Half Man finale: writer and creator Richard Gadd opens up about his Baby Reindeer follow-up Half Man

Spare a thought for Richard Gadd. He’s the creator and star of TV mega-hit Baby Reindeer, the Netflix series that became a global phenomenon after it launched back in 2024.

It was based on Gadd’s own experiences with a female stalker and it struck a chord with audiences, becoming a huge hit worldwide and catapulting the writer and performer to global fame.

In the first 91 days of the show’s release, Baby Reindeer racked up an astonishing 84 million views on Netflix, becoming one of the streamer’s most-watched shows of all time.

All eyes were on what Gadd would do next, and the pressure was mounting.

Anonymity was a thing of the past.

“I try not to think about the pressure too much,” Gadd tells Play via video call from his home in the UK.

“But yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to quietly do a piece of work again, or be able to write a theatre show and go (sit) at the back of a pub.

“And I guess there are positives to that, in the sense that you get to have your work out there on a bit of a bigger scale for people to hopefully see and enjoy.

“But that anonymity does go . . . and with it, the expectation and scrutiny goes up.”

He’s right: all eyes were on Gadd’s latest project, the six-part series Half Man, when it dropped last month on Stan.

Critics and audiences rushed to check it out, fascinated to see whether Gadd could follow up on his success.

Was he a one-trick pony?

The answer to that is a decisive no.

Though more polarising than his previous work, Half Man has still landed with viewers, with a 77 per cent approval rating on critic website Rotten Tomatoes.

It has scored some five-star reviews, including from Lucy Mangan at The Guardian, who described the series as “bleak and brilliant”, praising it as “brave, brutal, and blazing TV”.

The show’s finale is dropping on May 29, and feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

“I guess when you sign up to be creative, to a certain degree you are subject to opinions — all the time,” Gadd admits.

“(You get) scrutiny, and assessment, and I knew that thanks to Baby Reindeer, there was going to be a large microscope on this show, and not just on the show itself, but my performance.”

In the series Gadd plays Ruben, the violent stepbrother (of sorts) to Jamie Bell’s Niall.

He’s terrific, as is Bell, who gives a searing performance as Ruben’s polar opposite.

Gadd transformed himself physically to play the imposing Ruben, all muscle, grunt and bravado. The character is a world away from the weedy comedian Donny Dunn he played in Baby Reindeer.

“You look at Donny Dunn and you look at Ruben Pallister, and there’s no logical link,” says Gadd, admitting he initially took some persuading to take on the role.

It was actually Bell who got him across the line, as well as the studios funding the project, who were keen to have Gadd’s name attached post-Reindeer success.

So what was it Bell saw in Gadd that he hadn’t considered himself when writing the character?

“I would love to ask him that, actually,” Gadd admits.

“I never have.

“I remember at the time, when I flew out to LA to meet him, he read the script and got back (to me) enthusiastically.

“I was talking him through it and he said, ‘Are you going to be in it?’ And I said, ‘Well you know, I did Baby Reindeer, I am pretty exhausted, and I want to take that pressure off my plate,’ but he said, ‘I really want to work with you, and I think you should consider Ruben.’

“I took 24 hours to think about it, and I realised I had to do it — it was one of those opportunities I couldn’t turn down.

“But it’s been terrifying. And there have been times when I have lost myself to worry about it.”

However, the gamble has paid off, and in this week’s final episode viewers will see the full force of Gadd’s powerful performance.

It’s not hard to think he must be absolutely exhausted going from Baby Reindeer to this powerhouse production.

“Yes. I am,” he concedes.

“I did this back-to-back. Quite literally: I finished the Baby Reindeer sound mix on the 13th of December 2023, and I started the next episode of Half Man on the 14th of December at 8am.

“I really pushed myself as hard as I possibly could — so yes, it’s probably time for a break.

“But I love it.

“I love the creative process for all of its challenges — I can’t be without it.”

Half Man is now streaming on Stan.