Richard Gadd on ‘Half Man,' Masculinity and Life After ‘Baby Reindeer'

“I went in with limited intention and maximum ambition. That’s how I go about most of my projects.”

Richard Gadd follows Baby Reindeer with Half Man, an HBO limited series about two repressed ‘brothers' in Glasgow. "I came up with the two characters, and I couldn’t shake them."

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Editor’s Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.

After the massive global success of Baby Reindeer, was it intimidating to figure out what to do next? That would terrify the sh** out of me.

I don’t know. Pressure is only pressure to the degree in which you let it in. External pressure is always going to be there, but it’s nothing compared to the pressure I put on myself to try and make something as good as possible. I was just lucky that I knew what I wanted to do after Baby Reindeer, and I knew I wanted to do this, and that provided a clarity of feeling and meaning to me that allowed me to move past any sort of feelings of pressure or expectation off the back of Baby Reindeer. In a lot of ways, the best thing I did at that point was spin 180 and just go straight into my next project. And it was literally straight into the next project. The whole of Half Man has pretty much been done in the space of about two years, which is taking a lot out of me [Gadd is writer and creator], but I didn’t pause to let that feeling in. I just wanted to move on to the next thing and try to make it as good as possible.

You could have done anything. What made this the obvious next project?

I always think that your own work should come above any other kind of opportunity. Ultimately, I feel most fulfilled by doing what I’ve done all the way through my life, which is create an idea from the ground up and oversee it to its conclusion. Money is not a motivating factor for me in that respect, and I did have a lot of offers, crazy offers in a lot of ways, but I turned them all down to do this because ultimately my heart was telling me this is what I needed to do next. I just had to do it next. It’s hard to describe.

I’m obsessed with the portrayal of masculinity in this story, and you go from extreme to extreme within these characters. What was it about masculinity specifically that you wanted to explore?

I just wanted to dig deep inside the whole issue of it. All the contradictions, all the idiosyncrasies, all of the pressures, all the expectations of what it means to be a man. It just felt like something that called me to write about it. I can’t really boil it down to any one thing. It’s not like I tried to get to the heart of what it means to be a man. I didn’t go in to seek answers to questions I’ve been grappling with my entire life. It just feels like something which called me to write about it. I came up with the two characters and I couldn’t shake them and I just had to explore it. I went in with limited intention and maximum ambition, and that’s how I go about most of my projects. I can’t really say what it is about it that makes it interesting to me other than I just think it’s a whole complex theme, and that’s what I like to explore in my work.

What is it about the Britishness of this story that makes the conversation around masculinity even more compelling?

Not necessarily the Britishness as much as the Scottishness of it. I thought placing the story within Glasgow was really interesting as a backdrop, because Glasgow is a city that has gone through phenomenal change from a place that was deemed scary and dangerous to one of the cultural LGBT capitals of the world. It’s almost like the city was progressing more than the characters were. These two repressed men can’t move with the times, yet the city’s expanding and progressing faster than they are. That just felt like an interesting backdrop. Ultimately, aspects of Britishness or Scottishness didn’t seep into the story as much as just trying to pull the knottiness of the characters out. I took two men, and I tried to make their story, their journey and their relationship as knotty and as complicated as I could.

Every young queer male, and I’m sure others too, knows the fear and intimidation of a hyper-masculine man. Did you feel that in creating the story between these two?

That was part of it. What I was interested in exploring most of all was the depth of human repression, not just in terms of sexuality, but all kinds of repression. Ruben’s a deeply repressed person, just in a very different way. What Ruben brings into the series is a sense of chaos and power, which Niall deflects a lot of stuff onto. Because Ruben is intimidating and scary and prone to deep violent outbursts, there is a sense of intimidation from Niall, naturally, but also a way in which he can displace some of his feelings and blame externally. Ruben not only had to be intimidating as a character so we buy this example of masculinity that exists within the series, but it was important almost as an excuse Niall would make to himself as to why he couldn’t come out or progress in his own life. It gave a lot to the story in that respect.

