Richard Gadd was faced with a difficult task as he began work on his next show after Baby reindeerwhich swept the awards season.
However, the 36-year-old Scottish actor-writer hasn’t let himself be swayed by people’s good or bad opinions of his art, because he believes you can never create good art that way.
The Emmy winner explores something similar when it comes to themes of toxic masculinity in his upcoming show. Half manwhere he plays Ruben and Jamie Bell plays Niall, two estranged half-brothers who bring out each other’s violent tendencies.
In a new interview, Gadd shared that when Baby reindeer went viral, he didn’t want to give himself “time to think.”
“I wrote an episode [of Half Man] in 2019, and I put it aside for four four years while I did it Baby reindeer. I knew I was going to do this next,” he said at a recent Television Critics Association press conference.
For his next show, Gadd has taken complete liberty to address all extremes, otherwise “depriving the audience of the truth about this big theme that we’re grappling with right now, as a society,” he said.
At the same conference, he also welcomed Adolescence for its themes which challenged the public. “We love facing our own demons and seeing them again on TV.”
