of all its principal characters, and there isn't a day that goes by now when somebody doesn't bring it up in conversation.

"I could never get bored of talking about it, though," he says, his eyes suddenly alive, "because I'm just so glad I was in something that made such a connection."

When Ricky Gervais and co-writer Stephen Merchant decided to pull the plug on The Office last Christmas, Crook could easily have disappeared into substandard sitcom hell. Instead, he turned to the big screen. Unlikely as it may seem, Hollywood rather adores him.

At this point, he stutters with embarrassment, cheeks flushing red, Adam's apple bobbing. Once again, your heart really does go out to him, and you feel gripped by the strangest notion that, just perhaps, you could adopt him, and keep him safe.

"I'm very ... surprised by my ... my, you know, my success," he says, running a hand through his blond hair repeatedly, and studying the stripes on his pinstriped leg. "I have to pinch myself sometimes, because I really have had an extraordinary stroke of luck. Everything I've done since can be traced back to The Office in some way." He nods his head, almost smiles and then chooses not to. "I've been ... well, I've been fortunate."

It all started, he says, with Finding Neverland, a film about the Peter Pan creator J M Barrie, which stars Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. Although only recently released, it was made a couple of years ago; its director, Marc Foster, cast Crook in a minor role after watching an episode of The Office during a transatlantic flight. This in turn led to Depp recommending him for the role of Ragetti in Pirates of the Caribbean, a film so successful that, in early 2005, Crook will decamp to St Vincent to film not one, but two sequels. Earlier this year, former Monty Python actor-turned-film-maker Terry Gilliam was thrilled by watching Wernham Hogg's Gareth Keenan, and promptly requested the actor's services in The Brothers Grimm, alongside Matt Damon.

And later this month, he can be seen in two new releases, a lavish costume drama, and a loony comedy. Michael Radford's succulent adaptation of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice sees him playing Launcelot Gobbo, humble manservant of Shylock (played, with typical shouty theatrics and an awful lot of flying saliva, by Al Pacino).

"Al ... I mean, Mr Pacino," he says, grinning, "is, well, he's great. Initially, you are terrified of him because of his reputation, but he's actually very quietly spoken, very gentle and really generous. The film was an amazing experience, and I love the results. It looks like a painting."

His second, another supporting role, is in Churchill: The Hollywood Years, a ribald and often ridiculous comedy directed by Peter Richardson (erstwhile performer with the Comic Strip, the early-1980s comedy group that also spawned French and Saunders and Rik Mayall). It stars Christian Slater as the wartime PM reborn, effectively, as Bruce Willis in Die Hard, and also features a whole slew of British comedy talent including Vic Reeves, Bob Mortimer, Harry Enfield and Leslie Phillips. Crook is happy with the film but, he admits, only cautiously so.

"I think it's really funny, but then I thought Sex Lives of the Potato Men was funny, so what do I know?"

In the middle of last year, a time when he was receiving umpteen scripts a week and was consequently spoilt for choice, he plumped for Potato Men, a Lottery-funded homegrown comedy, deeming it the funniest. Upon its release, it was immediately hailed as the worst British film of all time.

"I don't know quite what went wrong with it," he shrugs, "but something clearly did. If that film taught me anything, then it was to be very wary about my own ability in choosing scripts. I don't want to be in too many turkeys if I can help it."

The conversation then turns to the theatre, apparently one of his abiding passions. He tells me he loves to perform.

"I know it's probably hard to ... to believe, but I'm very confident on stage," he says. "Really, I am."

The following night, I go to see him in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, the West End play in which he stars alongside his friend Christian Slater and Frances Barber. He plays the part of tragic Billy Bibbitt, a young man so henpecked by his mother and society in general that he is driven to the point of insanity. His performance is all in the eyes and hands, which twitch and flex constantly, and is so softly nuanced that, while Slater chews the scenery, Crook very quietly steals the show.

"It's weird," he begins, "the prospect of doing live television scares me to death, but I feel absolutely no nerves whatsoever walking out on to a stage in front of a thousand people every night. I've never been nervous in a performance, not even remotely. It just doesn't happen."

I ask him why and the response takes upwards of three minutes to come.

