The Mystery of Whether or Not Ricky Gervais Wrote His ‘Simpsons’ Episode

Ricky Gervais is a self-proclaimed Simpsons superfan. “When I got into comedy in about 1999, I remember thinking that I would love to get a joke on The Simpsons,” he once told The Independent. “It had already been my favorite program for about 10 years by then. The thing is, every comedian worth his salt, his favorite thing is The Simpsons.” 

Gervais even paid Matt Groening 20 bucks to draw a Homer for radio flunky Karl Pilkington, proclaiming, “I love Karl ‘cause he’s stupid like me” in a cartoon dialogue bubble.

Gervais loved the show so much that he asked if he could write an episode, according to Simpsons writer Mike Reiss’ book Springfield Confidential. “We were flattered,” Reiss said. At the time, Gervais was sitting on top of the comedy world as the creator of the original version of The Office. 

But the writers were “even more flattered when he called back two weeks later and said, ‘I can’t do it — it’s too hard.’” Even though Gervais couldn’t complete the script, Reiss says we should cut him some slack — he did pitch the plot, star in the episode and perform original songs.

For a simple bit of Simpsons lore — Gervais couldn’t quite pull off a script — this tale has more variants than a late-stage Marvel movie. In Version B, it’s Groening who asks Gervais to take a crack at writing an episode, not the other way around. “I knew I had to say yes, but fear kicked in at exactly the same time,” Gervais told The Independent.

Groening doesn’t dispute Gervais’s version. “We love Ricky’s work. We love Extras, we love The Office,” he said in the same joint interview. “And the podcast is fantastic. It’s dangerous to listen to while driving because it’s so funny.”

Gervais agrees that he needed help with his script, though his take differs from Reiss’ “I can’t do it — it’s too hard” description. “The truth is that it was a co-write,” Gervais admitted. “I put some ideas down, sent them off to Al (Jean, Simpsons showrunner), a big bag of jumbled-up stuff, and they put it through their mill. Then they came back to me and said, ‘Did you mean this?’ And I went, ‘Yes, exactly.’"

Somehow, there’s a Version C of the story as well, with BBC News reporting in 2006 that Gervais’ script knocked it out of the park. “The Simpsons Creator Matt Groening Said Ricky Gervais Did Such a Good Job Writing an Episode of the Hit U.S. Comedy Show That He Wants Him to Do More,” blared a headline.

“He caught our tone exactly, and then added his own Ricky Gervais/David Brent patheticness,” Groening supposedly said according to unsourced “reports in the U.K. press.” “Everything you could ever possibly want from Ricky Gervais, you get. It’s possible we’ll collaborate again. He should be a regular character. In fact, he should have his own cartoon series.”

While those Groening quotes seem out of sync with other remarks, Gervais did become a cartoon character. The Ricky Gervais Show repurposed audio from his popular podcasts with Stephen Merchant and Pilkington, rendering Gervais and friends in simple, Hanna-Barbera-style animation. If you’re one of those “The Simpsons/Matt Groening predicted the future!” weirdos, here’s another one for your files.