Ricky Gervais has said that working class people are the only group that comedians can still mock without facing a backlash.
The comedian and actor was speaking in a new interview with BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life ahead of the release of his new Netflix special, Mortality, tomorrow (December 30).
“People understand most power struggles. They understand why racism, homophobia and misogyny are wrong, but they are very disparaging about the working classes,” he said.
“It’s the one thing that it seems to be fine to take the mickey out of with no blowback at all.”
Gervais went on to say he would avoid making jokes about disadvantaged people as times have changed – but said he doesn’t have any regrets.
“You are a product of your time and you do make things for people of your time. I’d put trigger warnings on things, but I wouldn’t go back and change something,” he added.
“Do I regret anything? No. Would I do things differently now? Probably.”
It comes after Ash Atalla, who produced the UK version of The Office, recently admitted that he questioned his own stance on having Gervais make jokes about his disability.
Atalla previously insisted that Gervais mock his disability while picking up an award at the 2001 British Comedy Awards. Atalla contracted polio as a child, and the disease left him unable to walk.
But in a recent interview, he said: “I felt good about it at the time. The joke that people remember, the first one, was a line that I gave to him, because I said to him, ‘Make sure they know I haven’t won a competition to be here.’”
Reflecting on the jokes, he admitted that “maybe I realise, or I feel I sold a bit of myself in that moment, I put the wheelchair front and centre because I knew it was something that would set me apart in that instance. Set me apart in a good way.”
“And, just in recent years, as I’ve thought about it, it’s made me consider whether I was right to do that,” he said.
Elsewhere, Transport for London (TfL) recently responded to claims by Gervais that they banned a series of his adverts for his vodka brand.
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