Richard Gadd says Half Man draws on his own recovery from abuse, while insisting the series is fiction, distinct from Baby Reindeer’s “truth.”
A new series is arriving at a moment when audiences are hungry for stories about vulnerability. anger. and the damage that pain can leave behind.. In Half Man. creator Richard Gadd returns to material shaped by his past. but he insists the show walks a different path from Baby Reindeer. even as it carries echoes of what he has lived through.
In a scene from Half Man. author Niall Kennedy (played by Jamie Bell) speaks to an interviewer and repeatedly cautions that the issues raised by his book. The Rising Sun. belong to fiction.. For Gadd. that moment feels almost symbolic—an encapsulation of a long-running debate about whether art can exist outside the author. and how closely creative work can mirror lived experience.
Gadd. a 36-year-old Scot. has previously turned to his own experiences on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe. including Monkey See Monkey Do and Baby Reindeer.. Those shows. he has said. delved into his experiences of sexual abuse. and the themes were later folded into his critically acclaimed Netflix series. which brought a wide audience into his “dark journey and recovery.”
As Half Man unfolds, it sharpens the question of what can be safely fictionalized.. Gadd describes his approach as neither purely detached nor purely literal: he argues that all work is autobiographical to some extent. yet still allows characters and worlds to be invented.. In his telling. Half Man is a purely fictional world with no characters based on specific individuals. even if it borrows themes. traits. and struggles he recognizes from his own life.
At the center of Half Man are two men who grow up as brothers despite not being related by blood: Niall Kennedy (Bell) and Ruben Pallister (Gadd).. The series portrays Niall as bookish. sensitive. and thoughtful. frequently bullied at school. while Ruben appears strong. violent. and lacking in boundaries.. The relationship between them is built on a fierce protective loyalty. and it is that loyalty—at times tender. at times terrifying—that drives the story.
The series’ tension is amplified by a cast performance that stretches across time.. Actors Mitchell Robertson and Stuart Campbell play Niall and Ruben as teenagers in flashbacks that dominate much of the first half.. Their portrayals. along with Bell and Gadd’s central performances. help make the characters feel complex rather than merely reactive—especially as the story forces their bond into a cycle of fracture and harm.
The narrative eventually reaches a violent breaking point that unleashes a dark journey the series sustains with extraordinary pressure.. Across their lives. their relationship is described as fractured and mutually destructive—shockingly violent at points. but also capable of heartbreaking moments.. The show is not easy to watch. with the emotional weight landing as much on the deterioration of closeness as on what unfolds.
Producing that intensity came with its own toll.. Gadd has said filming was challenging. in part because. as creator and showrunner. he had to shift out of highly emotional moments to manage production once filming paused.. He described the difficulty of moving into a different mindset immediately after the command to cut. and later the physical aftermath—how adrenaline and body tremors can linger into the next day on set.
Even with the darkness it charts, Half Man complicates any simple reading of love and harm.. In the story’s inescapable core, the relationship between Niall and Ruben remains a kind of love story.. The men at its center carry a brotherly love that is described as deep. uncontrollable. and damaging. creating a paradox the series keeps in view rather than resolving.
That paradox sits awkwardly within the public language often used to discuss violence, especially among men.. Gadd addresses comparisons that frame the show as being about male violence or toxic masculinity. saying instead that the heart of Half Man is about two men struggling to love themselves and one another.. For him. the focus is also on how love is communicated—or not communicated—and the disconnect between emotions and the ability to articulate them.
The show’s moral landscape is further complicated by the way Ruben is written and performed.. Sources indicate he is not always portrayed as a villain in every scenario.. His generosity. his capacity to forgive. and what emerges about his ability to empathize all make his tendency toward excessive and horrific violence harder to reduce to a single explanation.
Gadd describes Ruben as fundamentally human rather than an inhuman force. arguing that Ruben lacks the kind of childhood that might have offered him emotional grounding.. In this framing. the violence becomes tied to “a river of pain. ” and Gadd suggests that different circumstances could have produced a different outcome.. He also says he did not want to write Ruben as pure psychosis.
Gadd also connects this to a broader pattern he has observed: he suggests that many people who attack are deeply vulnerable. including men who adopt “alpha” traits and aggressive strategies.. In his view. the underlying dynamic involves vulnerability and pain. with attack serving as a defense mechanism. particularly when someone cannot communicate what they are suffering.
Because Half Man draws heavily from this emotional territory. comparisons to Baby Reindeer are inevitable—yet Gadd emphasizes the difference in form and origin.. He says Half Man is fiction. even though it is dipped in themes drawn from his life and his struggle to recover from abuse.. By contrast, Baby Reindeer came through a “polished-but-gritty” lens shaped by comedy and grounded in his darkest, most discomforting experiences.
Gadd also describes how. about a decade earlier. his decision to create Baby Reindeer felt less like an artistic detour and more like an escape from impossible pressures.. He frames that work as a kind of lifeline—“a last roll of the dice”—while also describing continuing doubt. loneliness. isolation. confusion about the future. and worry about where his life is headed.. Still, he points to progress, including an effort to accept that life may remain complicated.
Half Man. however. arrives within a cultural conversation already filled with terms and debates about toxic masculinity and politics. alongside newer and more dangerous trends such as “looksmaxxing” circulating among younger male peer groups.. Gadd is careful to say Half Man was not written as a direct response to the current moment; he says he wrote it in 2019. then paused it for four years while working on Baby Reindeer. and later returned to it as the online conversation around the “manosphere” and masculinity intensified.
In that sense. Gadd portrays the release as almost serendipitous: he wrote the series. moved on. and only later came back to it while social media dynamics appeared to be accelerating around the broader themes of male anger and identity.. At the same time. he says he does not have the kind of substantial online presence that many creators rely on. and that even now he does not fully grasp how all of it operates.
He cautions against trying to connect his work too tightly to socio-political talking points.. Gadd says he never set out to answer specific questions with Half Man. arguing that if he were aiming to directly respond to a debate. it would shift the work away from the emotional core.. Instead. he hopes the show offers a window into lives of two broken men who struggle with expression and vulnerability. leaving viewers to take what they need from it.
The series’ approach to clarity also reflects Gadd’s broader philosophy about art.. He suggests that contemporary media can push creators to spell things out too directly. making art feel like the author is instructing the audience how to think and feel.. Against that trend. he says he wants art to mirror life’s lack of clarity—especially when the subject matter is difficult.
By the end of the journey he describes. Gadd says exploring complicated themes like male violence. repression. and rage did not yield a neat conclusion.. Instead. he says the subject turned out to be even more complicated than he initially believed. reinforcing the emotional realism at the core of Half Man.
Half Man is now streaming on Stan, owned by Nine, the publisher of Misryoum.
Richard Gadd Half Man Baby Reindeer male violence toxic masculinity Jamie Bell streaming