"Well, it's ... I don't know, maybe ... maybe it's because I've got my lines, my direction, and, well, it's because I'm not me, am I?" He looks up, but fails to make eye contact. "I'm, I'm somebody else."

And it is precisely this - his eagerness to play a role, to become somebody else - that has made Crook rather uncomfortable of late. The huge success of The Office has brought him fame, so much that whenever he leaves the house these days, he feels compelled to disguise himself with hats pulled down low, collars up, and sunglasses on. He worries terribly about the pressure it puts on his wife, Lindsay, and their two-year-old son, Jude.

"You know, they never asked for all this," he says, "and sometimes it is difficult, especially when people barge right past my wife and child just to get to me. Gareth seems to prompt this strange hysteria in people at the moment, and because I've got such a recognisable face, it's hard to hide from. I really don't know how to deal with it."

He tells me that pubs have effectively become no-go areas because, "being in a boozer at 10.30 at night can be pretty dangerous for Gareth Keenan. It's funny - if people see Christian [Slater], they will sort of do a double take, not completely sure it's really him, and not sure how to act. But as soon as they see me, they point and laugh and ask me to 'do' Gareth down the mobile phone to all their friends. They are never nasty, and, you know, I do appreciate it, but I suppose I'm easily ... well, easily intimidated."

He begins to frown.

"But I ... I don't want you to get the wrong idea here," he says. "I don't want you to think I spend my life complaining about my fate, because I don't."

And, as if to compensate, he tells me that he loves his life, and he copes, in his own way, just fine. He and his wife have just bought a dream house in north London (one that used to belong to Peter Sellers), and he is developing a love of gardening, when his workload permits. Which, these days, isn't often because he's much in demand right now. He recently failed an audition for Roman Polanski's adaptation of Oliver, and was so gutted that he is now determined to do Dickens elsewhere because "the characters are so rich, and it would be nice to do something more meaty". Then there's the comedy series, set in the "world of rock", that he's developing for Five. Most of next year, however, will be taken up with the filming of Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3, and he is keen to do more theatre. Fame, he professes, is something he is learning to adapt to, and perhaps eventually even to welcome.

"Lots of actors I know never read the interviews they give, and I can see their logic," he says, "but I'm still somehow drawn to reading about myself. I can't help it. It's a ... a strange experience, really, especially when I feel I've been misrepresented. Sometimes, a journalist will quote something I've said, but they'll finish the sentence with an exclamation mark, which makes me sound wacky. For some reason, that really bothers me, because I know that I wasn't trying to sound wacky at all. I was trying to sound dry and ironic."

He clasps his hands together, his eyes, perfect "O"s, full of worry.

"I don't really speak in exclamation marks," he says.

'The Merchant Of Venice' and 'Churchill: The Hollywood Years' are out on 3 December. 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' runs at London's Gielgud Theatre until 22 January

Gervais to make children's movie
By Daniel Kilkelly
Digital Spy
November 20, 2004

The Office star Ricky Gervais is to turn his children's book, Flanimals, into a £50 million movie.

The successful book has sold more than 200,000 copies, and Gervais has now signed to produce a film adaptation, as well as voicing one of the Flanimals.

A source close to Ricky told The Sun, "He’s delighted. He’ll work on storyboards for the film and voice one of the characters. They are also hoping to sign up a lot of other big names."

Speaking of the inspiration behind his bizarre creations, Gervais said, "I was making up stupid animals for my six-year-old nephew. He grew out of them and I carried on."

The book includes characters such as Munge Fuddler and Frappled Humpdumbler.

Gervais hopes to match the success of Monsters Inc. with the new film.

'The Office' Closing Shutters for Good
The Associated Press
November 18, 2004

LOS ANGELES -- Ricky Gervais, the star and co-creator of the underground comedy hit "The Office," decided to say goodbye to his white-collar workplace drones by showing them some mercy.

The BBC series, which ran for two six-episode seasons and became a Golden Globe-winning hit in the United States on BBC America and DVD, concludes in a 90-minute special released on home video this week.

Gervais, who plays the pathetically desperate manager at a British paper merchant, said most of the humor has come from putting his David Brent character through gut-wrenching embarrassments.

For the conclusion, he and co-creator Stephen Merchant agreed that since Brent was merely a fool, not a villain, it would be nice to end things for him on an upbeat note - slightly.

