09/10/2026
For months, Ricky Gervais stood on stages across the country making audiences laugh through his Mortality comedy tour. Behind the scenes, a portion of what those audiences paid was heading somewhere they likely never imagined.
Gervais has donated £150,000, roughly $200,000, to Animals Asia, a charity working to end bear bile farming across Vietnam. The funds came directly from premium ticket sales on the tour.
Bear bile farming remains one of the more disturbing practices still operating in parts of Asia. Bears, typically Asiatic black bears, are confined in cages often barely larger than their own bodies, unable to stand fully upright or turn around, and subjected to repeated invasive procedures to extract bile used in traditional medicine. Many endure this for years, sometimes decades. Vietnam currently has an estimated 150 bears still living on bile farms, a dramatic reduction from more than 4,000 in the early 2000s thanks to sustained campaigning and rescue efforts by organizations like Animals Asia.
The donation is being directed toward tangible, ongoing work: funding rescue operations to physically remove bears from farms, expanding sanctuary capacity to house them, and covering the substantial long-term cost of caring for animals that, after years in captivity, may never be capable of surviving independently in the wild. Rescued bears are taken to specialist sanctuaries offering veterinary treatment, proper nutrition, space to move freely, and permanent homes.
Gervais has used his public platform consistently on behalf of animal welfare causes for years, rarely treating it as separate from his career rather than central to how he uses the attention his work generates.
One donation will not free every bear still living in these conditions. But Animals Asia describes the practice in Vietnam as closer to ending than at any point in its history, and contributions at this scale move that timeline forward in a real and measurable way.
