Richard Gadd’s new series, “Half Man,” continues the creator’s knack for finding extraordinary talent. Then, it was “Baby Reindeer’s” Jessica Gunning. Now, it’s young Scottish actors Stuart Campbell and Mitchell Robertson.
As Niall and Ruben, stepbrothers locked in a toxic relationship over the course of 30 years, Robertson (played by Jamie Bell as an adult) and Campbell (Gadd as an adult) bring the series’ explosive depiction of modern masculinity to life as exquisitely as their older counterparts. In part, perhaps, because the young Scottish actors are as much a study in contrasts as the characters they play.
Campbell started performing as a teenager to make friends; Robertson did so after the “lightbulb moment” of seeing fellow Scot David Tennant in “Doctor Who.” Campbell is a keen botanist and has a diploma from the Royal Horticultural Society; Robertson has started learning how to mend clothes and is an avid music video fan. Robertson’s comfort show is the UK version of “The Office”; Campbell loves “Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild,” a travel docuseries about people who, as he describes it, “escape the rat race and move to remote places.”
The pair’s bond began long before their first meeting, through the shared experience of “Half Man’s” extensive audition process. Gadd’s smash hit “Baby Reindeer” hadn’t premiered when the nine-month, five-round search for young Niall and Ruben started, with the success of Gadd’s Emmy-winning Netflix series contributing to various postponements on “Half Man.” After a few callbacks, things started to feel possible for Campbell and Robertson. Until they didn’t.
“In April 2024, I was told, ‘You just need to let it go, because it’s not yours,’” remembers Campbell. He was devastated. “I really did want to be part of this more than anything I’d ever done.” Robertson got a similar call. “I was told it wasn’t going my way, either,” he says.
Mitchell Robertson as Niall, left, and Stuart Campbell as Ruben in “Half Man.”
(Anne Binckebanck / HBO)
Eventually, though, both found themselves at a final audition. “We did a bunch of different chemistry reads with different people, and it wasn’t until the very last one that we met each other and did one together,” says Robertson. “It was worth the wait,” Campbell adds. That night, they got the job.
Indeed, says Robertson, the duo “clicked straight away” — before the chemistry read even got underway.
“I had a T-shirt that, in my mind, belonged to my character Ruben that I’d wear for auditions,” Campbell recalls. “I arrived at the chemistry read and realized I forgot it. I was convinced I’d lose the part. Mitchell had to calm me down. He became the Ruben to my Niall. He grounded me. From there, we were always there for each other.”
That immediate closeness — and a shared love of pizza crunch, a battered pizza popular in Scotland — allowed the actors to take on the more demanding aspects of their roles. “To get through those intense moments and access further emotions, I want to have a safety net, so I feel capable of taking those risks,” says Campbell. “Having that relationship definitely helped.”
“Half Man” is a brutal show that puts its characters in profoundly compromising situations from the start. Although both actors described the news of their casting as “euphoric,” “that lasts for 20 minutes, and then you get this feeling of, ‘How on Earth am I going to do this?’” Robertson says.
1. Stuart Campbell. 2. Mitchell Robertson. (Victoria Will / For The Times)
In the first episode of the series, for instance, there’s an extremely tricky sex scene that features Niall, Ruben and Ruben’s girlfriend. It was Robertson’s biggest challenge in filming the show.
“When I first read the script, I thought, ‘Whoever gets this, that’s gonna be tough.’ Obviously, I ended up with the role. It’s like eight pages in the script. Physically, emotionally, it’s so challenging. There’s a huge vulnerability there,” he says.
For Campbell, it was a spin-the-bottle scene in the second episode, which finds Ruben dropping in on Niall at college and causing chaos among his new flatmates. It’s another one of the deeply uncomfortable yet utterly mesmerizing scenes the show excels in, and it’s easy to understand why Campbell would struggle. “Being in a group situation and needing to command attention and take up that space is something that makes me anxious,” he says.
Thankfully, for both actors, those scenes proved more daunting on the page than they were on set. “We all felt safe so we could explore and take risks, and probably mess it up. But that was OK because we had each other’s backs,” says Campbell. “Everyone making this show cared so much, and you get that sense of strong community because of it,” Robertson agrees.
Robertson’s favorite moment of making “Half Man” is actually unfolding right now. “It’s getting to share it with everyone,” he says. “There was so much passion in the cast and crew, and it’s so lovely in this moment, currently, getting to share that.
“You had this great quote you were telling me earlier,” Robertson says to Campbell.
“There’s this John Krakauer book, ‘Into the Wild,’ about Chris McCandless,” Campbell jumps in. “The last thing he wrote in his diary was ‘Happiness is only real when shared.’”
“He told me that on the plane here,” Robertson says, “and it’s so true. The show has pulled me so close to people I’ll hopefully have in my life forever.”
