Richard Gadd didn’t show later scripts to the actors cast as the younger versions of two brothers in “Half Man,” his latest limited series.
“I didn’t want them to think ahead where the characters go,” he explains. “They go through phenomenal change during the series. The Nialls and the Rubens we meet later on in the series aren’t the ones that we grew up with.”
In those first three episodes, a teenage Niall learns he’s going to share his bedroom with Ruben, a thuggish peer who’s going to be his brother. Ruben threatens him repeatedly and makes the kind of impression that could change him.
In the six episodes, the two morph repeatedly, giving the actors playing each plenty of nuance to mine.
Gadd plays the older Ruben; Stuart Campbell plays the younger version; Jamie Bell plays the older Niall; Mitchell Robertson is the younger Niall.
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“We wanted them to stay close to the instincts they captured in their auditions,” Gadd says. “If they had too much knowledge, that would maybe influence things in the wrong way.”
Gadd, who created the Emmy-winning “Baby Reindeer,” wrote the first episode of "Half Man" before he even started on that series.
“By the time ‘Baby Reindeer’ had exploded, I had already made up my mind that this is what I was going to do next," Gadd says. "I didn’t want to rest on my laurels. I needed to get back on the horse and do it again straight away.”
Distance, he says, made his heart grow fonder for the story.
“There was a lot I changed about it, but I went back … and I did love it still,” he says.
Discovering what happens to their characters later in life wouldn’t have helped Campbell and Robertson, Gadd says.
“Who’s the same person they were when they were 15, 17, 20? People who go through life tend to become more broken because they’ve harbored the kind of difficulties of life in the body and in the mind," Gadd says. "Ruben lives so fast and so loose that something’s bound to happen to him eventually. You can’t keep that youthful vivaciousness all the way through.”
Campbell says the “darkness, the hostility, the rage” of Ruben is on the page.
“It was there from the first reading," Campbell says. "But then we did work in the rehearsal process to make sure that we kept the lightness every day, consciously making sure that we continued to see this sort of unspoken connection between us.”
The more the two got to know each other, Robertson says, “the more it naturally happened. We kind of feel we’re good mates anyway.”
Even though he spoke with Bell on Zoom, Robertson didn’t have to worry about matching accents or mannerisms.
“I had the luxury (of doing it)," Robertson says. "Then Jamie had to go away and do all the work.”
Bell matched Robertson’s nuances and took the character in other directions.
Gadd bulked up to give the older Ruben a menacing quality.
“If you keep Niall and Ruben the same all the way through the show, you’re not really telling a good story because you’re showing no growth within your characters,” Gadd says.
When the two are young, “anything is possible and life is difficult and confusing and adolescent," Gadd says. "But at the same time, the world’s your oyster because you’re existing in a very insular way. I was very keen for them to be seen as different people."
“Half Man” airs Thursdays on HBO.
