Embora seja possível que os dois tenham se desentendido, a palavra oficial é que eles estão apenas trabalhando em seus próprios projetos.
Isso começou com Hello Ladies , que é sobre experiências de namoro terríveis na vida do Merchant. Como Gervais está com a namorada há 30 anos, Merchant achava que não seria capaz de se relacionar com a história e decidiu fazer o projeto sozinho.
Aqui está o que ele disse Splitsider quando eles perguntado sobre Gervais:
What made you guys decide to try to go your own way this time?
Well I don’t know if it was that premeditated, really. I did the standup show which was about these experiences, and HBO approached me and said maybe there’s some sitcom material in there. And Ricky has been in a relationship with the same woman, lucky for him, since he was in college; he’d never been in the dating world or the dating scene. It’s not something that resonates with him. So it just didn’t seem like a fit for the two of us. It didn’t seem like an obvious role for him. I think he would have felt like what am I doing if I can’t plug into the sort of meat of the subject? It just didn’t seem like a fit for the two of us, really. So that sort of explains that.
Do you guys have plans to work together in the future on any projects?
We’re sort of on different time frames because I was doing that and he’s doing his stuff, Derek and stuff like that, so we’re in two different time tables. It’s proven a bit frustrating to try to get back into it but I’m sure there’ll be something down the road.