Brent meets a woman who tolerates his boorishness long enough for him to gain some self-perspective.

"We decided not to tie it up completely, but we left it with a mood of hope," Gervais said in a recent phone interview from London. "I just think he got a metaphorical hug for the first time in years, and he grew up a little bit - at age 42."

The finale still gives Brent his share of humiliations: He squanders his life savings to make a horrid music video with him singing "If You Don't Know Me by Now," and then gets two drinks tossed in his face when he participates in "The Dating Game."

Gervais is now developing a show called "Extras," in which he plays a background actor who tries to become more than just glorified scenery.

Like "The Office," he said, the new show is a sendup of "people thinking that fame can sort their lives out."

Once again, desperation is his chief source of humor.

"I think it's fun to make them laugh, then make them squirm," he said. "Or it's funny if you make someone squirm, and squirm and squirm until they laugh nervously. It's just like, imagine a bad soliloquy at a funeral. It doesn't get funnier, does it? If the vicar gets the name wrong, you go, `Oh my God ...'"

Gervais uses his flanimal instincts
By Samantha Grice
© National Post
November 5, 2004

With a bit of imagination, you can see the link between the Wobboid Mump -- an eye in jelly that spends most of its time looking around trying to find a reason for its existence but never does because it's blind -- and David Brent, the hopelessly and hilariously inept office manager on the BBC sitcom The Office.

Both are the creation of Ricky Gervais, the writer, director and actor who played Brent on one of the most adored television series of the last decade. And the Wobboid Mump, along with the Glonk and the Munge Fuddler, are among the cast of characters in Gervais' newly released children's book, Flanimals.

Long before Gervais had the misfortune of working nine to five inside the Petri dish of bizarre behaviour that passes for a modern office, he set his astute eye for quirky character traits on developing wacky imaginary animals with even wackier names in a series of teenage journals.

When Suzy Jenvey, editorial director of children's books at Faber & Faber, learned of Gervais' secret talent and treasure trove of journals, she rang him up.

"He came in and showed us some very rough illustrations and told us that he needed to sit down and work them through," she says from her home in London. "As he lives just around the corner from Faber & Faber, we gave him an office and for a year and a half he wandered in and out, basically working at Faber and developing the characters with Rob [Steen, Flanimals' illustrator]."

The result is a somewhat inexplicable field guide to lumpy-looking, made-up creatures divided into sections on Spotter's Guide, Flanimal Behaviour and Flanimal Testing. Gervais has said he's been interested in zoology for as long as he can remember, and he went to university to study biology before changing courses after two weeks to avoid the 9 a.m. classes.

Flanimals was released in the U.K. on Oct. 7, and is currently No. 7 on Amazon's best-seller list, though the online bookseller has noted that it's Gervais's rabid fan base and not parents who are the primary purchasers.

"The thing about Ricky that is unusual is he is massively popular. The English like to knock comics down when something has done fantastically well," explains Jenvey. "But everyone loves Ricky and they're rooting for him to do well. The reason is he's a good feet-on-the-ground person and is the same as he's always been."

Gervais' initial cult status in the U.K. grew to superstardom during the second season of The Office. The show concluded with a two-part special in December, 2003, which garnered rave reviews and huge ratings. Gervais has won four BAFTAs (the British equivalent to the Emmys) and this year became the first British star to win an award -- actually two -- at the Golden Globes.

Naturally, all this helped him get his book published.

"Of course, that's true," says Jenvey. "But all I can say is it made me laugh, a lot. It still does.

Man in Court on Ricky Gervais Bullion Fraud Charges
By Melvyn Howe, PA News
scotsman.com
November 3, 2004

An alleged gold bullion fraudster appeared in court today accused of plotting to pocket nearly £200,000 belonging to Ricky Gervais, creator of the award-winning TV series The Office.

Kenneth Speight is said to have teamed up with three courier company employees and a NatWest bank call centre worker to target Mr Gervais, as well as a businessman and a consultant, between February and April last year.

He and the others face three conspiracy to defraud allegations altogether, understood to involve a total of £349,000.

The Crown is expected to allege that the £196,000 belonging to Mr Gervais, who played David Brent in the Slough-based BBC2 comedy series, was to have been used to buy gold bullion.

