Gift of the Gadd

As Richard Gadd prepares to film his next series, Half Man, he reflects on the success of his breakout drama hit Baby Reindeer and reveals how he balances the competing demands of acting in and writing his own work.

By his own admission, Richard Gadd is a workaholic. But even so, now that pre-production is ramping up on his new project Half Man, “I’m working silly hours at the moment.”

The BBC and HBO series sees him combine writing and acting – just as he did on his breakout 2024 hit Baby Reindeer – to tell the complex, complicated story of two estranged brothers across four decades.

“I think every pre-production is quite stressful,” he tells DQ, “because every pre-production is blighted by question of, ‘Will we get there on time?’ whether it’s something about scripts, casting, locations or all kinds of things. There are so many variables that make it innately stressful. Making television is, for the most part, quite stressful for everyone.”

Part of that hard work is to make sure all six scripts are completed and that there are as few script amendments needed on set in Glasgow as possible, to avoid replicating the “constant rewrites” he faced during filming on Baby Reindeer.

“Some were just for various reasons, like mishaps on the day or scenes were accidentally dropped and you had to write around them,” he remembers. “I realised quite a big continuity error during Baby Reindeer that had to be written around. I want to limit that and not do that this time. I want to learn from those because that is just a shifting of focus that I think doesn’t really help. I want to put that to bed, really, and not do that again.”

There is some relief, however, that unlike Donny, his character in the autobiographical Baby Reindeer, his Half Man character won’t be in every single scene when shooting begins, which he expects to be next month. “But it’s still a massive part,” he says. “I certainly don’t want to be writing during filming.”

Gadd jokes that he is under “sentence of death” should he reveal anything about the series and estranged ‘brothers’ Niall (Jamie Bell) and Ruben (Gadd) beyond the BBC logline, which reveals that when Ruben shows up unexpectedly at Niall’s wedding, it leads to an explosion of violence that catapults viewers back through the pair’s lives.

Telling a story that runs from the 1980s to the present, the “ambitious” series will cover the highs and lows of the brothers’ relationship, from them meeting as teenagers to their falling out as adults – with all the good, bad, terrible, funny, angry and challenging moments along the way – set against the backdrop of the wild energy of a changing city in an exploration of what it means to be a man.

It is being made by Mam Tor Productions for the BBC, BBC Scotland and HBO, with Banijay Rights distributing outside the UK and Ireland and the US. Directed by Alexandra Brodski (Somewhere Boy, Rivals) and Eshref Reybrouck (Cheyenne & Lola), it is due to air in 2026.

It’s notable that when casting for the series was announced, executive producers Tally Garner and Morven Reid said they were “thrilled” that Gadd had agreed to play Ruben. So was it ever in doubt that he would star in the series?

“When the casting had come about, HBO and the BBC really wanted me to do it, and it’s not that we never really discussed it or anything,” he says. “I was leaving all possibilities open – not being in it at all, doing a cameo appearance as just the waiter or something, or being one of the main parts, but not the main part [of Niall].

“In the back of my mind, the more I wrote it, the more I thought I’d really like to play the part of Ruben. When the BBC and HBO came on board and said, ‘I can really see you doing that, will you consider it?’ it confirmed this desire I had to do it. I never wanted to be the kind of person that is like, ‘I’m doing this part.’ But when people landed on it of their own accord, I was happy to oblige.”

Of course, when Half Man (previously titled Lions) was first announced by the BBC back in February last year, Baby Reindeer hadn’t even launched. Now likely to be billed as Gadd’s follow-up to the Netflix sensation, which won two Golden Globes last weekend to add to its haul of six Emmys, it wouldn’t be a surprise to know the writer is feeling some pressure to repeat that success.

“Well, I think the pressure I put on myself is phenomenal and far greater than any global pressure I feel,” he remarks. “I will never be in a situation where I can say that I haven’t worked as hard as I possibly can, because I just feel like I’m doing it all the time and giving it my everything. It’s no greater than the pressure I put myself under. The pressure I put on myself I think is quite phenomenal.

“Because I was such a workaholic, I was writing scripts [for Half Man] as well as writing the Baby Reindeer scripts at the same time, just constantly writing. I remember I finished Baby Reindeer on December 13, 2023, and I was in speaking about this at 9am on the 14th. It really was back to back.”

A year later, Gadd is back in pre-production – “and it’s a lot,” he adds. “There’s been a lot of change this year and a lot of things that I’ve had to deal with. A show is stressful enough, but there’s been a lot of other stuff going on and I’ve just been juggling it, but I’ve still been working really hard. The work always takes precedence and I’m very passionate about it, and I just really want it to be good. But that’s the pressure I put on myself. I just really want it to be good.”

