Half Man, starring Richard Gadd and Jamie Bell, is now streaming in weekly instalments on BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom and HBO Max globally.
Niall (Jamie Bell/Mitchell Robertson) and Ruben (Richard Gadd/Stuart Campbell) are brothers. Not related in blood, but the closest you can get. One, fierce and loyal. The other, meek and mild-mannered. Inseparable youth. Brought into each other’s lives through death and circumstance, all they have is each other…
But when Ruben turns up at Niall’s wedding three decades later, everything seems different. He is on edge. Shifty. Not acting like himself. And soon, an explosion of violence takes place, which catapults us back through their lives, from the eighties to the present day. Capturing 30 years in the lives of these broken men, Half Man explores brotherhood, violence, and the intense fragility of male relationships. After all, when things fall apart, it is sometimes the closest relationships which break the hardest.
©️ BBC/Mam Tor Productions/Anne Binckebanck
Q: Richard, where did the idea for Half Man come from, and what does a normal day look like for you when you’re writing?
In my past projects, I’ve touched on masculinity through my own struggles as a man. All of my stories explore human feelings, but this time I wanted to explore what it means to be a man in this ever-changing world through these two characters. To me, it feels like the debate about men has reached quite a high pitch and, at the same time, become somewhat simplified.
“Toxic masculinity” is a phrase we hear a lot, and while it can risk feeling overused, it’s also being discussed so widely for a reason. What’s interesting is that, despite that visibility, there are still aspects of it that haven’t yet been fully explored in the mainstream. I think that much of how society has been structured can lead to men having an inability to express themselves and express love and vulnerability, so it felt interesting to posit that conversation through Niall and Ruben.
When I’m writing, I usually go for a run whilst listening to my playlist, and those songs always provide a backdrop for my project’s inspiration and often end up included in the project itself. For Half Man, I was bulking up to play Ruben, so I missed my running, but I still had a playlist. I usually begin my writing day at 5am because I think it’s my most productive time, so I usually get up at 4:30am and get a coffee, and I’ll then write from 5 am to 9 pm – aside from Christmas Day and Soccer Aid, when I give myself a day off! I work hard, and I’m constantly reworking and questioning things until it feels right. It is a constant, evolving process.
Q: How would you describe Half Man?
Jamie – Half Man chronicles the relationship between two men – Niall and Ruben – over three decades. The series starts with the two of them as young men in their teenage years, and it follows them both as life drifts them apart and pulls them back together. The series looks at how their time together has shaped them as adults and, at the same time, how the culture around them growing up has done the same. More specifically, the series explores their personal relationship with masculinity, what being a man means to each of them, and the complexity of that relationship.
Richard – When the series starts, Niall and Ruben are forced to coexist in a lot of ways within a working-class household. Ruben is violent and volatile, whilst Niall is very sensible and self-conscious. They’re polar opposites, but in a strange way, they form an alliance – for better or worse – which catapults them through the ages. They both have something the other lacks, and they crave what the other has.
Q: How would you describe the relationship between Niall and Ruben?
Jamie – Niall is an incredibly complicated person. He’s a product of a certain place and time – he was born in the seventies and is becoming a man in the 80s – and he has big identity struggles. He’s not comfortable in his own skin, and he’s certainly not comfortable with looking inwards in any meaningful way. When we first meet Niall, he’s genuinely someone with a good heart, but, systemically, with everything going on around him, he becomes flattened into someone he thinks the world wants him to be.
A lot of Niall’s social discomfort stems from an unwillingness to be honest and truthful about who he is, and this leads to a lot of the problems he experiences within his life, such as this toxic relationship with Ruben, who isn’t his brother by blood, but is his brother in many other complicated ways. Niall has identified Ruben as this aspirational person, and I believe that’s because Ruben is unapologetically who he is, and although Ruben’s problematic, at least he’s honest. Meanwhile, Niall is always fraught with this sense that he can’t be honest about who he really is, and that’s the essence of their whole relationship.
Richard – The friends we make growing up are sometimes the most powerful relationships we have, and I needed to show both the good and the bad all at once, and how intertwined our early relationships can become. I never want to beat audiences over the head with moral trajectories either. There are two men struggling to live and coexist in a way. In seeing Niall and Ruben over an extended period, you never really know which of them is bad and which of them is good, either.
Q: You never shy away from exploring the darkest realms of Niall and Rueben’s relationship. Why was that brutality important in the story you were trying to tell?
Richard – To explore the topic of male repression and violence, 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. 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. Ultimately, whether we like to admit it or not, we live in a violent culture and world, but I don’t see that on television very often. At least not in a way which is realistic or “brutal.” I think exploring and showing these things not only leads to powerful drama but also reflects a very real part of society where they happen and are seen daily.
©️ BBC/Mam Tor Productions/Anne Binckebanck
Q: How do you think the women in Niall’s life contribute to his sense of self?
Jamie – I think if Ruben is the male role model for Niall’s lack of a father figure, then the women in Niall’s life instantly feel really important. Still, his unwillingness to admit who he is hampers his relationships with everyone. I think the closest he comes to a sensitive and understanding relationship with any woman throughout his life is Ava, whom I won’t say too much about, as everyone will meet her later in the series.
