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He doesn’t pull his punches.
“Baby Reindeer” creator and star Richard Gadd, back with a second provocative show, said that if he spent his life “worried about [audience] reactions, or worried about how people will respond to things,” then “you’re not going to ever write good art.”
The Emmy-winning Scottish actor / writer, 36, rose to fame in 2024 with Netflix’s viral hit “Baby Reindeer,” a disturbing series about a man (Gadd) and his stalker, Martha (Jessica Gunning).
It swept the Emmys and Golden Globes – and also made headlines for its behind the scenes controversies.
His new six-episode limited series, “Half Man,” is about the toxic, sometimes brutal relationship between Ruben (Gadd) and Niall (Jamie Bell) two pseudo stepbrothers, over the course of several decades.
Gadd said Niall’s no-nonsense mother, Lori (Neve McIntosh) is one of his “favorites ever” among the characters he’s written, “second only to Martha.”
“Baby Reindeer” was beset by behind the scenes controversy, as it was based on Gadd’s own life.
Fiona Harvey, a woman who claimed to be the basis for “Martha,” came forward, gave interviews and sued Netflix in 2024, alleging defamation. (The case is still pending.)
Gadd didn’t address that, but he said that when that show “exploded,” he didn’t want to give himself “time to think.”
“I wrote an episode [of ‘Half Man’] back in 2019, and shelved it four four years while I did ‘Baby Reindeer.’ I knew I was going to this, next,” he said at a recent Television Critics Association press conference.
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“Half Man” has several violent scenes. Ruben is introduced with a wild, bloody reputation (it’s mentioned that he did two years in juvenile prison for biting somebody’s nose off).
Gadd said he never thinks the bloody parts are “cheap,” because anything in the show that is “challenging, violent, depraved…is born out of character and born out of story.”
He thinks where sex and violence fail on TV is when they’re “frivolous,” or used because the creative team says, “we’re bringing two beautiful actors together, won’t that get viewers to watch?”
On “Half Man,” he said, he aimed for disturbing scenes to lead to “plot development or character psychology going deeper. I think it’s completely justified.”
Because “Half Man” has themes of masculinity, Gadd said, “you have to show how extreme that can go. Otherwise, you’re robbing the audience of the truth of this big theme that we’re grappling with right now, as a society.”
Gadd wasn’t involved in the 2025 awards sweeping hit miniseries, “Adolescence,” but similar to his work, it was about the darker side of toxic masculinity.
He thinks that “Baby Reindeer” and “Adolescence” both proved that society likes “to be challenged.”
“We like to face our own demons and see it back on television.”
“Half Man” airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on HBO Max.
English (US)