Critics have called HBO's new show Half Man a study of toxic masculinity, but Richard Gadd, who created and stars in the series, pushes back on that assessment. He says the six-part series, which centers on two boys who become brothers after their mothers fall in love in 1980s Scotland, is really about "the difficulty of male relationships and the dangers of repression."
The characters at the center of Half Man are polar opposites. Gadd plays Ruben, a volatile man who spent time in juvenile detention. Jamie Bell's Niall, meanwhile, is quiet and sensitive. Over the course of 30 years, the two form a close bond that neither one is able to shake. Gadd describes it as a "complicated love that they seem incapable of expressing."
"You take the stereotypical 'alpha' and 'beta' [male], and you put them in a two shot opposite each other — one's kind of muscly and terrifying looking and the other is kind of well dressed up and timid — and you start to kind of deconstruct that from there," Gadd says. "But I like to think, as the show progresses, the boxes in which we meet them in become a bit more blurred and a bit more complicated."
Gadd's semi-autobiographical Netflix series, Baby Reindeer, also explored complicated relationships. It told the story of a struggling comedian who was being stalked by a woman and grappling with the sexual abuse he had endured from an older man early in his career. Baby Reindeer became one of the most-watched Netflix shows ever, and made Gadd a star practically overnight.
"[Baby Reindeer] came out on a Thursday, April 11th ... two years ago, and I think by Sunday, it just felt like everyone in the world was stopping me, just coming up to me, speaking to me," he says. "It was the zeitgeist. It was the hottest thing on the planet. It was crazy."
Interview highlights
On playing an intimidating hyper-masculine person in Half Man
I gave off an intimidating vibe, even though I was just an actor with a beard and a mad haircut and a big sort of body. … At my biggest, I was on a flight, and I walked down the middle aisle and there were seats on the right and left, and I would just remember people kind of just putting their heads down as I passed. I think people are attuned to think, "Oh, that's danger. That guy looks a bit mad, and he's massive, and so I'm not gonna provoke him." But I guess that was the visuals that I wanted from Ruben. So I guess in that respect, it worked.
On creating his one-man show about his sexual assault and exploring victimhood and manhood
It was a case of do or die, almost. I know that sounds extreme, but it's the truth. I couldn't keep it in anymore. ... I think I told my mom [about the sexual abuse] first, maybe one of my friends. And it was always painful. I always remember the adrenaline was kind of unbelievable. But then you would always feel like a weight had been lifted, you know? Meanwhile, I was going up to the Edinburgh Fringe … and doing these kind of madcap jokes that were wacky humor, but meanwhile I was sort of dying inside. It was just this juxtaposition you almost can't write. It's what Baby Reindeer is all about — the kind of sad clown thing, but it was like that to the extreme. I was going through all that, trying to come to terms with all that, whilst simultaneously going on stage and trying to make people laugh in the most kind of wacky way.
On bombing doing stand-up
If you're booked for 20 minutes, no matter how good the gig's going, you play 20 minutes. And I remember going out and I [was] thinking ..."That didn't land, that didn't land." And I was racing through and I looked at my watch and I was almost done with my set, because it was clearly not landing. I was just racing through it and I had about 17 minutes to go. And you could have heard a pin drop. … Once a crowd sucks up an atmosphere of tension and [you think] "Oh my God, this is awkward and uncomfortable," no matter what you do, sometimes you cannot get it out. … There's nothing like the feeling of a bad gig. It's like its own specific feeling. It's hard to describe. It's like a humiliation tinged with sort of existential doubt.
On the thrill when a performance goes well
[There's an] adrenaline of holding an audience in your hands ... and sometimes that comedy, it can be kind of transcendental, in a way. Like, sometimes you feel like you just plug in in a weird way, like a jigsaw piece and the audience [is] plugged back into you. And you sometimes feel almost like moving your eyebrow makes them laugh. And you just suddenly go into this almost suspended place where you're almost completely in the moment, and you just feel like you're completely in tune with the audience. And there's times when I've gone off stage and I've cried because the adrenaline and the euphoria was so great to experience that my body was just like ... shaking to the point of crying. It's kind of incredible.
Lauren Krenzel and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Clare Lombardo adapted it for the web.
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