\n Gadd started working on Half Man before Netflix commissioned an adaptation of his award-winning Edinburgh Festival Fringe show Baby Reindeer.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n Half Man, which the BBC will launch on April 24, follows the characters from their first encounter as teenagers to falling out as adults and an unexpected reunion after years of estrangement.\n<\/p>\n
\n Gadd, who describes Bell as \u201cone of the greatest actors of his generation,\u201d has told how he had never thought “for a second” that the production would be able to secure the actor to play Niall.\n<\/p>\n
\n Jamie Bell and Richard Gadd will be starring in the new BBC series Half Man. (Image: Anne Binckebanck)\n<\/p>\n
\n Gadd said: \u201cI remember when we were casting for Baby Reindeer, lots of famous faces really wanted to play Martha, but I wanted everyone to audition and naturally a lot of global stars did not.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cHowever, there was something about this show as I was writing it \u2013 I couldn\u2019t get Jamie out of my head.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cHe\u2019d probably roll his eyes if he heard me talking about Billy Elliot, but I can\u2019t believe that he managed to do that at the age of 13 and I just think he\u2019s instinctively an incredible actor.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI never thought Jamie would actually be in Half Man, but when I heard he was interested, I flew out to LA, and we had a long chat. Jamie said he\u2019d love to do it if I played Ruben.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cBefore that moment, I had never thought about it and didn\u2019t see myself being in the series.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe shot our final scene together at 3am in the morning, and it was a really emotional one. In that moment I knew how much I would miss acting alongside him and I feel really grateful to have had that opportunity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Bell said: \u201cI heard that Richard had written this with me in mind and was incredibly flattered.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cUpon meeting him I could see how unique Half Man would be.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cRichard actually sent through episode six for me to start with and whilst that might seem like a strange place to begin, I was so taken by the spiral throughout episode six that it was actually a great place to start. I knew where Niall ended up and I wanted to know how he got to that point.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cRichard is a brilliantly unique and singular writer, and I often find his writing activates the senses quite specifically and takes you to emotional places very easily.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201c As his previous work goes to show, he has such a strong grasp of things that feel challenging and complex and emotional.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI was also astounded by some of the length of some of the scenes too \u2013 there are scenes between myself and Richard that are up to 16 pages long.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cAs an actor I knew that was incredibly ambitious, but you also never really get gifted that kind of material where essentially these two characters are talking – about their lives, their problems, their failures – much like a piece of theatre.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Gadd said the original idea behind Half Man was to explore \u201cwhat it means to be a man in this ever-changing world\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: \u201cTo me, it feels like the debate about men has reached quite a high pitch and, at the same time, become somewhat simplified.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cToxic masculinity is a phrase we hear a lot, and while it can risk feeling overused, it\u2019s also being discussed so widely for a reason.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is that, despite that visibility, there are still aspects of it that haven\u2019t yet been fully explored in the mainstream.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI think that much of how society has been structured can lead to men having an inability to express themselves and express love and vulnerability, so it felt interesting to posit that conversation through Niall and Ruben.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe meet Ruben and Niall as two teenagers thrown together in their youth, and we then follow them over three decades. \u00a0When the series starts, they\u2019re forced to coexist in a lot of ways within a working-class household.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cRuben is violent and volatile, whilst Niall is very sensible and self-conscious. They\u2019re polar opposites but in a strange way they form an alliance \u2013 for better or worse \u2013 which catapults them through the ages. They both have something that the other does not and they crave what each other has.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Bell said: \u201cThe series starts with the two of them as young men in their teenage years and it follows them both as life drifts them apart and pulls them back together. The series looks at how their time together has shaped them as adults and at the same time, how the culture around them growing up has done that too.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cMore specifically, the series explores what their personal relationship with their own sense of masculinity is and what being a man means to them both, and how complex that is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gadd ended up casting himself when the Billy Elliot star said he him he wanted to appear opposite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-530240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}