I see human life as a combination of good, bad and odd idiosyncrasies: Richard Gadd on 'Half Man'

New Delhi, Jul 9 (PTI) Long before Richard Gadd became famous with his breakout Netflix series "Baby Reindeer", the Scottish actor-writer was gripped by a different idea while travelling on London Underground. That idea led him to "Half Man", a series that has been praised for its searing examination of masculinity, identity and past trauma. While "Baby Reindeer" was inspired by his experience of facing stalking and sexual abuse, his new show is fictional. Gadd still remembers how the show's idea came to him. "You've got these two men in a barn having a weird conversation. One of them is way more masculine than the other, at least stereotypically speaking, and he punches him, and then there is a flashback. "I got that kind of gust of wind, or creative impulse. I got off the Tube and typed the scene onto my phone. I wrote it out, and the scene remained kind of what it was. From that point on, I couldn't get it out of my head, really," Gadd told PTI in an interview. "Half Man" is a six-part drama which Gadd has created, written and stars in. It spans 30 years and centers on the destructive, codependent relationship between Nile (Jamie Bell) and Ruben (Gadd), two "brothers" brought together when their mothers form a relationship. The series, which grapples with harsh themes, including toxic masculinity, homophobia, substance abuse and unresolved psychological trauma, is currently streaming on Lionsgate Play in India. With the show, Gadd said he got a "creative impulse" that he felt was compelling enough to follow till the end. "I feel if you can't get an idea out of your head, then you should follow it," he said. "All the way through "Baby Reindeer", I was thinking about it and thinking, 'What if he did this? What if he did that?' I felt I was going on flights of fancy with the show, and I thought that was a good sign. So once I had that sort of impulse, I just had to follow it all the way through to the end by working as hard as I possibly could." With his lead protagonists, Gadd presents two opposing embodiments of masculinity. While Niall is a soft spoken man who self combusts with issues related to his sexuality, Ruben is shown as an alpha male whose unresolved trauma manifests through anger, bravado and self-destruction. Gadd takes a different lens with the characters by not showing the two as victim and oppressor. The actor said his aim was to embrace the humanity and complexities of these characters, as he believes that this perspective is often missing from stories on screen today. "I see us all as this sort of combination of good and bad, odd idiosyncrasies, and all kinds of different contradictions, really. I think human makeup is so complicated that all I try to do in bringing my work to the screen is show how complicated it is... "I've seen a lot of violent people on TV before but the justification for the violence is simply that they're violent, they're sociopathic, or they're psychopathic. But I think a lot of people in life who commit violence do so because it comes from trauma. It comes from difficult experiences. That was something I wanted to bring to the screen." And this lens is what made his 2024 show "Baby Reindeer" also different from the rest of the dramas that told the story of stalking. Adapted from his acclaimed one-man stage play, based on Gadd's own experiences, the series saw him playing the role of Donny Dunn, an aspiring comedian and bartender whose act of kindness towards a vulnerable woman, Martha, spirals into a years-long stalking ordeal that upends his life. Gadd was praised and rewarded for his nuanced exploration of stalking, abuse, masculinity and the lasting impact of sexual abuse trauma. Asked about his understanding of the word masculinity after working on "Baby Reindeer" and now "Half Man", the actor said he never really set out to explore the concept or "even say anything about it". "I think I went into it exploring masculinity, male violence and male repression, and I came out of it realising just how complicated it is. I don't think I landed on even what an example of masculinity is, nor was I really seeking that. I was more just exploring the difficulty of male connection. In the end, to try to give it some explanation would have undermined just how complicated it is. "To me, masculinity is under such a microscope. It's going through so much conversation, so much flux and so much change that I thought it would do it a disservice to wrap it up in a neat little bow or to comment so clearly on it by saying, 'This is what a man has to be. This is what a man should be. This is the problem with men.' None of that really rang true to me." To play the role of temperamental Ruben, Gadd said the challenge extended beyond physically bulking up to fully inhabiting the character's emotional and psychological complexities. "I was aware that he does a lot of bad things. You see a lot of characters on television who almost know they're twisted, but I don't think Ruben knows that. Genuinely, all of his impulsive reactions, his seeing red and his blackout violence come from a certain sense of dissociative pain and trauma. Every time I went into a scene with Ruben, I always tried to think about the pain he was in. "It's a very bleak headspace to be in. So, in order to get into character, you really need to dig deep into the psychology of someone who has gone through all of that. That's really challenging, but for it to feel real, you have to dig deep into the reality of his psychology, which is very broken." "Half Man also stars Mitchell Robertson and Stuart Campbell. PTI RB RB BK BK