Unemployed Speight, 39, from Erith, Kent, appearing at a short preliminary hearing at London’s Southwark’s Crown Court, was remanded in custody to December 8 when he is expected to enter pleas.

His co-defendants are due to stand trial at Wood Green Crown Court on November 22.

A supremely satisfying sendoff of BBC's "Office"
By Joanne Ostrow
Denver Post TV Critic
October 21, 2004

"The Office,” the terrific British mockumentary series about the pointlessness of white-collar paper-pushing, was all about workplace tedium, daily drudgery and personal disconnections.

The theme was existential emptiness; the humor was excruciating. Imagine a funnier "Dilbert" crossed with "Waiting for Godot," set at a small paper manufacturing company in a dreary town in England. The full series amounted to two nearly perfect six-episode seasons.

Now comes a two-hour "Office" special to tie up loose ends. Fans may be surprised to learn the series sendoff is infused with an unexpected sweetness, even hopefulness.

The theme this time, as the mock-doc ends, is redemption.

The supremely satisfying special will air from 7-9 tonight on BBC America (Comcast digital cable channel 162). The reunion, along with the two previous seasons, will be released by BBC Video as a DVD boxed set on Nov. 16.

As the reunion edition opens, it's three years later and the gang is back in their cubicles at Wernham Hogg in Slough (even the name is deadly dull). They've undergone some changes in the interim.

When last we encountered David Brent, the clueless boss played by series co-creator Ricky Gervais, he had been forced to accept a severance package. Now he is selling cleaning products and appearing at tacky bars as a quasi-celebrity, trying to cash in on his notoriety thanks to his appearance in the BBC documentary. (He claims he was a victim of bad editing.)

He still fancies himself an entertainer. In fact, he took his severance money and financed a rock video starring himself. Nobody bought it, but we get to see him in the gauzy self-tribute singing the golden oldie, "If You Don't Know Me By Now." Even viewers new to the show will know him by the time he finishes the pathetic performance.

Of course, they can fire David, but they can't keep him away from Wernham Hogg, where he continually shows up to see his old chums - who aren't particularly chummy.

Last we saw Dawn (Lucy Davis), the blond receptionist, she was flying off to Florida with her brutish fiancé, while the honorable Tim (Martin Freeman) was red-faced after having finally confessed his unrequited love to Dawn. And military-minded über-geek Gareth (Mackenzie Crook) had moved up to swaggering regional manager.

For the reunion, the documentary crew coaxes Dawn and her fiancé back to England for a visit. Gareth is lording it over the rest of the workers, planning the office Christmas party. And Tim is sarcastic and resolute as ever in the face of the absurdity and unrelenting tedium that is office life.

Picture a disco ball strung above the desks as the centerpiece for the alcoholic holiday party, and the stage is set.

The two-hour capper is a delight.

In the end, the story underscores the humanity (surprise!) of the obnoxious but not truly evil Brent. Remember, he's an idiot, but an idiot with a heart. The creators also choose to celebrate the possibility of real connections even within the deadening office atmosphere.

The writers - Gervais and co-creator Stephen Merchant - have sworn they will not be tempted to revisit the characters for future reunion specials. I don't want to believe it.

But I know it is going to take some doing for NBC to succeed at Americanizing "The Office," as it plans to do next year. Remember what the network did to "Coupling," the last British import it tried to rework for the 18-34 U.S. sitcom demographic? Cringe at the memory and enjoy the original "Office."

'Office Special' turns out the lights brilliantly
By Tim Goodman
SFGate.com
Thursday, October 21, 2004

It is one of those tasks most television shows need not worry about: reclaiming brilliance. So few ever achieve that status anyway that the question of whether, having left at the peak of its creativity, a series can successfully return, seasons later, with its genius intact is simply not the kind of thing "According to Jim" must wrestle with.

Nor, for that matter, "ER" or "NYPD Blue." Most great shows outlive their greatness. After five seasons it becomes less about creative content and more about economics. If the people are still tuning in, if the network absolutely needs a hit, the show stays. No surprise there.

What generally happens is a popular show -- something quite different from a brilliant show -- will return years later for a reunion movie. It's almost mandated. And the results are reliably depressing.

But tonight, something truly special is going to happen. The British series "The Office," a cult favorite on these shores and a series as critically adored as only a few American series, returns for "The Office Special," quite possibly the finest closing chapter ever for a TV series.

