Warning: This story contains major spoilers for Half Man Episode 6. Please proceed with caution!
The last scene of the Half Man finale leaves audiences gasping for breath, as Jamie Bell‘s Niall Kennedy is strangled to death by his brother figure, Ruben Pallister, played by Baby Reindeer auteur Richard Gadd. The climactic showdown comes after decades of a tumultuous relationship, and Bell now tells Gold Derby how the shoot left its mark — literally.
“I burst a blood vessel in my eye doing that scene,” the actor reveals about the physically demanding sequence. “It was actually the first scene that we shot, me and Richard. That was all in the first week, the fight and the killing and all that stuff. That was very first up in the schedule, which is a brutal way to start a shoot, just brutal.”
In an in-depth interview with Gold Derby, the BAFTA- and Critics Choice Award-winning Billy Elliot star also dives into the “tragic” history of the two lifelong companions, and why they weren’t destined to “go out singing and dancing.” As he explains, “They are each other’s life force. … In that sense, there was never going to be a version where they could live separately or live without one another.”
Finally, Bell praises Mitchell Robertson and Stuart Campbell, the actors who portray the younger Niall and Ruben, respectively.
Gold Derby: What went through your mind when you initially read the sixth and final episode of Half Man?
Jamie Bell: Episode 6 was the first episode I read of the whole show. That’s what was sent to me as, “Do you want to do this?” Obviously, I was incredibly hooked by the whole episode. It’s about the nature of this downward spiral of this man, this self-hate and self-destruction and repression, and this combustible relationship between these two men who seem to not be able to live with each other, nor live without each other. The glimpse of a man coming to terms with who he is and accepting himself and seeing the potential in his life and what it could be, only to have that snuffed out at the very end, was just so tragic. It left me totally broken.
Ruben kills Niall during that terrifying last scene in the barn. What do you remember most about filming it?
It was actually the first scene that we shot, me and Richard. That was all in the first week, the fight and the killing and all that stuff. That was very first up in the schedule, which is a brutal way to start a shoot, just brutal. Like, not easing your way into it at all. The dialogue scenes are so intense, as was the physical nature of having this 200-plus pound man on top of you, squeezing the life out of you. And it’s not just killing. There’s an intimacy in it. He is physically on top of me, and I’m getting his sweat and snot and tears in my face. All of their history is in their eyes with each other, and all of the fear and tension and sense of loss. I burst a blood vessel in my eye doing that scene, because I was holding my breath so long. We were exhausted at the end of it. It felt like we’d been through 10 rounds of boxing.
There’s so much physicality in that scene, so what does that take out of you as an actor? Because your body doesn’t know that you’re pretending,
I totally understand what you mean — it doesn’t. So your heart rate is going crazy, and your breathing is all over the place. I’m actually holding my breath, because I want to simulate the sense that it’s been taken from me. He’s not actually squeezing, obviously. I’m in control of all that stuff. But even within that, Ruben is a physically dominant person. He’s not going to let go, or let you take that breath. Richard wanted it to go on and on. He wanted it to feel excruciating, which it was to shoot, so he got that.
All my screaming wasn’t particularly written, but in my mind, I was like, “You need to shout with everything you have and hope that someone from that wedding is going to come in and save your life. You have to scream as if your life depended on it.” I didn’t even really ask Richard if that was OK. Niall knows exactly what’s coming. He’s seen Ruben do this to so many people: destroy them, kill them, basically. Tthat primal understanding that Niall knows exactly what’s coming was, again, brutal.
This might be a silly question, but what is the secret to playing a believable dead body? [Bell laughs] I love that you’re laughing!
I’m laughing because I don’t really like to watch anything I’m in. It’s awful for me, and just like a train wreck. But I did see that in ADR, and it was like, “I look actually dead!” [laughs] Don’t you think? I said to Richard, “When I’m dead, I physically need to end up in a space where I’m looking at you,” so that when he looks at me, it looks like I’m still alive, just kind of looking at him. We planned it all out so that he could look down and meet my eyes. It’s the sense that he’s still somehow active, even though he’s dead.
Niall does manage to stick a knife in Ruben’s side, and in an earlier episode, we see that Ruben is dead after the fight. Fans might have some conspiracy theories about when Ruben actually dies. Is it the knife that kills him? Maybe Alby kills him after finding Niall dead? What’s your personal take?
What’s interesting about it is, in its fragmented nature and in the way that the narrative is delivered in a non-linear way, it does leave it open for interpretation. I guess the sense that he’s locked the barn from the inside suggests Ruben is not trying to flee with this injury and save himself. Ruben, after he’s taken Niall’s life, and I think that final grunt of the episode, has the understanding that there is no fun anymore. That without him, without this opposite, there is kind of no meaning. The oblivion of their relationship is laid bare in his decision not even to try and save himself, to flee, to run. What’s the point? Like, life don’t mean anything anymore.
In your mind, was it always destined for Niall and Ruben’s journeys to end at each other’s hands?
I do think it had to, in a way. After I read Episode 6, and it was a pretty bleak, brutal ending, I thought, “Is there a way that we could make them go out singing and dancing with a song?” [laughs] Obviously, you can’t. They are so combustible together, these two people, and it was always destined to be this way, always. They cannot live with each other, they cannot live without each other. They are each other’s life force, in a way. They do sustain each other in a very physical way. They are each other’s oxygen, or energy, or the sun, or water, and they cannot survive without one another. In that sense, there was never going to be a version where they could live separately or live without one another.
How did you and Richard prepare for the emotional prison scene where you’re speaking to each other through the glass and revealing past secrets, including that Niall is actually the father of Ruben’s child?
Another brutal scene. I want to say it was 14 to 15 pages of dialogue, which was easier to shoot because you’re just sat down and it’s not that tricky to put together from a technical point of view. But emotionally, there are a lot of ups and downs and the roller coaster of it all. There are dynamics shifting and power positions changing. The thing with that scene that I was always at odds was, “Why the hell would Niall ever say this? Why would he ever admit to it?” I was always trying to get Richard to justify it to me, because I did feel like Niall would take that to his grave. And so, what I came up with in the end was that Niall thought Ruben was never getting out of prison, because maybe he’s going to kill someone in there. “If we’re getting everything off our chests, you’re never going to get out of prison, so this is another truth you should know.”
I also do think that it’s possible that Niall really is the true villain of the piece, that he really is that malevolent and vindictive that he would say it just to have that sensation of winning, of holding that power over him, even in a moment when he’s the most vulnerable. I do think that there is that duality in the character, and I do think that is possible. I don’t want to take that off the table. I find people who present as non-threatening, polite, and nice-mannered often have ulterior motives and are quite vindictive and conniving and cunning. That to me is so much more malevolent and insidious than physical strength or dominance.
The younger actors were also really amazing: Stuart Campbell as young Ruben and Mitchell Robertson as young Niall. How did you and Mitchell work together to make sure there was some consistency with Niall over the various decades?
We had a nice double Zoom to begin with, just a kind of intro. The way the schedule fell, they had already shot all of their work, and it had been assembled by an editor. I saw all of those assemblies, so I had this living, breathing, emoting memory of everything these characters had done when they were younger. When you’re building backstory, it was incredibly useful to have all that stuff, and you just never get that. Richard and I are incredibly indebted to what Mitchell and Stuart did together, what they conjured up between them, and creating the dynamics of that relationship. If that doesn’t land, our stuff doesn’t work, it just doesn’t. They built us an incredible foundation.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
