Comedian Ricky Gervais is torching attention-seeking celebrities during the Covid-19 pandemic as brutally as when he hosted the Golden Globes, saying that “people are just tired of being lectured to” in a new interview.
At this point, more than a month into the pandemic, there is a rabbit hole of celebrity videos preaching to the rest of the world about the coronavirus, and Gervais thinks he knows why.
“Now celebrities think: ‘The general public needs to see my face. They can’t get to the cinema — I need to do something’,” the comedian said in an interview published Thursday in the New York Times of all places.
“And it’s when you look into their eyes, you know that, even if they’re doing something good, they’re sort of thinking, ‘I could weep at what a good person I am.’ Oh dear,” he continued.
Ricky Gervais talked about his darkly comic Netflix series “After Life” and about his own life since his celebrity-skewing Golden Globes appearance. (He wasn’t a fan of that “Imagine” video either.) https://t.co/gls04f7pk1
Gervais specifically targeted the now infamous ‘Imagine’ video put together by ‘Wonder Woman’ star Gal Gadot and other celebrities covering the classic John Lennon/Yoko Ono tune.
“You won’t hear me complain,” Gervais said of lockdown measures. “Not when, every day, I see some millionaire celebrity going, ‘I’m sad that I’m not on telly tonight.’ Or, ‘I had a swim in the pool that made me feel a little bit better’.”
He then proceeded to sing the first line of ‘Imagine.’
From the very beginning of Covid-19 lockdowns, celebrity messages have fallen flat with the quarantined public. There was New York Governor Andrew Cuomo deploying actors Ben Stiller and Danny DeVito to preach his order to stay indoors.
Pop singer Madonna was skewered on social media for a video of her sitting nude in a bathtub, calling the coronavirus the great “equalizer.”
TV host Ellen DeGeneres found herself a target of similar mockery for comparing her quarantine inside of a mansion to jail.
The ‘Imagine’ video itself became little more than fodder for humorous covers mocking celebrities’ desperate attention-seeking during a pandemic. Conservative actor and filmmaker Nick Searcy parodied it with “imagine there’s no acting.”
Roasting celebrities is an increasingly common theme in Gervais’ comedy. He made waves in January when he hosted the Golden Globes and used his opening monologue to roast celebrities for virtue-signaling and hypocrisy with barbs like, “If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?”
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