‘Baby Reindeer’ Exploded Richard Gadd's Life. It Also Set Him Free.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**David Marchese** (0:33)
From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. In 2024, the relatively unknown writer and actor, Richard Gadd, had the strange experience of seeing the lowest moments of his life become viral entertainment. His unsettling Netflix show Baby Reindeer, which was based on his experiences as a victim of both sexual assault and stalking, unexpectedly became one of that year's biggest critical hits and one of the streamers' most popular shows ever. It catapulted Gadd, who's 36, into a heightened and uncomfortable level of personal and professional attention. His response to that discomfort has been to go deeper. His new show, Half Man, which will air on HBO, is about the decades-long, mutually destructive friendship between two Scottish men, the slight and thoughtful Nile, played by Jamie Bell, and the brutish and violent Reuben, played by Gadd. Unlike Baby Reindeer, the show is not based in fact, but what Half Man shares with its predecessor is a brutally unflinching exploration of sexual confusion, tortured masculinity, emotional abuse, and the impact of trauma. All of which Gadd himself is still trying to understand, both in his art and in his life. Here's my conversation with Richard Gadd.
Richard, thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

**Richard Gadd** (2:01)
Thanks very much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

**David Marchese** (2:04)
I wanna start with a question that maybe doesn't have any simple or straightforward answer. You know, you were someone who, for years, were working as a performer, you know, you did stand-up comedy, but the work itself was often intentionally alienating. You know, you did a lot of anti-comedy. It's not like you've been trying for years to make some mainstream thing, and then finally baby reindeer was the thing. You were kind of doing your own weird thing. And so as a result of that, I imagine that the possibility of enormous mainstream success was probably not even really on your radar as something that was gonna happen in your career. But what did achieving success show you about the reality of what success can do for you or can't do for you emotionally?

**Richard Gadd** (3:00)
The best thing about success is that it leads to opportunity for me. Because all I really ever care about is writing the next thing, or working on the next thing, or trying to explore more things that I want to do as an artist. Fame, on the other hand, is an interesting thing that I think I still come to terms with. I think at the best of times, I'm a self-conscious person. And I think, it's so funny, I always look back on those, as you say, those kinds of early comedy days where I was performing this alienating sort of comedy style to comedy class up and down the country. I used to think, why is no one getting this?
This is the cusp of brilliance, this right here. And I find it so good that I can look back on that and kind of laugh at myself because I think fame has led to a certain degree of discomfort in the way I go about my life now. You always have to think about what you're doing and where you're going and like not so much about just oh, I hope there's not too many people here. I worry about people coming up to me. And I know that it's ever bad when people come up to me. They're almost like projections of my own fear. But that is also a byproduct of fame, because people who come up to me, if not all the time, tend to be really, really nice. But I still, because I think I'm just wired to think in an anxious way, I always think that something is lurking that might be hard to deal with in a social situation. But I think in a lot of ways like, I'm quite a reclusive guy in a lot of ways, which I think people kind of realize, and it didn't really change the way I lived my life. All I was ever interested in doing was taking Baby Reindeer and building on the success with, hopefully, different pieces of work and art.