Elizabeth Day

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Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day.

This is the podcast that believes every failure can teach us something in the fullness of time.

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Richard Gad was 34 when he became really, really famous.

Baby Reindeer, the seven-episode Netflix series he adapted from an award-winning Edinburgh one-man show, was a global hit of such magnitude when it was released in April 2024 that Gad briefly became the most Googled man on earth.

A visit to a supermarket turned surreal when he saw his face staring out of the front page of a tabloid newspaper under the headline, Richard Gad's Struggle to Cope with Fame.

The strangeness of the moment was compounded perhaps by the autobiographical darkness of his subject matter, repressed trauma, sexual identity, stalking and mental illness.

The show won him six Primetime Emmys, two Golden Globes, and garnered 84.5 million views within its first 45 days.

Gad has long been interested in the complexity and struggle of understanding the self.

Growing up in a village in Fife, he was bullied at school but found solace in drama.

He studied English literature and theatre studies at the University of Glasgow, where he began performing stand-up.

By 2016, he'd won a Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe.

His work became known for its compulsive storytelling, blending dark comedy with a kind of philosophical kink for asking audiences the most uncomfortable questions.

Now, Gad returns with Halfman, a six-part drama co-production between HBO and the BBC.