There’s a conversation about hyper-masculinity and some of these groups who want to reclaim masculinity. What do you hope people take from the portrayal of these two masculine characters, or is it up to interpretation?

The latter. I would never want my or any viewers to take anything specific from it. Art should be open to interpretation and people take what they need from it. Too often in this day and age, television and film is too clear. Its intention is too clear, what it wants you to think and feel. I don’t think that’s correct in a lot of ways. If you’re in an art gallery and you’re standing next to a painter and he’s pointing at different parts of the painting saying, “Well, I did this brushstroke because of this reason, and behind this character’s eyes is this,” it kind of loses the magic. I don’t ask anything from my audience. If they take something from it, that’s what it is. A lot of people ask about the ending and say, “What does it mean?” And I usually go, “Well, what do you think it means?” And they go, “I think it means this.” And I say, “Well, that’s probably what it is then, because that’s what it is to you.” That’s just how I think art should exist. I might be wrong, but that’s how I feel.

The physicality of your performance is almost a supporting character. Your body and the way you hold it becomes just as intimidating. How important was it for you to physically transform?

It was important artistically for my performance. The weight needed to be felt in his body. I didn’t want it to be a Hollywood six-pack. I wanted it to feel real. Burly is the word I kept saying to the personal trainers and nutritionists. He needs to be a burly man. The second he looks like a gym bro, it wouldn’t be correct. Ruben’s body is a natural byproduct of his innate primal strength. If he looked like he preened himself too much in the gym, then he cares too much. Ruben’s not about self-image. It was important in his later life as an example of masculinity that he looked like one. I towered over Jamie Bell, and I looked thicker and wider and taller than him, and I really felt like that was important. I wanted to feel the character in my body as well. I wanted to feel that strength and that weight. For people to go on a journey believing Donny Dunn is now Ruben Pallister, I needed to transform almost absolutely everything about myself, and that’s what I did.

What was the first thing you wanted to eat after filming wrapped?

It’s so funny you say that. On the last day of set, they surprised me with a McDonald’s, and if I told you what I ate in one sitting, you wouldn’t believe it.

Jamie Bell is one of the most underrated actors working who deserves more respect. The disparity between your heights, your physicality, the way he’s able to own it, he’s almost like a dancer working around this tree stump of a man that you are. What was it like establishing that intimate relationship?

I agree with you. He’s a terrifically celebrated actor, but still underrated in a sense. I always wondered what he was capable of, and now I know he’s capable of this and more. He’s a phenomenal actor and capable of vulnerability and layered performance. We got on straight away, which helped, and we had an ease around each other. The second scene we ever shot was the ending of episode six, so we had to get very physically comfortable around each other very quickly. I actually think it helped. Me and Jamie spoke a lot about how starting in that moment threw us in the deep end, and we had to go on a journey together as actors in terms of getting really intimate with one another. He threw himself into everything. There’s always a fear that an actor of his caliber comes over and is reluctant to do things. They don’t want to get in the mud, or they’re stubborn on notes or in terms of feedback, but he threw himself into everything. I felt a phenomenal amount of respect from him around the project and what he had to do, and we hit it off immediately. That helped us shortcut our way to the heart of the story.

This and Baby Reindeer are both amazing, serious and gut-wrenching. Do you just want to do a comedy next? Something fully absurd, no crying?

I’ll do whatever takes me next. I want to do whatever compels me. If it is a lighthearted comedy, then I guess that’s what I’ll do. Right now in my life, I don’t feel compelled to write a workplace sitcom or whatever. It doesn’t speak to me. Never say never, because if something inspired me, if I walked down the street one day and thought, “Oh, this is a perfect idea for a rom-com,” I would do it and take that risk. Right now, my sensibilities are a little more idiosyncratic. I don’t really know how to bottle Baby Reindeer and Half Man into one bracket, but my sensibilities aren’t at the stage where I want to do that. I love sitcoms, and I love all kinds of different art forms. So if my life called upon it, I would certainly do it.

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This story was originally published April 22, 2026 at 3:00 AM.