Half Man: Richard Gadd series explores male rage

Half Man: Richard Gadd series explores male rage10 hours agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GooglePauline McLeanScotland arts correspondentBBCGadd plays Reuben, whose violent rage drives the dramaI first encountered Richard Gadd in 2016.He was clad in pink lycra and running on a treadmill for the whole hour of his Edinburgh Fringe show.The premise was he was trying to outrun his demons and win the "Man's Man competition in Mansfield". But beneath the frivolity lay a darker truth about Gadd's own experience of sexual assault."It sounds mad," he recalls."But I promise you it worked. That was when I started to to explore the discomfort of masculine pressure."'It terrified me': Richard Gadd on his follow-up to Baby ReindeerBaby Reindeer star's family 'beyond proud' of winMonkey 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 da...