Monkey See Monkey Do won critical acclaim and was a turning point in Gadd’s career. Three years later, he returned to Edinburgh with another one-man show show exploring abuse – Baby Reindeer.
The story of Donny Dunn, a comedian and barman who becomes the target of a stalker, it too won critical acclaim and was swiftly commissioned as a series by Netflix. Gadd was cast as the lead and wrote the screenplay.
Released exactly two years ago, Baby Reindeer brought Gadd global recognition. But it also brought controversy and criticism.
Scottish lawyer Fiona Harvey outed herself as the inspiration for the show’s obsessive stalker, suing Netflix for defamation and negligence for billing it as “a true story”.
The $170m dollar case is still going through the US courts.
It has cast a long shadow over Gadd but he was keen to get back to work, keen to get back writing about masculinity.
“There were lots of conversations around male rage,” he says.
“I thought it would be interesting to take two broken men in adult life and flashback to their childhood to see what made them the way they are.”
He began writing Half Man the day after completing the script for Baby Reindeer.
The new series examines the dysfunctional and volatile relationship between two men growing up in Glasgow in the 1980s.
It begins on the wedding day of Niall (Jamie Bell) with the unexpected arrival of Reuben (Richard Gadd) who immediately punches him in the face.
Through flashbacks over six episodes, we learn why the two are so irredeemably attracted and repelled by one another.