Inside the mysterious world of Richard Gadd: Baby Reindeer star has revealed an incredible reinvention for his dark new show. But as he enjoys the plaudits, what now for the woman whose life was torn apart by his last Netflix hit…

Bearded, tattooed, rippling muscles and menacing gaze, Richard Gadd’s physical appearance is a vivid example of how much can change in two years.

Because compared to his character as troubled comedian Donny Dunn in the Baby Reindeer series that catapulted him to stardom, Gadd is almost unrecognizable in his new BBC series Half Man, which starts on Friday night.

The plot of the six-episode series, which divided critics, focuses on the relationship between two men, Niall, played by Jamie Bell, and Ruben, played by Gadd, who meet as teenagers and whose explosive bond is then drawn over decades into their adult lives.

In Baby Reindeer, Gadd dropped from 15th to 10th place to better recall the skinny version of his youth on which the story is based.

By contrast, the star who plays Ruben, the man-mountain whose anger spills over into brutal acts of violence, has piled on 3.5 percent of his muscle mass, not to mention grown a bushy beard.

As a colleague of the comedian-turned-actor told the Daily Mail this week, he’s determined to play the part.

‘He’s a very nice man,’ says the partner. ‘He’s also really disciplined, it’s amazing how focused he is.’

As Gadd, who worked with a personal trainer to transform his physique for the series, said: ‘I knew I had to go big to explore what people thought of as an alpha male character.

Niall, played by Bell, and Ruben, played by Gadd, meet as teenagers and their explosive bond later shapes up to last for decades in their lives.

‘I worked six days a week; I had a nutritionist, I had meals prepared and sent to me, and I had to eat at certain times.

‘I have never deviated from my diet, except for the days when I shot topless scenes and went through a dehydration process to make the muscles more defined.

‘It’s amazing how it works. The day before I would look at myself in the mirror and think I wasn’t there, and then you go through a very intense – and I can’t believe how intense – period where you make yourself sweat to make your muscles more defined.

‘It’s kind of incredible.’

Indeed it is.

Earlier this month, Gadd said it took a ‘leap of faith’ to ‘go from skinny comedian to icon of masculinity’.

‘But I knew,’ she added, ‘I knew I had to change everything about myself to move on from the past.’

Gadd’s self-penned drama Baby Reindeer, based on her experience of being stalked and sexually assaulted, became a surprise Netflix hit in April 2024 and has become a global phenomenon.

It has amassed more than 250 million views since its launch, and Gadd has won three Baftas, two Golden Globes and six Emmys, up and down the red carpet like a yo-yo.

But it wasn’t just Gadd, now 36, who was catapulted to stardom overnight.

At the center of the heated debate over his characters’ inspiration was another figure: Fiona Harvey, the woman online sleuths identified as his real-life stalker.

Two years later, the uproar continues after Harvey filed a $170 million lawsuit against Netflix, claiming the series was billed as a ‘true story’ and that they ‘ruthlessly ruined’ it.

There were claims and counterclaims that Harvey, then 58, vehemently denied that he sent 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, a total of 106 pages of letters and 350 hours of voicemails over the course of four and a half years; Gadd says his follower did this.

But as this case continues—Netflix is ​​awaiting a decision in response to its appeal against allowing the case to go to trial—Gadd’s career has gone from strength to strength.

He’s been promoting Half Man in the US in recent weeks, proudly sharing photos of billboard ads in New York and Los Angeles with his Instagram followers.

The success of Baby Reindeer also appears to have strengthened its creator’s financial situation.

The deal to make Half Man with BBC and HBO had already been signed when it signed a major contract with Netflix in September 2024.

Recent accounts of the 36-year-old company’s RRSG (reflecting the initials of manager Richard Robert Steven Gadd) show how its coffers have swelled.

The firm announced that its total assets for 2025, including money held in its bank account and investment portfolio, are £2,462,405.

Baby Reindeer has been watched more than 250 million times and Gadd has won three Baftas, two Golden Globes and six Emmys.

After creditors were paid the company’s shareholders’ fund stood at £1,875,649; This is more than double the previous year’s figure of £772,544.

By comparison, in 2019, after the first year of trading, funds stood at £1,789.

Gadd, whose career is still in its infancy, invested in a £500,000 top-floor flat with a roof garden in trendy Finsbury Park in north London in 2020.

But little has been seen in recent months about the star, who recently registered a property firm with Companies House.

As one neighbor told the Daily Mail: ‘It’s quite busy; I think they are filming in Glasgow. He hasn’t lived here for a while.

‘I don’t know what your plans are for this place. ‘I haven’t seen him for a while.’

Another woman, who has lived in the area for more than 40 years, says: ‘I didn’t know you were here; It must have been overlooked.

