Now embarking on his first ever scripted series with Sky One’s Sick of It, Karl Pilkington has insisted that he won’t be back working with his old sparring partners Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant any time soon.
Pilkington originally rose to fame appearing alongside Gervais and Merchant in a series of Xfm radio shows, which the trio followed up with a record-breaking podcast.
Merchant recently stated that he and Gervais have moved in “different directions, creatively”, with Karl telling Digital Spy that there are indeed no plans for the three of them to work together on future projects.
“[There’s] nothing planned, yet,” he said.”[Any new project], it’s got to be different. We wouldn’t be able to sit in a room and try and redo what we’ve done, because we’ve all changed so much.
“It was a long time ago. I reckon it would ruin it.”
Pilkington added: “Maybe if we all end up in the shit and we need some money for something, we’ll go, ‘Let’s do the f**king podcast’. But because we’re not, and we’re doing other things, it’s a bit like, ‘Let’s just leave it’.”
Above: The Ricky Gervais Show
Known for segments including Karl’s Diary and Monkey News, The Ricky Gervais Show podcast had been downloaded over 300 million times as of March 2011, when the final edition was released. A television series, putting animated visuals to the original audio, later aired on HBO.
Pilkington admitted, though, that he would often not see Gervais and Merchant for long periods when the trio weren’t recording together. “If we weren’t doing the podcast and they were filming, I wouldn’t see them.
“People who love the podcast, they think they know our relationship – that we were hanging out together all the time and stuff. And it’s not that. But that’s what they’ve created in their head. Because that’s how it sounds.
“We’d meet, and we’d have a chat, and then I’d take it away and edit it. They’d be off doing their busy thing. I’d email it to them… done. Next time we meet up, it’s [recording] the podcast.”
Pilkington’s new project, Sick of It, is a scripted sitcom in which he plays two characters, both based on aspects of his own personality – Karl, a down-on-his-luck taxi driver, and Inner Self, the grouchy voice inside Karl’s mind.
But while he’s making a foray into scripted comedy, Karl again ruled out working with Gervais and Merchant on a similar project, saying he’d “feel embarrassed” collaborating with the Office and Extras duo.
“They’re proper writers,” he said. “I’d be scared to open my mouth, because I’d just be like, ‘What do I know?’
“I was never part of that thing. People at the time, when they were doing Extras and things, people went, ‘Oh, Extras? I’ve heard a lot about it. Have you seen the scripts?’
“I was like, ‘Have I heck! That’s a different world’.
“They had an office with different parts in it. They had a room where they sat and wrote, but we did the podcast somewhere different. I was almost scared of going in that [other] room, and seeing something on paper that I might put in my brain and say out loud and ruin something for them.
“Honestly, it was a different area, what they did. And I didn’t even ask questions about it.”
Sick of It starts Thursday, September 27 at 10pm exclusively on Sky One and NOW TV.
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