Richard Gadd on His New Series 'Half Man' and the Shadow of 'Baby Reindeer'

Richard Gadd never expected his first TV show, Baby Reindeer, to resonate the way it did.

The series followed comedian Donny Dunn (Gadd), struggling professionally and working behind a bar, when he catches the attention of the lonely and obsessive Martha (Jessica Gunning).

In 2024, the stalker dramedy debuted at number five in Netflix's top 10 English-language TV shows, before climbing to the top spot the following week.

It landed Gunning a BAFTA, an Emmy and a Golden Globe, and an Emmy for Gadd. It also won best limited series at both the Emmys and the Golden Globes, among a slew of other accolades.

"I never anticipated that level of success," Gadd says. "And that kind of stuff just doesn't come into my mind when I'm writing.

"I thought it would be a critical success maybe."

Based on two of his award-winning live shows, Baby Reindeer came directly from the comedian-turned-screenwriter's life. A card at the start of the first episode even reads: "This is a true story."

Gadd was stalked for six years by a woman he met working behind a bar in London, who went on to send him more than 40,000 emails and 350 hours of voicemail messages.

That authenticity proved fraught when internet sleuths tried to figure out Martha's real identity. The woman who was exposed contradicted the way she had been portrayed and has since sued Netflix for defamation, seeking $US170 million ($239 million) in damages. The case is ongoing.

"It was almost like an indie film in a lot of ways — it's a stand-up comedian's sort of psychosexual relationship with his stalker. It doesn't scream commercial hit."

Now, Gadd has followed up Baby Reindeer with the six-episode series Half Man.

It stars Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) as Niall Kennedy, a semi-successful writer, whose estranged stepbrother, Ruben Pallister (Gadd), arrives unexpectedly at his wedding, seemingly to settle old grudges.

The series charts about 30 years in the brothers' lives, from their teens, when Ruben (Stuart Campbell), recently released from a young offender institution, moves into the home Niall (Mitchell Robertson) shares with his mum, through to Niall's college years, Ruben's adult imprisonment and release, and Niall's struggles with substance addiction and his sexuality.

While Gadd might have felt some pressure to repeat the success of the Baby Reindeer, he says he tried to let go of the weight of expectation.

"Capturing the Zeitgeist is so rare, and I'm so proud of having done that," Gadd says. "People will always refer back to it because it was such a cultural explosion.

"But I realised after Baby Reindeer that either I let all that expectation and pressure in and let it stifle me and make me reticent to move forward or I just get back on the horse and do it again.

"Once I committed to [making Half Man], the pressure was trying to make it as good as possible."

Transforming for TV

When Gadd started writing Half Man in 2019, he had no intention of starring in it. This time, he didn't want to juggle the roles of both showrunner and star.

"It's really challenging and all-consuming," he says.

He had written the character of Niall with Bell in mind, and when he visited the actor in Los Angeles to talk about the show, Bell convinced him to play Ruben.

At the same time, the networks — HBO in America and BBC in the UK — suggested starring in Half Man would help audiences recognise it as his next project after Baby Reindeer.

"I went to bed one night and I thought, 'What if I make a fool of myself?' Everything I was thinking of was fear of what people might think.

"If that's the only reason then it's not good enough."

To play Ruben required more than being able to capture the threat of violence that festers beneath the surface of his hardened exterior. It required a complete physical transformation, with Gadd adhering to a strict diet and exercise regime throughout filming and production.

"Alongside trying to artistically do something different — Half Man has got different pacing, different feel, it's a bit more socially realist, there's no ironic score or playful tone — I was in the gym all the time, eating a different diet, and it was a lot.

"But I knew in order to get people to buy me as Ruben Pallister, not Donny Dunn, I needed to change everything about myself."

The writer and actor says he learned from Baby Reindeer how important it was to work hard like that — no matter the project.

"If you work hard and leave no stone unturned, then you're setting yourself a better chance of something positive happening," he says.

That dedication is something that has marked Gadd since he was in school, studying for his exams: "I just always remember having a thing in me."

Gadd also always knew he wanted to make work for the screen, ever since he was 12 years old, growing up in Fife in eastern Scotland, where he saw the original UK version of The Office for the first time.

"It's been a dream for as long as I can remember," he says. "I feel like I was lucky in a way that I knew what I wanted to be quite early on."

When Gadd was studying English literature and theatre at university in Glasgow, he would send scripts to production companies and agents, hoping for his big break.

That's also when he first started performing live comedy, in 2008, debuting his first stand-up hour at Edinburgh Fringe in 2010. Six years later, he picked up the top prize at Fringe for Monkey See Monkey Do, and then an Olivier for the one-man stage version of Baby Reindeer in 2020.

"Transitioning from stage to screen, when it came around, I felt like it was a long time coming," he says. "I'd probably written like a hundred different scripts by then."

An inescapable story

While Gadd was making Baby Reindeer, he couldn't stop thinking about the pilot script he had written for Half Man.

"I couldn't escape it."

The day after he finished the sound mix for Baby Reindeer, he got up and started writing Half Man again.

The story he couldn't escape is one of two men who are irrevocably intertwined, no matter how hard they try to extricate themselves from one another.

While at times they bring out ugliness and violence in one another, at others they are supportive and kind: In the first episode, Niall helps Ruben cheat at his exam so he can stay in school; while Ruben defends Niall from his bullies.

"I wanted to take these broken characters in the present and flash back to the prejudices and soaked-up, learned behaviours that made them that repressed and that vengeful and rageful," Gadd says.

"I can relate to a lot of the struggles they both go through as people; I can't always relate to the way they react to them.

"[Ruben] is someone in a lot of pain who does try his best, despite the deep psychological setbacks that he has, the deep traumas, and the fact society positions him in a way that almost never gives him a chance."

He wanted to explore these characters, rather than make some sweeping statement about masculinity, which feels like a hot-button topic on TV and in popular culture at the moment: from last year's Adolescence to Louis Theroux's recent manosphere documentary to the Booker winner Flesh.

"With the male condition, all I really got from writing Half Man was that it's very innately complicated," Gadd says.

"I didn't really land on any conclusions about where we're at or what it means to be a man or anything like that."

Both Baby Reindeer and Adolescence topped end-of-year lists, even though both explored difficult ideas around masculinity and violence.

Asked what we can learn from the success of shows like these, Gadd suggests: "I think people like to be challenged more than we think they do."

"[Adolescence and Baby Reindeer] cut through with a sense of authenticity," he says.

"They were showing things that people weren't used to in the world of television and broad storytelling.

"People like to watch stuff that challenges them and stuff that is hard or tough or carries difficult messaging and all kinds of stuff. Difficult doesn't necessarily mean no-one will watch."