Ricky Gervais is heading into this Sunday’s Golden Globe awards feeling “bulletproof.”
“I only do things that could end my career,” he told a gathering of TV critics in Los Angeles today. “That’s my fun, it’s my extreme sport. As long as I’m happy with my performance, I’m bulletproof.”
The controversial comic — who rattled feathers last year by insulting everyone from Robert Downey Jr. to the head of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — says he agreed to return to his hosting duties to get the last laugh.
“I wasn’t going to do it a third time,” he said. “Then I kept reading reports from the press saying that I would never be invited back. So I did this to annoy them.”
“I’m not one of those people who think comedy is your conscience taking the day off. My conscience never takes the day off. I know what I’m going to say. … I can justify it, I stand by it, as I do every joke I did last year, and I don’t care. I don’t care what people think,” he said.
Gervais, 50, says he has already written most of his jokes — as well as a monologue recapping Hollywood’s most newsworthy events of the past year.
“I won’t do real personal tragedy,” said. “I will do someone who made a really bad decision about a movie. Or wore a (bad) hat. Or got drunk.
“I have got nothing against any of those people. I have worked with many of them. I like many of them. I admire most of them. They are just gags. I am not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings or give them a bad night. Or undermine the moral fabric of America. I am a comedian. I would rather they laugh than gasp. But I cherish the gasps along with the laughs.”
The Golden Globe Awards airs live on NBC at 8:00 PM.