Stiller: 'Gervais better than nothing'

Ben Stiller has joked that working with Ricky Gervais on Night At The Museum was "much better" than working with nothing.

Speaking at the sequel's UK press conference, the actor recounted how "excited" he had been when Gervais first turned up on the set to film.

"It had been weeks and weeks of acting with nothing - running away from a dinosaur, but no dinosaur, and then running away from Attila The Hun, and nothing, no people to interact with, and then Ricky showed up," he explained.

His comments prompted Gervais to remark, "So, I was better than nothing?" to which Stiller replied: "Much better than nothing - it was almost too much! Ricky Gervais showing up after acting with no-one and we just laughed a lot!"

Discussing his experience, Gervais said: "All my scenes in both films are with Ben and it's basically just me trying to put him off! I went into the first movie a bit blind... [but this time] the characters got madder and madder to the point where Ben had to stop a take laughing and say that's ridiculous!"

Stiller added: "He just went off on some crazy tangent about what my character was probably thinking and saying, and doing a weird cowboy character that was supposed to be me. It was so far from reality and there was no motivation for it so I had to say something!"

Night At The Museum 2 opens in the UK on May 20.