{"id":450463,"date":"2026-05-29T03:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T03:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/450463\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T03:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T03:34:11","slug":"half-man-star-richard-gadd-on-ambiguous-series-finale-nialls-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/450463\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Half Man’ Star Richard Gadd on ‘Ambiguous’ Series Finale, Niall’s Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This article contains major spoilers for the series finale of the HBO<\/a>\/BBC drama \u201cHalf Man<\/a>,\u201d now streaming on HBO Max.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the past six weeks, Richard Gadd<\/a>\u2019s sophomore drama, \u201cHalf Man,\u201d kept viewers on tenterhooks as they waited to find out what actually went down between his character Ruben and Jamie Bell<\/a>\u2019s Niall in that locked barn at Niall\u2019s wedding \u2014 and, more crucially, why.<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, with the finale revealing the explosive secret Niall had kept from Ruben \u2014\u00a0and Ruben\u2019s almost predictable reaction \u2014 there is a conclusion. But is there closure?<\/p>\n

\n\tGadd \u2014 who conceived, wrote, executive produced and starred in the show \u2014 sat down with Variety to talk about the series\u2019 potentially controversial sixth and final episode, which he admits was making waves before it even aired. \u201cI would say the ending is the most talked about part of the show,\u201d he says, adding that it\u2019s the first thing anyone who has seen a preview of the series has wanted to discuss with him.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Gadd is wary of revealing too much about the meaning behind the ending, \u201cbecause sometimes it can take the magic away a little bit,\u201d he says. \u201cI like that the ending is a little ambiguous, and I like that you\u2019re asking these questions. But I sometimes think, it\u2019s almost my duty as an artist sometimes \u2014 or a writer, or whatever \u2014 to not over-explain intention. Because I think whatever people take out of the scene is more important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, the writer and actor \u2014 whose smash hit debut on Netflix, \u201cBaby Reindeer,\u201d also ended with a hint of ambiguity \u2014 was game to talk about how he landed on that closing shot, why he doesn\u2019t like happy endings and how they filmed that explosive fight scene in the barn with co-star Bell.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRichard Gadd in \u2018Half Man\u2019 <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of BBC\/HBO<\/p>\n

\t\tWas the fight scene in the barn with Jamie Bell filmed on location?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was on location, I can\u2019t quite remember where, but it was Scottish countryside, big abandoned barn. Very remote.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow long did you have to shoot?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI think we spent three days at the barn in total, and we squeezed the lot in. I think our second scene [with me and Jamie Bell] was the big final scene. We got very into it very quickly, I\u2019ll put it that way.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhat was the most challenging part of shooting the fight scene with Jamie?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tHow sore my elbows felt afterwards! I tell you what, working with Jamie, I loved it. We knew each other for like a week, and then before you know it we were throwing ourselves [around], snot pouring out my nose onto his face. Like, we really went for it. He is a real trooper.<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause Jamie\u2019s such an established actor, he\u2019s been going for so long, you always worry [whether he\u2019s] going to be happy to roll around in the mud like this. Boy, was he happy to roll around in the mud! And it was physically grueling.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow much of Niall\u2019s death did you choreograph?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI [not only] knew exactly the way I wanted it to be shot, but the way in which Ruben would kill him with a sort of severe pressing down on his face. That scene was in the draft script from the very first pass.<\/p>\n

\n\tEverything\u2019s carefully planned. I can\u2019t physically press down on Jamie, so there\u2019s a lot of fight choreography going into it. So really, when you see my hands pressing down, I\u2019m putting a lot of weight into my wrists. And honestly, I remember by the end of it, God, my wrists were so sore!<\/p>\n

\n\tRuben, at this point, has been so emasculated, his worst fears realized [when he finds out that Niall slept with his wife, meaning not only is Ruben likely infertile but Niall is actually the father of his son]. Not only has he been so emasculated by the one person he A) trusted the most and B) never thought had the power in him to emasculate him. So the only way Ruben can get back his dominance is to kill him in the most masculine and domineering way as possible: kill him with his bare hands.<\/p>\n

\t\tRuben\u2019s signature move throughout the series is stamping on people\u2019s heads and it seemed he chose a \u201cgentler\u201d method for Niall. Am I reading too much into that?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s the calculated version of Ruben, and then there\u2019s the explosive and in-the-moment version of Ruben as well. And I think he kills Niall in a different way, because he\u2019s gone about the violence in a very different way as well. It\u2019s not reactive. It is calculated, and thought through.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJamie Bell and Richard Gadd in \u2018Half Man\u2019 <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of BBC\/HBO<\/p>\n

