VIDEO The creator of the hit series “Baby Reindeer” is unrecognizable in a new streaming drama
Richard Gadd, the Scottish comedian and actor who had a smash hit two years ago with Netflix's Baby Reindeer, has undergone a stunning transformation for his new streaming series.
As with the series he created for Netflix, Gadd is the creator, writer and lead actor of the new series “Half Man,” which premiered on HBO Max last Friday.
This time, he plays the role of Ruben, a menacing and physically imposing character, so he had to do intense training to gain more than 40 kilograms.
“For 'Baby Reindeer,' I was 200 pounds when I shot that project. And at my heaviest weight in 'Half Man,' I was 109.8,” Gadd said in an interview on Men's Health magazine's “Built for Life” podcast.
The creator of the series “Baby Reindeer” trained for a year for the new role
“I've really put on a lot of weight. You feel it — you feel like you're carrying this massive body around. You feel heavier and bigger. The thing that surprised me the most about training is that I was always watching and thinking, 'I'm not progressing, nothing's happening.' Then someone would see me and say, 'You're huge now,'” Gadd said.
“But no matter how many times someone told me that, I just couldn't get it. It was just something I noticed – that suddenly I was carrying all that food with me,” the 36-year-old Scot said.
He also revealed that for “Half Man,” his first project after “Baby Reindeer,” he trained six times a week, sometimes even twice a day, for a year before filming began.
“I wanted Ruben to look authentic. I never wanted him to have that vascular, steroid look,” he emphasized.
What is “Half Man”, the new series signed by Richard Gadd, about
“Niall (played by British actor Jamie Bell) and Ruben are brothers. Not related by blood, but as close as can be. One, fierce and loyal. The other, shy and gentle. An inseparable youth. Brought into each other's lives by death and circumstance, they only have each other…” states the official description of the series published by Warner Bros Discovery, the American entertainment giant that owns the HBO television and streaming platform HBO Max.
“But when Ruben shows up at Niall's wedding, three decades later, everything seems different. He's agitated. Insecure. He's not acting like himself. And soon there's an explosion of violence that takes us back through their lives, from the '80s to the present day,” she continues.
Like “Baby Reindeer,” Gadd's new series is a miniseries. Unlike the Netflix series, “Half Man” is released episodically on HBO Max. The first episode came out on April 24th, with a new one coming every Friday. “Half Man” will have a total of 6 episodes, one less than “Baby Reindeer”.
Another difference from Gadd's first series is the reception from film critics. “Baby Reindeer” had a near-perfect 99% approval rating from them on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. That of “Half Man” is, instead, only 74%.
The difference is not so great among regular viewers, although they also give a lower mark to the new series. “Baby Reindeer” had an average rating of 7.7 / 10 on IMDb, while “Half Man” is 7.2 / 10. But the number of ratings is currently under 1,000, almost irrelevant by IMDb standards.