What stands out is the discipline needed not to hit all the easy notes, not to close the door tidily behind itself with an audible click. While cynics may say there was a concession made in the end for die-hard fans, it's simply not the case, given the unflinching conclusion of the regular series.

But let's backtrack for a second. If you haven't followed "The Office" or if you just don't receive the channel (it's on the digital cable platform or available to satellite subscribers), there were only two seasons -- a paltry six episodes each -- and both are available on DVD. The series, a faux BBC documentary on ordinary workers in a bland office environment, now wraps up for good with "The Office Special," which supposes that the BBC documentary crew returned three years after its initial visit to find out how things had changed at the fictional (and relentlessly banal) Wernham Hogg paper products company in drab Slough, England.

The protagonist of the series is the now-legendary David Brent (played by writer and creator Ricky Gervais), a man so delusional about his power and likability that he was the perfect foil for the emotionless BBC cameras. During the two typically brief British seasons of "The Office," the Brentmeister General got himself in all kinds of painful-to-watch moments with his staff, all caught on camera. When he described himself to the cameras in Season 1 as "friend first, boss second and probably entertainer third," it set the tone for just how blind Brent was to his own buffoonishness. Or, as he says in "The Office Special," three years after the fact and learning the hard way how he was represented on the (faux) documentary to the viewing public: "I am not a plonker."

"The Office" won a Golden Globe for outstanding comedy series and another for Gervais as outstanding lead actor. After winning virtually every award possible in England, it was a small American token for being so perfectly realized. "The Office" was a mockumentary that dared to be astutely subtle in a medium that has beaten the quiet moments out of scripts for years. It never tried to pander, was uncompromisingly British and pulled off -- particularly in the second season -- what is so difficult to do for comedies: creating drama from painful, incisively cutting humor. There was only one outcome for David Brent, and when he finally realized it, the scenes played out in a kind of comic anguish.

"The Office" was a mixture of "Dilbert" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and nobody said watching it was going to be a traditional laugh riot. But it achieved an exceptional portrait of workplace doldrums, social loneliness and failed aspirations like no other television series. It never cheated the audience with a laugh track or patronized it with obviousness.

How then, to come back from sublime perfection and not ruin the whole thing?

In "The Office Special," David Brent is now selling cleaning products, having blown his severance money, which he sued to get, on a disastrously misguided recording career. And the BBC cameras are back, checking in with the office workers and studying what has happened to them in the intervening three years. Well, it's clear from the moment you see him that Brent hasn't changed at all. He now considers himself a celebrity (the skewering of "reality" stars here is scathing), and hasn't quite come to terms with being bounced or, for that matter, having Gareth (Mackenzie Crook) take his job. Tim (Martin Freeman) is still accepting his lot in his old job. Receptionist Dawn (Lucy Davis), who so heartbreakingly turned down Tim at the conclusion of Season 2, has gone to live in Florida with her awful fiance, Lee (Joel Beckett).

But everyone returns for the office Christmas party (including Dawn and Lee, flown in by the BBC), and the result is two hours of wonderfully nuanced comedy and drama.

It's still hilariously uncomfortable to watch David Brent try to justify his D-level celebrity. And his attempts at finding a date for the Christmas party are as cringe-worthy as you might expect ("I'd bloody love her to be widowed" or "Can we not talk about my dead mother's breasts?")

He remains, as always, a man without a muffler. In fact, many of the characters in "The Office" are people beaten down by their jobs, stunted by nowhere lives and left somehow unaware of societal rules. They are ill equipped for most kinds of human interaction that don't involve drudgery, and when they do try to connect with others, the result is humiliation, blunted dialogue and embarrassed side glances (made more painful by the presence of the cameras).

The humor in "The Office" has always been tinged with sadness. And it has always been spot-on insightful. But what's so wonderfully realized in "The Office Special" is the sense of closure, which comes without gimmicks or sell- out dramatics.

The one aforementioned nod to die-hard fans couldn't be presented any other way. It rings true, and if it lifts your spirits in the process, that's just sweet payoff for all the hard-to-bear humor that David Brent and friends provided.

"The Office Special" is a grand finale to one of television's best, smartest and funniest series ever.