Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd has said he wanted to leave viewers with complicated feelings over a sex scene that transpires in the first episode of his intense new BBC/HBO drama, Half Man.
The actor and writer is returning to screens two years after his Netflix series – based on his own traumas and experience of being stalked while struggling as a comedian – became an global hit.
Gadd, 36, stars in Half Man opposite Jamie Bell, with Mitchell Robertson and Stuart Campbell playing younger versions of their characters, Ruben and Niall.
The show, which Gadd created and wrote, follows a pair of estranged “brothers” who are reunited on Niall’s wedding day, when Ruben turns up unexpectedly. The series then proceeds to flash back to their time as teenagers in the Eighties, who meet after their mums begin dating.
In one early scene, Ruben apparently helps Niall have sex for the first time, when Ruben brings his girlfriend back to their shared bedroom.
“I think a lot of people who I’ve spoken to who’ve seen that scene or seen that episode… they point to that scene and they have very different takes,” Gadd, who also served as executive producer on the series, told LadBible.
“I think that’s interesting in a way… they can take away, ‘That’s a very dramatic thing,’ and then some people see it and they’re laughing, or they don’t see it for what it is, but it’s a very complicated situation with a million and one takeaways.”
Speaking to the BBC, Gadd said he believed that in order to explore the subject of male repression, “you need to show violence, or at least the extremities of it – so that we can understand the context and depths of where repression can lead”.
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He added: “I think a show exploring male existence in all its forms needs to show the worst – and indeed best – sides of masculinity because you are never fully exploring anything if you stray from the edges or fail to paint a full picture”.
Bell said working with Gadd had been “extraordinary”, calling him a “phenomenal scene partner” who had undergone a physical transformation – gaining a considerable amount of muscle mass – in order to take on the role.
In an early review, The Guardian praised Half Man for Gadd and Bell’s “spectacular” performances that are “so frank they’re almost feral”.
“Gadd’s preoccupation with broken masculinity runs riot,” the review continued. “It veers close to pornography. Once again, past trauma doesn’t just explain men’s (self)-destructive behaviour: it makes it inevitable, to the point where their maddening choices are dramatically difficult to accept.”
Half Man will be released weekly in the UK on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Friday 24 April.
