If you’ve been hearing the words “Baby Reindeer” over and over again over the past few weeks, you’re certainly not alone, as the title of Netflix’s latest home run series seems to be everywhere right now.
Since Baby reindeer When the show debuted on the streaming platform on April 11, word of mouth spread like wildfire, landing the series at No. 1 on the Netflix charts and thrusting the series’ writer and creator, Richard Gadd, into the spotlight. The 34-year-old Scottish comedian and actor also stars in the limited series, which tells the shocking but true story of his own experience with a stalker, “Martha Scott,” who sent him 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, and… Sent 350 hours of voicemails over the course of six years.
A strange name for a series. Viewers won’t have to wait long after the first episode to find out why Gadd chose to name the series – and the original one-man West End play it’s based on. Baby reindeer. The show’s name comes from the epithet Gadd’s stalker called him before the police officially got involved.
Baby reindeer begins with Donny Dunn (Gadd) helping a complete stranger, Martha (Jessica Gunning), by serving her a cup of tea at the pub where he works. The simple act of kindness quickly proves to be one he would regret when Martha – whose name and other details have been changed in the series to protect her identity – becomes attached to him and begins a parasitic relationship. The woman begins visiting him at work every day, sending him nonstop messages, and even harassing other people in his life, including his parents, his girlfriend, and colleagues.
While many have watched the series in shock and horror at the entire ordeal – including the fact that investigators refused to intervene until Martha, a serial stalker, began contacting and threatening his family and loved ones – others wondered how A lot of the show is real.
According to Gadd, much of the show — including his painful memory of drug addiction and sexual abuse at the hands of a writing mentor — is taken directly from his own experience and is “100% emotionally true,” he said diversity. However, for obvious legal reasons, many details have been adjusted. Some people watching the show may be surprised that some details – particularly the extent of the stalking – have been toned down.
Forbes reports that in the play – which premiered at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival before winning an Olivier on the West End – Gadd reveals that in addition to the personal harassment, Martha sent 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemails and 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters.
In the show, Martha sends Donny up to 80 emails a day, sits at a bus stop near his house, attacks both his ex-girlfriend and his current lover, and follows him to one standup show after another, where he – an aspiring comedian – – is answered with heckling from her in the audience. At one point, the woman even tries to turn the crowd against him at a festival by mocking his jokes and making damning accusations.
While the show ends with Martha being sentenced to nine months in prison, Gadd was extremely reserved about how his real-life stalker was dealt with, only that he had “mixed feelings” about resolving the situation, as he once said The Independent.
“I can’t emphasize enough how much of a victim she is in all of this,” he said. “Stalking and harassment are a form of mental illness. It would have been wrong to portray her as a monster because she is unwell and the system has failed her.”
He made similar comments at the time of the release of the sold-out play The guard He also discussed his own role in the situation and explained that he does not believe he is innocent.
“It would be unfair to say she was a terrible person and I was a victim. That didn’t feel true,” the author said in 2019. “I did a lot of things wrong and made the situation worse. I wasn’t a perfect person [back then]so there’s no point in saying it was me.”
The comments are echoed in the show, where Gadd’s character expresses his complicated view of his role in Martha’s bond and his own sexual abuse at his hands Darrien O’Connor (Tom Goodman-Hill), an older comedian who first attracted and then abused him. Gadd believes his horrific history of sexual violence at the hands of someone he trusted made him a “band-aid” for someone like Martha to attach himself to.
While Gadd isn’t afraid to put it all on the line, he’s not here because he’s trying to uncover the identity of his real stalker or abuser. In Baby reindeerThe actor makes it a point to touch on Martha’s own traumatic experiences that shaped her into the person she became. In the weeks since the show’s release, he has asked his recent flood of new fans and followers not to fall down a rabbit hole of speculating about the identity of his rapist and stalker.
“Hello everyone, people I love, worked with and admire (including Sean Foley) are unfairly getting caught up in speculation,” he wrote in an Instagram Story Today. “Please do not speculate about who the real people might be. That’s not the point of our show.”
He told it before TUDUM from Netflix When he adapted his story into a stage play and later a TV show for the masses, his goal was to subvert the expectations associated with the concept of stalking. Instead of engaging in the often miscalculated and inaccurate portrayal of the subject in television shows and films, he wanted to portray it for what it is – a mental illness.
“Stalking on television is usually very sexist. There is something mystical about it. There’s someone in a dark alley. It’s someone who is really sexy, who is completely normal, but then gradually he becomes strange,” Gadd explained.
He added: “But stalking is a mental illness. I really wanted to show the layers of stalking with a human quality that I had never seen on television before. It’s a stalker story turned on its head. She takes a metaphor and makes it light up his head.”
Watch the trailer Baby reindeer in the player below:
All seven episodes of Baby reindeer are now streaming on Netflix.
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