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After Life 3: How TikTok took a Ricky Gervais fan to Netflix

Cole Anderson-James Cole with Ricky GervaisCole Anderson-James
Cole Anderson-James, 24, meeting "fan" Ricky Gervais

Before the pandemic, Cole Anderson-James was a salesman in a "boring 9 to 5 job". Then he downloaded TikTok.

The 24-year-old's videos - lip-syncing to scenes from The Office - soon attracted millions of views.

And he can now be seen alongside the man he impersonates, after Ricky Gervais cast the fan to appear in the new series of After Life on Netflix.

"It's crazy," Cole tells BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat.

"I've been a fan of Ricky Gervais for over 10 years - I even go to sleep with his podcast on in the background!"

Netflix Ricky Gervais and Penelope Wilton in After LifeNetflix
The third series of After Life has had mixed reviews, but it's been a hit with viewers

But the man from Essex is now living a dream.

'It just blew up'

It started when Covid hit, and Cole decided to give TikTok a try while he was "pretty bored".

"The rest is pretty much history," he said.

Cole realised he was "good at lip syncing" and started making videos recreating his favourite scenes from comedies, including The Office.

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After also sharing one of the videos on Twitter, he tagged the show's star Ricky Gervais, who retweeted it.

"It just blew-up, and I thought, 'I'm going to keep doing this'."

'My head exploded'

Cole's mum urged him to message his hero, who had also started following him on Twitter.

"On the premise you don't ask, you don't get, I don't suppose there's any cameo roles going in After Life?," he asked.

​"Months went past and I didn't hear anything. I thought 'it's not happening', and then I got an email saying 'audition for After Life [season] 3' and my head exploded."

A Zoom call with Gervais and the show's producers followed, but he was initially told they didn't yet have a role for him, before eventually being cast as a yoga teacher.

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"I learned the script the night before [filming]," says Cole, who arrived on set expecting rehearsals.

"But Ricky was like, 'nah, let's just film it and see what happens… Go loosely on the script, just make it all up'."

"That threw me off," recalls Cole. "When he [Gervais] said 'action!', my heart just dropped. I did mess it up a little in the first one, but we did it another billion times so it was alright."

By having the confidence to get in touch with Ricky Gervais, "I did shoot my shot," reflects Cole, who urges us all to do the same if the opportunity is there.

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