Niall and Ava see each other as equals, and there’s a shared respect that I think is absent from a lot of Niall’s other relationships – he’s someone who is often manipulative and selfish. I think those kinds of people aren’t necessarily interested in listening to people or sharing with people unless it benefits them in some way, and I think a lot of Niall’s relationships are based around what he can get from people and what they can shoulder for him.
Niall’s relationship with his mum, Lori, is one that I think will constantly confound people throughout the series. I think Lori is always trying to do what she sees as the right thing, whilst at the same time always saying the wrong thing to Niall and perhaps doing wrong by him too… You’ll see that there’s a lot of love within that relationship between mother and son, and also none whatsoever at the same time. I think that the absence of Niall’s father from his childhood ultimately informs a lot about how Lori raises him and who he becomes.
We see from the start of the series that Lori really puts her own happiness first; she’s comfortable with putting Niall in situations that really aren’t good for him, and her expectation is that he will survive – and that’s been how life has been for Niall since his father’s death. As Niall gets older, the strain those decisions put on that relationship really comes out. In the scenes I’ve had with Neve McIntosh, we’ve really had the opportunity to explore the turbulence of that relationship over many years with all its complexities.
Q: Richard, how did you go about finding young Niall and Ruben?
I love Mitchell Robertson and Stuart Campbell, and I want it on record that they were my favourites for Niall and Ruben from when I first saw their self-tapes. It was the same with Jess Gunning: I just knew from her first audition that I was witnessing exceptional talent. I cannot describe it, but it is like I see the character in my head, and I just need an actor to come in and echo it back at me – and these boys did that – and then some! They are true professionals through and through, and I never doubted them for a second. It is also a joy to give young Scottish talent their moment to shine. They would be a gift to any production they work on.
Q: Have you enjoyed working together on Half Man?
Jamie – Working with Richard has been extraordinary. He’s a phenomenal scene partner who has been immersed in taking on that role of Ruben – he’s changed his physical look – and he really pushed me in the best way. The scenes are of such an intense variety between us, and we started the shooting schedule with the series’ beginning and ending, which were physically and emotionally demanding. I hope that on screen, we’ve formed a relationship with Niall and Ruben that people will feel invested in and want to go on a journey with.
Amidst the intensity of the scenes, we have a hard time keeping straight faces the whole time; Richard is an actor that I corpse with a lot, which I didn’t anticipate! His writing is intensely uncomfortable, intensely human, intensely tragic, and intensely funny, so, naturally, at times when we are performing the scenes, we find it amusing. And sometimes when I am performing in a scene without Richard, I can hear him laughing off set, which is like music to me, as I find myself abhorrently unfunny, so to hear him laugh is a relief.
Richard – There was something about this show as I was writing it – I couldn’t get Jamie out of my head. He’ll probably roll his eyes when he hears me talking about Billy Elliot, but I can’t believe he managed to do that at the age of 13, and I just think he’s an instinctively incredible actor. I never thought Jamie would actually be in Half Man, but when I heard he was interested, I flew out to LA, and we had a long chat. Jamie said he’d love to do it if I played Ruben. Before that moment, I had never thought about it and didn’t see myself being in the series. We shot our final scene together at 3am, and it was really emotional. In that moment, I knew how much I would miss acting alongside him, and I feel really grateful to have had that opportunity.
Q: What do you think the series says about masculinity?
Jamie – I think Niall’s preconceived ideas of what the culture around him expects him to be as a man have informed every single decision he has made. Working on this series has actually made me reflect on how I perceive myself as a man and what I can be doing more of or be better at. I’m raising a son and a daughter in real life, and I didn’t have a father growing up. I’ve been raised by women and, of course, was a dancer as a child, so I have been really heavily influenced by predominantly female environments and feeling the absence of my father quite strongly has really informed who I think I should be as a man in my adult life.
I don’t think this is unique to me, as many people have grown up with a single parent, but I think it’s interesting to look at Niall because he is so driven by who he thinks people need or expect him to be.
Richard – I wouldn’t want my work to present the idea that men should be a certain way or are a certain way, because then I’m adding to a bigger problem and so I hope that within Half Man, there’s a very human explanation of what it is to be a man, which is knotty and complicated, and hopefully the conversation around the show will feel like that too.
Niall and Ruben both stay in the same place whilst the world develops around them, and I don’t think either of them ever truly manages to shake off the damage of their youth. I think that feels familiar in this day and age, where we have experienced cultural shifts – some people are on board, whilst others aren’t and feel left behind or alienated. For some people, change can be really difficult, and the more you repress certain parts of yourself, the harder life becomes as the years go by.
In a way, the only conversation Niall and Ruben ever have that is fully honest comes at the end of the series. It takes them six episodes and decades of their lives to reach a point where they are emotionally mature enough for that, and, in the meantime, the world around them has changed and progressed so much. I think that, in a way, is the quintessential male struggle.
Follow Us