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THR cover star Richard Gadd opens up about the inspiration for his new HBO series 'Half Man' that he's "really proud of." He also reflects on the success of 'Baby Reindeer' and why it connected with audiences. Plus, he shares the last show that reminded him "what television's capable of" and the surprising things that make him laugh.
Transcript
00:00Themes of I guess masculinity or what it means to be a man or going through a
00:04masculinity crisis comes into it probably because I've been through that in
00:07my life and I feel I can write to it and I speak to it. I assume with a lot
00:10of the
00:11themes in Half-Man I guess I wasn't done exploring them yet.
00:14Hello I'm Richard Gad and I'm on set at my Hollywood Reporter cover shoot.
00:21I've been working on this show so intensely and so consistently for the best part of two years
00:27since since Baby Ranger came out and I got to work and sometimes you when you're
00:32in the throes of the television process and you're stuck in the edits and you're
00:35you're resting with every single day trying to grapple it down to size I sort
00:38of sometimes doesn't feel real that it ever reaches an end point and now that
00:41the trailers out now that press is starting now everything's happening it
00:44feels real and I'm excited I'm nervous everything in between but I'm really
00:49proud of the show and I just hope that people like it I wrote the first script
00:56pre-baby reindeer funnily enough so I wrote episode one back in around 2019 I
01:02would say it was I guess back in 2019 there's probably a lot of conversation
01:05about men I'm assuming something sort of seeped its way into my
01:09subconscious because I was just walking down the street one day and I just came
01:12with this idea it was interesting you take two broken men in their adult life and
01:16then let's contextualize why they're so repressed let's contextualize their their
01:20rage their violence the way they view themselves and each other sometimes all I
01:25need is just the creative idea that doesn't leave me to move forward and
01:28with a project I always think like the best kind of artist kept close to your
01:34chest kept close to your heart kept close to your experiences and and I guess
01:38with half man I there's a lot in it that I relate to it's not a autobiographical
01:43piece by any stretch it's purely fiction but it certainly borrows from themes and
01:47struggles and issues that I understand I really don't know how people will
01:52respond to half man I I think it's very different to anything I've done before
01:56very different baby reindeer speaking of baby reindeer because I guess I can look
02:00back on that and I think at that time it really stood out against the
02:03televisual landscape I think I think it really went against the grain and humans
02:07love to be challenged and and that they love to watch stuff they can't look away
02:11from and and I think humans love running the gamut of emotions when they watch
02:15television shows I think baby reindeer not only did I think it stood out just
02:18because it was artistically different for everything that was going on right
02:21now I think it stood out and I think people loved it because they they hadn't
02:24been challenged in that way before for a while on television when you said shows
02:32that I love that come to mind the first thing I thought was succession that was
02:35the last show I watched with my jaw to the floor I remember watching it during the
02:39baby reindeer process and it gets to the end of this the episode number that oh I'm not
02:43sure this is good for me it's so good it's so good that was the last show I mean so
02:48many shows have blown my mind for so many different ways but that was the last show
02:51I watched that that made me you know really have have a sort of another second wave of
02:57artistic sort of enlightenment about what television is capable of things that make
03:04me laugh I mean I mean loads of things make me laugh I I think I I think people probably
03:10got
03:10this from uh like my old stand-up routine or if you could even call this stand-up routine the
03:18kind
03:18of stuff you sort of see parodied in in baby reindeer I think really awkward sort of almost
03:24intentionally bad comedy makes me laugh it really makes me laugh it almost taps into like an immature
03:30side that I think I must have had when I was a kid I think somebody tried so hard to
03:34be unfunny in a
03:36way or writing lazy jokes so it just I don't know it just makes me laugh so much I think
03:40your maturity
03:41really makes me laugh
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