Golden Globes host Gervais ready to play favorites, demand answers: Where’s his nomination?

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Golden Globes host Gervais ready to play favorites

LOS ANGELES — Golden Globe Awards host Ricky Gervais has firm ideas about who should win Sunday and who should have been nominated in the first place — for instance, him.

Gervais said he plans to follow in the footsteps of Bob Hope, who, as Academy Awards host, jokingly whined about being overlooked for his movies. Gervais failed to get a nod for “The Invention of Lying,” which he starred in, co-wrote and co-directed.

“There will be questions asked,” Gervais warned, adding he might drag the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the ceremony’s organizer, onstage for questioning.

“Look forward to that,” he said, with more than a touch of glee.

He also places tongue-in-cheek blame on Daniel Day-Lewis, who’s up for musical or comedy acting honors for “Nine.” The oft-acclaimed Day-Lewis has received Oscars for the dramas “There Will be Blood” and “My Left Foot.”

“How dare he move in on comedy? It’s just not fair,” Gervais said. “He doesn’t need it, does he? I need it more than he does. … It’s like Barack Obama having a go. He doesn’t need to. Just showing off. Stop it.”

Gervais, the ceremony’s first host in 15 years, isn’t abiding by any expectations of neutrality for the Globes, airing 8 p.m. EST Sunday on NBC from Beverly Hills.

“Am I meant to be impartial? Because I’ll blow that straight away. Whoever wins (for best TV drama), I’m going to give it to either ‘Damages’ or ‘Dexter,’” he said.

Gervais is downright fanatic about Showtime’s “Dexter,” which he considers a class act.

“It’s quite incredible that you’re totally on the side of a serial killer,” he said sincerely, then couldn’t resist adding a quip: “Which is good.”

Although he confessed that, as of a couple weeks ago, he hadn’t seen all the nominees, he’s a big fan of “Up in the Air” and its star, George Clooney. The film is “a proper, grown-up, funny romantic comedy, which proves they can be done,” Gervais said, adding that Clooney is “such a brilliant comic actor.”

Another nominee, the animated movie “Up,” is “lovely, such a sweet film” and his favorite of last year, Gervais said.

Nominee or not, Gervais figures he’s a winner anyway: He gets to promote the Jan. 19 release of the DVD of “The Invention of Lying” and the February debut of HBO’s animated series “The Ricky Gervais Show,” based on his popular podcasts and audio books with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington.

As for his approach to hosting the ceremony, he doesn’t plan any skits and is only roughly shaping his monologue. “Then we’ll see what happens,” said Gervais, star and co-creator of “The Office” in Britain, the basis for NBC’s Globes-nominated version starring Steve Carell.

Could Gervais take part in a Globes song-and-dance number?

“If I’m drunk enough; I’m certainly not planning to. But who knows what will happen by act three?” he said.

And what’s his planned look for the evening?

“I thought fat and sweaty and crumpled. What were you thinking?”

On the Net:

www.goldenglobes.org

www.nbc.com