Ricky Gervais has sparked controversy after apparently ignoring his The Office co-creator Stephen Merchant during a 64-minute YouTube video marking the show's 25th anniversary. The 65-year-old comedian, who skipped the BBC's official celebration, instead posted a video reacting to The 25 Greatest David Brent Moments. Fans quickly noticed that Gervais failed to mention Merchant even once throughout the entire video.
Fan backlash over Merchant's absence
Viewers took to YouTube comments and Reddit to express their displeasure. One user wrote: 'The erasure of Steve (sic) is not a good look.' Another commented: 'Give some credit to Stephen Merchant.' User @daleemery9800 added: 'Honestly, the arrogance to have your favourite Brent moments not favourite Office moments. Zero credit for Merchant, who you can tell from your later work is responsible for all the subtlety and brilliant moments.'
On Reddit's r/RickyGervais, user @Double_Sport9468 said: 'The Merchant erasure is really mental at this point. It's actually quite sad that he can't acknowledge him at all.' Gilneedsthis noted: 'No mention of Steve in his posts about The Office on the 25th anniversary. A post I saw said "25 years ago I had my breakthrough show" or some such narcissistic drivel.'
Merchant acknowledges Gervais
In contrast, Stephen Merchant publicly acknowledged Gervais's role in the show's success. In his own 25th anniversary post, Merchant shared the unaired pre-pilot presentation featuring both creators, which led to the BBC commissioning the series.
Rumours of a rift
Speculation about a falling out between the duo has persisted since they stopped working together in 2013. The pair, who also created Extras, Life's Too Short, and co-presented An Idiot Abroad, have not collaborated since. In 2020, Merchant was accused of taking a swipe at Gervais's show After Life when he criticised storylines involving characters watching home movies of deceased loved ones. However, Merchant later told The Independent: 'Whenever people stop working as closely together as they were, people immediately assume it's "knives out." It was such a strange idea to me, that I'd take a swipe at Ricky by doing a tweet, and [make] an abstract criticism of his show.'
In 2022, Merchant told The Last Laugh: 'I get on perfectly well with Ricky. I just think we started doing slightly different projects. I've had enormous success and fun working with Ricky, but I was starting to enjoy working with different people and different collaborators and finding sort of new territory that I don't think we're necessarily of appeal to Ricky. And so we just sort of drifted apart creatively, really, but we certainly never had any big falling out or big argument or anything like that.'
Gervais's stance
Gervais told NME in 2018 that he purposely avoids mentioning Merchant or Karl Pilkington because he enjoys annoying fans who speculate about a rift, but denied any actual falling out.
