Ricky Gervais says he was stunned After Life resonated with so many people

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"I think that too many people second guess what an audience can take," Gervais says in promoting Season 2 of his Netflix series that was released Friday. "I’ll go, 'Of course they can take it; real life’s worse.' This is still just fiction. The characters in After Life are dealing with all these things that people deal with in real life. And, in fact, I’ve never had a reaction like the reaction to the first series of this. I don’t just mean the size of the reaction. That could be a reflection of Netflix having 170 million subscribers. But the emotional response… My agent got 300 letters. That never happens. No one writes letters anymore. It was because we were telling their personal stories. Everyone came up to me on the street—when they were still allowed to—and they would say, 'I lost my brother three weeks before…' What it makes you realize is everyone is grieving all the time. Because when it happens, we only know about ourselves."

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• For Ricky Gervais, coronavirus lockdown isn't all that different from his regular life: "Apart from the gigs that were postponed, my life hasn’t changed much," he says. "I didn’t go out a lot, and there’s always enough booze in the house for a nuclear winter. You won’t hear me complain. 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.'" Gervais then proceeded to mock the Gal Gadot coronavirus video by singing "Imagine."
• After Life is a series constantly looking for easy solutions