It’s ironic that the title of Richard Gadd’s latest show is “Half Man,” because he’s incapable of doing anything halfway.
Gadd first wrote the script for what would become his HBO limited series in 2019 before “Baby Reindeer” was commissioned for Netflix. Even as he was adapting his live performance into what would become the Emmy-winning limited series, Gadd was thinking about “Half Man.” He spent hours obsessing over lines, figuring out the exact cadence that would best serve each line of dialogue. When he decided to play Ruben — one of the two stepbrothers central to the series — he spent a year working with a personal trainer and a nutritionist, bulking up to match the body type he envisioned for the character. Even after he gained a six-pack, he put on more fat to ensure Ruben looked like a guy who “carries his life in his body.”
“The fact that I hadn’t forgotten about (‘Half Man’) in four years meant that it was all the more reason to continue,” Gadd said. “I didn’t stop for a second on ‘Baby Reindeer.’ And equally, I didn’t stop for a second on ‘Half Man.’ I can never look back and say I didn’t try my absolute hardest, which is all I ever really want.”
Though “Half Man” isn’t autobiographical like “Baby Reindeer,” it shares that show’s haunting emotional punch. Set in Scotland in the 1980s, it focuses on the meek yet brilliant teen Niall (Mitchell Robertson), whose life is forever changed when his mother’s girlfriend moves into his home and brings her explosive son, Ruben (Stuart Campbell). Niall tiptoes around Ruben’s temper, but he also gains confidence thanks to his stepbrother’s presence. Under his brutish demeanor, Ruben is protective of Niall.
The peace doesn’t last. Niall can’t bring himself to admit to his stepbrother that he’s in love with a man (Bilal Hasna) — a man Ruben beats nearly to death, which lands him in prison. As the timeline shifts forward, Jamie Bell takes over as Niall, and both men battle shame: Niall over his sexuality, and Gadd’s Ruben over his violent behavior.
“Shame, fear and all these emotions — they’re so primal in a way that they can really destroy the core of someone. It’s something that I’ve experienced in my life that I thought was interesting to explore,” Gadd said. “It’s always born out of reality, circumstance and character. As long as you make sure that at the heart of these struggles is genuine humanity, you can go where you want.”
Where “Half Man” goes is bleak. Gadd knows that many people look at the show, which he also executive produced, as a story about toxic masculinity. But to him, it’s about something far more universal. “It’s about the struggle to love oneself,” he said. “My main intention was to explore a broken male relationship and how those two characters got to that point.”
When it came to casting, Gadd chose relatively unknown actors for the younger versions of the stepbrothers. Robertson conveys Niall’s internal conflict, while Campbell captures Ruben’s hidden torment. As for Bell, Gadd had long been a fan of his co-star’s “inherently vulnerable” performances. “No matter the awful things these guys do, is there still a pocket of sympathy for them at the end?” he said. “That was my artistic game.”
Throughout production, Gadd maintained an open dialogue with his creative team, especially Alexandra Brodski, who directed half of the six episodes (Eshref Reybrouck took the other three) and shared his vision of balancing all the pain with warmth and light — because ultimately, it’s Niall and Ruben’s love, however dysfunctional, that fuels the story. “I wanted ‘Half Man’ to be oddly beautiful,” Gadd said. “There is a version of this that is extremely socially realist with grayscale buildings and harsh human reality. There’s a version of that that’s probably good. But with Alex, she fundamentally got the heart of the project, which wasn’t the darkness.
“Anytime I’ve experienced tragedy in my life, there’s always some odd, surreal humor to it. (Comedy) is just a natural byproduct of trying to explore and dig deep into the complications of life.”
This story first ran in the Limited Series/TV Movie issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
The post For Richard Gadd, ‘Half Man’ Is About the ‘Struggle to Love Oneself’ appeared first on TheWrap.
