Martin Freeman: "Ricky Gervais made me laugh more than anyone else"
The Sherlock star pays tribute to the genius of The Office co-creator
Martin Freeman has praised his Office co-star and creator Ricky Gervais, saying that the writer made him laugh more than anyone else while they were filming the hit BBC comedy.
Freeman, who has gone on to land major TV roles as John Watson in Sherlock and in US drama Fargo, earned his big break playing the lovelorn Tim Canterbury at Wernham Hogg Paper Company and said he knew the project was going to be a success because of Gervais and co-creator Stephen Merchant's writing.
“I knew I liked The Office and I knew it was to my taste," Freeman said at the Edinburgh Television Festival earlier today. "And when I did the readthrough I knew that Ricky made me laugh more than anyone has made me laugh. And I thought, we like it, this will be pretty good. But there’s no way we could have known where it would take us.
“Even though it was a relatively small show on BBC2 with no stars in it, that’s when people first started to properly know who I was on buses and tubes. It changed my life, the immediacy of my reality when I walked around on streets and public transport.
“It was a big door opener in work because every f****r watched it.”
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