{"id":623166,"date":"2026-04-23T11:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T11:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/623166\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T11:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T11:33:08","slug":"richard-gadd-on-his-even-darker-baby-reindeer-follow-up-i-write-for-the-people-who-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/623166\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Gadd on his even-darker Baby Reindeer follow-up: \u2018I write for the people who struggle\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Screenwriter Richard Gadd also starred in his debut miniseries, Baby Reindeer. His latest series, Half Man, continues to explore gay men\u2019s mistreatment and the trauma that follows.Ed Miller\/Netflix\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Richard Gadd\u2019s Baby Reindeer was one of those word-of-mouth hits of the streaming era that came as a complete surprise. <\/p>\n

The surprise came, in part, because half the words you\u2019d hear coming out of the mouths of viewers were about how difficult it was to stomach the 2024 Emmy-winning Netflix limited series. <\/p>\n

The critics\u2019 consensus section on Rotten Tomatoes summarizes thusly: \u201cPunishing watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

While some creators might have followed-up a project inspired by the dark corners of their life \u2013 being stalked, surviving sexual assault \u2013 with something a little lighter, maybe even joyful, that\u2019s not the Scottish actor and stage-scribe-turned-screenwriter\u2019s way.<\/p>\n

Johanna Schneller: Baby Reindeer transcends its trauma drama and succeeds as art<\/a><\/p>\n

Half Man, Gadd\u2019s new six-episode limited series on Crave about a pair of Glaswegian brothers who make Cain and Abel seem like model siblings, is for those who want it even darker. Like Baby Reindeer, it tackles queer themes in a way that runs counter to other TV storytelling these days, such as Heated Rivalry. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s room for both: You can have shows that have a lot of queer joy in them \u2013 and I think you can have shows that show a certain sense of sexual struggle,\u201d Gadd says, leaning in with intensity toward his laptop in a video interview from a hotel in London.<\/p>\n

\u201cI write for the people who struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n

A BBC and HBO co-production, Half Man follows the complex relationship between self-described \u201cbrothers from another lover\u201d Niall and Ruben, who make Cain and Abel seem like model siblings, over three decades.<\/p>\n

The two are played by Mitchell Robertson and Stuart Campbell as teenagers and young men, and Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) and a terrifyingly beefed-up Gadd later in life.<\/p>\n

After opening with a violent confrontation between the two men at Niall\u2019s wedding, the series flashes back to Glasgow in 1989 (the year Gadd was born \u2013 a coincidence, he says).<\/p>\n

Then, Niall is a shy and nervous but academically talented high-school student, facing relentless homophobic bullying.<\/p>\n

This is both because he is perceived as gay \u2013 it will take him a long time to accept his sexuality \u2013 and because his widowed mother is now in a relationship with a woman.<\/p>\n

Things gets worse for Niall when the physically intimidating Ruben \u2013 his mother\u2019s partner\u2019s son; we\u2019d just call him his stepbrother in our age \u2013 is released from prison, moves into his bedroom and enrols at his school. <\/p>\n

But it also, in some ways, gets better. <\/p>\n

Ruben deals with Niall\u2019s bullies (in a brutal manner), while Niall helps Ruben with his grades (in a deceptive fashion).<\/p>\n

In the first episode, there\u2019s a confusing sexual encounter that begins when Ruben brings a girlfriend home to the room he shares with Niall. The lines of consent and attraction are nothing if not blurred. <\/p>\n

The fall out will continue over the course of the brother\u2019s twisty, symbiotic lives as they try to break out of patterns of harming others and themselves.<\/p>\n

In addition to the effects of internalized homophobia, another theme connects Half Man to Baby Reindeer: the long-tailed consequences of trauma on a male survivor of sexual abuse. <\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I wasn\u2019t done exploring it,\u201d says Gadd, who notes he doesn\u2019t like to think of his work as having \u201cmoral take-aways\u201d or being \u201cabout\u201d something.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that Gadd doesn\u2019t understand that representing certain subject matter \u2013 not always spoken about, especially among men \u2013 can be helpful. \u201cWhen I was going through a sexuality crisis, in a masculinity crisis, and going through the aftermath of sexual abuse, something like Baby Reindeer would really have helped me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

But Gadd is also clear that, for him, it\u2019s important to not shy away from the darker corners his tormented or tormenting characters go.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know a lot of people in my life who find that this age of progressiveness makes them feel left behind, because they still have these sort of synaptic responses to ideas of shame relating to themselves,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In Half Man, Niall grows up to be a writer and releases a novel that draws on his experiences with his brother, whose crimes are a matter of public record.<\/p>\n

In one scene, he gets upset after being peppered with questions about the real stories that inspired his work. His publicist steps in and says: \u201cWe will only be taking questions that relate to the author and the writing process behind this novel.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those who followed the fallout of Baby Reindeer, this can seem like meta-commentary. Billed as a \u201ctrue story,\u201d it set off legions of internet sleuths who pried into Gadd\u2019s personal life, and inspired a continuing defamation lawsuit<\/a> from a woman who says she\u2019s the basis for the stalker character.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be doing a disservice to the work itself if I was to try and comment on other things outside the show about myself,\u201d Gadd says. \u201cBut I can see why people would take that out of it. It\u2019s that age-old question: Do you divorce the author from the work?\u201d <\/p>\n

Review: Netflix\u2019s new miniseries Adolescence will terrify parents \u2013 and is the streamer\u2019s best since Baby Reindeer<\/a><\/p>\n

The Half Man publicist scene stuck in my mind because, ahead of my interview with Gadd, I received a similar note from the BBC advising that Gadd could not discuss any personal matters.<\/p>\n

Does Gadd regret the framing of Baby Reindeer as a personal story? And is it easier to put a purely fictional work such as Half Man out into the world?<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, there\u2019s so many aspects of this question that I can\u2019t really speak to because, as you probably know, it is part of a sort of an ongoing, sort of legal process,\u201d Gadd begins.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I don\u2019t feel any sense of freedom writing something that\u2019s now fictional, because my struggle with the art is the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gadd\u2019s struggle involves what he calls \u201cutter devotion\u201d and \u201cobsession\u201d with asking himself every day how to make Half Man better \u2013 an auteurist artistic ethos that is apparent in how multi-layered each scene of the show is. <\/p>\n

\u201cI still find it hugely fulfilling, but I don\u2019t find it any more freeing that it\u2019s a fictional piece,\u201d repeats the king of tormented and tormenting TV.<\/p>\n

New episodes of Half Man stream on Crave Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Screenwriter Richard Gadd also starred in his debut miniseries, Baby Reindeer. His latest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,2922,1008,348],"class_list":["post-623166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-noastack","tag-pleasemod","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}