‘There’s such a community spirit here. We have two big street events twice a year.

‘If you’ve lived on the street for a while you know people, but there was never a whisper that Richard Gadd was among us at any of these events, which there would have been if he had been there.’

The house is about three miles from the Hawley Arms pub, where Gadd worked behind the bar as he launched his comedy career and became infamous for perverted ‘Martha’.

A quiet life might suit Gadd, who is struck by the impact of a show that shows Donny’s multiple traumatic experiences—not just under Martha’s relentless focus, but also a flashback narrative of how he was groomed and raped by a man he considered a friend (another experience grounded in Gadd’s equally traumatic reality).

Following the triumph of Baby Reindeer, he said he thought it would be a success in a ‘critical, artistic’ sense but never imagined what it would actually be.

‘ I remember thinking, ‘Maybe some people will watch it this weekend.’ It came out on a Thursday and I figured people would probably cover it on Saturday or Sunday and I might get a few messages on Monday. Maybe a few more on the weekend. My hope was that the reviews would be good enough that maybe I could make another TV show off the back of it.’

At noon on the day of the launch, his phone was ‘blowing up’.

And that was just the beginning.

‘It was a weird feeling that it was getting too big to control,’ Gadd said. ‘Not that I wanted to control him, but he was getting too big for his own good. I felt like it was on the news, on the radio, everywhere outside my home.’

But the actor, who says he has been single for ‘over three years’, seems pragmatic about stepping into the limelight.

Earlier this month, he highlighted not only the creative opportunities that have come his way as a result of this: ‘being able to take the next step in my career and realize my dreams’, but also the impact on abuse charities.

It says referrals to abuse charities have increased by 53 percent, while referrals to harass charities have increased by 47 percent.

Gadd’s self-penned drama Baby Reindeer, based on her experience of being stalked and sexually assaulted, became a surprise Netflix hit in April 2024.

At the center of the heated debate over his characters’ inspiration was another figure: Fiona Harvey, the woman online sleuths identified as his real-life stalker.

In Baby Reindeer, Gadd dropped from 15st to 10lbs to better recall the skinny version of his younger self on which the story is based.

What about Half Man? Given the autobiographical nature of Baby Reindeer, will there be more sleuthing on the internet?

Although he is now sober, Gadd insists that Half Man is a fictional series, although he is candid about the fact that there was a time in his life when “the darkness became too much” and that he turned to drink and drugs after his own difficulties.

‘There are clearly themes I’m interested in: confusion, trauma, abuse,’ she says.

But as he writes: ‘People will think that everything I do now is based on my life, but Half Man is a fictional series I created from a blank page.

“All it takes is a little googling to discover that my childhood was very different from that of the main characters, Ruben and Niall, who meet when their mothers move in together.

‘And growing up in Scotland, my upbringing was very different to what was portrayed on the big screen.

‘I grew up in a much smaller town than the town where Ruben and Niall grew up. The characters in Half Man live in a more crowded, urban environment, whereas I grew up in a small town with one shop and a bus that came once a year in June.’

Indeed it was. Gadd grew up in a large, detached house in Wormit, a village in north-east Fife, with her older sister Kate and parents Geoff, a University of Dundee professor who was awarded an OBE for services to Mycology and Environmental Microbiology, and school secretary Julia.

Richard played football and tennis at the local club and made his first appearance in his school’s birthday play, navigating the boards as one of the Wise Men.

He dropped Latin in secondary school and turned to drama, taking on the role of Macbeth in his senior year.

He studied English Literature and Theater Studies at the University of Glasgow before completing a year at the Oxford School of Drama.

He was already a keen writer and began performing at the Edinburgh Fringe while still a student.

Her breakthrough moment came in 2016 with the Fringe show Monkey See Monkey Do, a harrowing account of being sexually assaulted by an older man; Gadd’s physical presence on stage grew more harrowing as he tried to escape a figure in a gorilla costume by hitting the treadmill for miles each night.

He says Half Man was a production that was being worked on before Baby Reindeer hit the big screen, but he wasn’t planning on being the leading actor either.

Rather, it was Jamie Bell (who rose to fame as the child star of Billy Elliot) who suggested it should be Ruben; This suggestion was echoed by HBO, which co-produced the series with the BBC.

Gadd, who says that he does not like being in society and still has ‘bad days’, says that the series is based on the question of ‘what it means to be a man in this ever-changing world’.

‘For me, the show is not about toxic masculinity. This is more about male existence and oppression; It’s about internal brokenness and entrenched expectations. I’m sure people will take that line out of the show, but ultimately it’s a complex human story about two boys growing up into men, trying to come to terms with themselves, and furthermore, struggling to love each other.’

And I hope it won’t be the case when there’s a pervert in sight.