“Acting is a dangerous thing to try,” says Mitchell Robertson, as he recounts his seven-month marathon of auditions to be cast as schoolboy/student Niall Kennedy in the Richard Gadd-created BBC/HBO miniseries Half Man. The Scotland-born actor had to be resilient through five separate auditions for the protagonist role (which is played as an older adult by Jamie Bell), as well as changes to the production schedule.
Allured by the creative achievement of Gadd’s Emmy-winning autobiographical series Baby Reindeer, Robertson wanted to see how he would handle the pressure of the director’s fiction debut. “Making a show knowing that maybe people are going to be out to scrutinise it — I was super up for that,” he says.
After spending his childhood producing his own comedic skits and completing a course in acting and performance at Glasgow Clyde College, Robertson’s role as young Tibbs in the Scottish Bafta-winning BBC miniseries Mayflies (adapted from Andrew O’Hagan’s 2020 novel, and like Half Man set in two timelines decades apart) was a pivotal point in his career journey. The series, which stars Martin Compston and Tony Curran in the later timeline, was “a real fun whirlwind of making something”, he says.
Robertson enjoyed an immersive experience shooting Athina Rachel Tsangari’s big-screen folk drama Harvest (2024), opposite the likes of Caleb Landry Jones and Harry Melling, and played one half of a detective duo in Paramount+ dystopian series Curfew (2025), set in a world where men are restricted by a nighttime curfew. He will next be seen in BBC legal drama Counsels, and he is currently shooting the male lead in crime drama All The Colours, the feature directing debut of Leo DeHaan.
Robertson set up independent production co-operative JintyHouse in 2022, and says it is a space for him to showcase his versatility as an actor through filmmaking. Tackling themes such as classism and masculinity, Robertson wrote, directed and performed short film Boy (Eighteen) and hopes to continue his work in creative direction. “I’m just really after making things that feel honest, truthful and grounded,” he says.
Contact: Taylor Jefferson, The Artists Partnership; Maryam Hunwick, Hunwick Associates
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