Richard Gadd is looking at the ‘dangers of repression’

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today, Emmy Award-winning actor, writer, and comedian Richard Gadd, writes complex stories about the parts of being human most of us hide. His Netflix series Baby Reindeer became an instant phenomenon in 2024. It's an unsettling story of a struggling comedian who is being stalked by a woman while grappling with the sexual abuse he endured from an older man early in his career.

The series became one of the most watched Netflix shows ever, winning six Emmys and made Gad almost overnight one of the most scrutinized writers in television. Well now he's back with Half Man, a six-part HBO limited series set in 1980 Scotland. It's about two boys who become brothers after their mothers fall in love. One is volatile just out of juvenile detention, the other is quiet, sensitive, and afraid. Over thirty years, the show traces what happens to them and to each other.

Critics have already been calling Half Man a show about toxic masculinity, and Gad has pushed back on that. He says it's more about repression and what happens to boys who learn early that the parts of themselves they need most are the parts they often feel forced to bury. Richard Gadd, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. That was a lovely introduction.

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