In Half Man, Niall (Jamie Bell) and Ruben (Richard Gadd) navigate a complicated, volatile relationship over the course of their frequently intersecting lives, beginning at a young age when Niall (Mitchell Robertson) meets Ruben (Stuart Campbell) and following them through significant and irreversible events that send them down very different paths.
Awards Buzz spoke with Gadd about how, after the success of Baby Reindeer, he might have been a more expected fit for the character of Niall rather than Ruben:
“I’m not sure it was a consideration. I think that Niall was probably a bit more of a sweet spot, or less, I would say, of a risk than Ruben, but I guess life is all about risk, isn’t it? Taking chances and risking failure and all that stuff. Ruben was probably about the biggest acting risk I could have taken in a lot of ways following Donny Dunn, but I think when I was writing Half Man, my initial thinking was, I don’t want to be in it. It’s so much being in something and writing it and showrunning it, and I thought, I’ll take it off my plate. So by the time we were going out to Jamie Bell and asking if he wanted to be Niall, I was still under the impression that I wasn’t going to go near it. I think one of the reasons I did play Ruben was because it was such a challenge and a risk and it enticed me in a way, but it was terrifying.”
He discussed the process of becoming Ruben:
“I always felt like Ruben was never aware that he was a quote-unquote ‘hard man,’ if that’s the right phrase. I thought he ran on a river of pain in a lot of ways. I knew I had to physically transform to get people to buy Donny Dunn as Ruben Pallister, I needed to go through a physical transformation and be intimidating in look, beard, hair, voice. My biggest thing when it came to getting into character was actually trying to capture the heartache, because I didn’t want him to be just stereotypical aggressive all the time. I think I always wanted when you look into his eyes to see sadness no matter what he was doing.”
Watch the video above to hear what other shows he’s finally looking forward to catching up on once he’s not so much in the throes of his own projects.
New episodes of Half Man debut Thursday nights at 9pm on HBO through the series finale on May 28th.