\t\tIs there a significance to the fact Niall is killed on his wedding day?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI mean, weddings symbolize a happily ever after. You could almost imagine a preoccupation building in Ruben\u2019s head when he finds out that this day is happening, that Niall is going to be living happily ever after. You can almost imagine the preoccupation with that, having had everything that he had in his life taken from him in the way that it was. And so, yeah, I think the idea of the wedding day would have built up so much in Ruben\u2019s mind as something that Niall, quite simply, wasn\u2019t allowed to have it.<\/p>\n

\t\tThe last shot in the show cuts about half a second before the audience expects it: You\u2019re looking at Niall\u2019s body, it almost looks like you\u2019re rolling your eyes, and then it cuts. Did you always know the show was going to end with that shot?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI always wanted to end it that way. I knew something significant was happening in the barn at the end. The second I landed on it \u2014 I don\u2019t know whether I was in the middle of writing Episode 6, and I was seeing the ending coming around the corner \u2014 I thought, \u201cOh, what about that?\u201d And then I think I started to be like, \u201cOh, that does interest me and excite me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tCoupled with the grunt, it\u2019s almost comedic, in that it seems like you\u2019re looking at Niall\u2019s corpse and either thinking \u201cGreat, now I\u2019m going to have to dispose of this body\u201d or \u201cOh God, I\u2019m going back to prison.\u201d What was your intention when you were playing it?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI know what I intended with that sort of grunt, or with the ending in general and the cut to black, but I think the fact that provokes so much discussion, it\u2019s almost more important than me saying what it is. I think that it can be interpreted in many different ways. In a show which is almost written so you have to fill in the gaps between the episodes, it felt only natural to me that you would have an ending where you have to almost fill in some of the gaps yourself as well. An ending in this that was neat and tied up and [checked] off a box and made everything feel whole didn\u2019t really work for an innately fractured serial story like this.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhy did you decide Episode 4 was the right place to show that Ruben dies rather than keep it for the finale?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI thought something has to happen at the end of 4 to keep these wedding bookends surprising. Because let\u2019s just say he completes the speech, I feel like there might have been a slightly deflating energy coming out the episode of feeling like it was ending the same as Episode 3. So really, just in a storytelling sense, I felt like I needed to shake it up in quite a significant way again. And I really was racking my brains because I knew I needed something at the end of 4 to really push those bookends along. And I can\u2019t remember where it came to me, but the second it did, I thought, \u201cOh, that might be quite a nice way of doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tThe audience doesn\u2019t actually see Ruben die, and the first time I watched it I thought maybe he survived and the end of Episode 4 was actually a dream sequence. Did you shoot a scene where Ruben explicitly dies just to have in the editing room?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNo, I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRichard Gadd <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of BBC\/HBO<\/p>\n

\t\tWhy did you choose not to have Ruben die on screen and to keep it slightly ambiguous?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI feel like some of the mistakes television makes so much in this day and age is kind of neat endings. I felt in a show that was innately playing with structure and innately playing with the stuff that happens that you don\u2019t see, it just felt like the honorable way of almost mirroring the story we\u2019ve seen so far.<\/p>\n

\n\tI did [it] at the end of \u201cBaby Reindeer\u201d as well. There was multiple meanings you could have taken from the ending of \u201cBaby Reindeer,\u201d where Donnie looks up at the barman.<\/p>\n

\n\tTV shows and films, they always have a happy ending. If you look at the rom-com structure, it\u2019s usually \u201ctwo people meet, they finally admit their love for each other, the credits roll and life makes sense from that point forward.\u201d And I don\u2019t think that\u2019s true to life. I don\u2019t think happy endings, or even conclusive endings, are really true to life. And therefore I\u2019m not sure why television seems to have them all the time, because I think it almost brainwashes people to grow up and think that there is a point in my life where something will happen \u2014 I will meet someone, or some big life event will happen, or I\u2019ll say something about myself \u2014 and everything will be fine. I think lack of conclusion mirrors life in a way.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fact that people have to keep debating or questioning what\u2019s happened to Ruben long after the credits roll means that the struggle of him and the struggle of the story and the questions around life and their relationship and humanity in general, continue after the credits have rolled. It just felt like the right way to end a show like this.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This article contains major spoilers for the series finale of the HBO\/BBC drama \u201cHalf Man,\u201d now streaming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,193172,2592,59767,111,139,69,126919,437],"class_list":["post-450463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-half-man","tag-hbo","tag-jamie-bell","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-richard-gadd","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}