Ricky Gervais pitched Kevin Pollak 'Special Correspondents' role on Twitter

NEW YORK, April 24 (UPI) -- Comic actor Kevin Pollak says he was playing poker one night when he checked his Twitter feed and saw a message from Ricky Gervais stating he wanted to discuss a film role.

Pollak, who is famous for his work in The Usual Suspects and A Few Good Men, spoke about Gervais' unexpected outreach at a Tribeca Film Festival panel in New York Friday night.

"We met for about nine seconds, four years before and didn't know each other at all," Pollak recalled. "I opened up the direct message and it said: 'I'm going to direct a movie. Where do I send the script? There's a part in it for you.' And I thought, 'I've just received the greatest direct message in history!' Certainly, my history. So, he had me right there. I was just praying, 'Please don't be a [expletive] part because I'll do it anyways.'"

Pollak ended up taking the role of the radio news producer in Special Correspondents, a comedy Gervais stars in, as well as wrote and helmed.

In the movie, Gervais and Eric Bana play broadcast journalists who lose their plane tickets and passports on their way to cover a war in Ecuador, then start filing fake reports from a room over a restaurant in New York City to avoid getting fired.

The film co-stars Kelly Macdonald, America Ferrera, Benjamin Bratt and Vera Farmiga. It will premiere on Netflix Friday.