In the last year alone, Gadd has become a breakout star thanks to Baby Reindeer and its numerous award wins – more could be expected later this year at the Bafta Television Awards. But that success has been overshadowed by claims relating to the authenticity of its storyline and its portrayal of real-life individuals in the story based on Gadd’s own experiences. Netflix is currently battling a US$170m lawsuit from one woman claiming to have been portrayed negatively in the show.

Despite the legal fallout, Gadd says he always thought Baby Reindeer would be a success, as well as a show that would stir up some debate and conversation. Based on his award-winning one-man stage play, it centres on struggling comedian Donny Dunn (Gadd)’s strange relationship with his stalker, Martha (Jessica Gunning), leading him to confront a deeply buried trauma. Nava Mau co-stars as Teri, a therapist and trans woman who meets Donny through a dating app, and Tom Goodman-Hill as Darrien, a television writer and potential mentor to Donny.

“I really believed it was saying and doing stuff that I felt was groundbreaking,” he explains. “I thought that it would have its moment in the sun, but there is a level where you almost can’t conceive of it. I remember the first time I was on a call and somebody mentioned the Emmys, for example. I genuinely thought they were just saying it. I couldn’t get my head around the fact it would be considered for something like that – and then to go on to be one of Netflix’s most successful shows of all time. That’s a level I could not have envisioned.”

He believes the show chimed with viewers because it “cuts through to the human soul.” “A lot of people in are struggling right now in this ever-changing world; this almost post-modern, slightly dystopian world we find ourselves in; this kind of post-truth, fake news, social media-driven world,” he continues. “We’ve lost a touch of the human soul, and Baby Reindeer has a lot of soul. People were crying out for something they could connect to, in a way. The fact that it was challenging and the fact that nobody in the show was perfect, it just showed a slice of human experience that people really could get on board with.”

But while there might have been questions about him acting in Half Man, there was never any doubt Gadd would play Donny in Baby Reindeer, which debuted in April.

“I felt like it added a lot to it. It was this semi-autobiographical show, and I felt like putting me in an added layer of artistry to the piece,” he says. “I’d never be one of these people who cast themselves in roles just because they’re the main roles when they could maybe take a side character and someone else might be better and the show might be better for it.”

Gadd also fought to have a cast largely made up of unknown actors, despite numerous “celebrities” being interested in playing Martha and other roles on screen. “Every time I felt celebrity entered Baby Reindeer, some of the personality of the piece was gone,” he says. “I just fought it and resisted it at all costs. I felt that because nobody’s going to really know me on a grand scale when it came out, no one’s going to know Jess, and I thought as a result they really believed they were watching this tumultuous slice of London life because everyone in it was unrecognisable. That added to the piece. I’ll always just try to fight for what I think is the best thing to do for the show.”

Gadd wrote Baby Reindeer on his own, and though it was his first major series as a writer, it was by no means the only show he has written. He was part of the Sex Education season two writers room and previously developed numerous other projects that didn’t get commissioned.

“I was always writing telly scripts and I was always coming close to series commissions,” he says. “By the time Baby Reindeer rolled around, I’d been scriptwriting for years. It’s just nobody had really seen any of it. I’ve got so many scripts, like 10 to 15, just sitting on my laptop that will never see the light of day.

“There’s this idea that Sex Education was the first time I wrote for television, but it really wasn’t. It was the first time I wrote something that was broadcast on television. I loved that show and writing on that show. It was all great experience for sure, but I considered myself a television writer long before that.”

It was also due to the personal nature of Baby Reindeer that Gadd chose to write all seven episodes himself, rather than bring in co-writers or open a room of his own.

“I felt it was an idiosyncratic show and, as a result, it needed a very strong authorial presence across it,” he says. “I couldn’t have envisioned it any other way. There are some shows like Sex Education, where a writers room is beneficial – multi-character, multi-plot. Baby Reindeer was a singular-vision show and I felt like these experiences that I’d been through were so singular and unique that it didn’t make sense to bring people along to try to write what I’d gone through. It just felt very appropriate that I do it.

“A lot of people sometimes do writers rooms because of the overwhelming work that faces them, but I was up for the challenge as well.”

Gadd says a lot of those scripts were written in a certain period in time and he’s unlikely to revisit them. “But there’s one maybe that I might dust off,” he teases. “Who knows?”

tagged in: Baby Reindeer, Banijay Rights, BBC, Half Man, HBO, Mam Tor Productions, Netflix, Richard Gadd