Stewart is being rightly celebrated as a master Shakespearean stage actor and sci-fi star. But The Office creator Ricky Gervais recalled that Stewart’s genius extended to comedy as well.
“What an actor,” Gervais wrote on social media. “I still can’t believe he agreed to do this scene. And he didn’t even mind when I ruined every take. Legend.”
The scene Gervais was referring to was from his 2005 The Office follow-up, Extras. In it, Gervais’s character, a lowly background actor with big ambitions, enters Stewart’s trailer seeking career advice from someone he considers a serious master thespian.
But all Stewart can talk about is the screenplay that he’s working on — for a movie in which he plays a man who uses his “real world” superpowers to make women’s clothes “fall off.”
“I’ve seen everything,” Stewart says again and again. “I’ve seen it all.”
It’s a brilliant bit of self-parody by an actor who enjoyed his roles on The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, Sesame Street and Robin Hood: Men in Tights as much as performing Shakespeare.
“I still want to try another TV comedy,” Stewart wrote in his 2023 memoir. “I still have so many characters inside me that I need to let out.”