Spoiler alert: This article contains plot details about Baby reindeer.
Richard Gadd wrote and stars Baby reindeer, Netflix’s new hit limited series, about her real-life experience with a stalker and, separately, being a victim of sexual violence. Now, as the show tops the streaming service’s most-watched list for a second week, Gadd urges viewers not to “speculate about who real-life people are.” [the characters are based on] could be.” His appeal comes after a director he previously worked with contacted police after being falsely accused of being the Scottish star’s attacker.
What is ‘Baby Reindeer’ about?
Gadd plays comedian Donny Dunn, who is being pursued by a woman, Martha Scott (played by Jessica Gunning), who nicknames him “Baby Reindeer.” The fictionalized account of the real story, told in seven episodes, is adapted from Gadd’s Olivier Award-winning play of the same name, based on his own experience. In real life, Gadd’s stalker allegedly sent him more than 40,000 emails350 hours of voicemails, 106 pages of letters, dozens of social media messages and bizarre gifts (including a reindeer toy and sleeping pills) over three years.
Since Baby reindeer premiered on April 11 and recorded over 15.9 million views. Not only is it Netflixis the most-watched series in the US, but is also in the top 10 in 89 countries.
Armchair detectives tried to identify Gadd’s stalker and attacker
In this culture of true crime obsession and Internet sleuthing, viewers have been trying to discover the real identity of Martha, as well as the character Darrien (played by Tom Goodman-Hill), an older comedian who drugged and sexually assaulted Donny. him while he was unconscious. Many Reddit threads are trying to decipher the true identities of the characters in the story.
On April 23, British actor/writer/director Sean Foley — who directed Gadd in Urban Myths in 2019 – wrote on social media that he contacted the police due to “defamatory, abusive and threatening posts” made about him by people speculating, without any evidence, that the character Darrien is him.
The police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory, abusive and threatening posts against me.
-sean foley (@SeanFoleyJ) April 23, 2024
Gadd took to social media to ask viewers to stop trying to investigate. He wrote: “People I love, worked with and admire (including Sean Foley) are unfairly being caught up in speculation. Please do not speculate about who any of the real-life people could be. That’s not the point of our show.” Foley shared the post.
What Gadd Said About the True Allegations
Before Baby reindeer came to Netflix, Gadd told his story in a play of the same name that premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019 and had a successful run at London’s Bush Theatre. Won Great Britain’s Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliated Theatre.
It’s a true story, but “slightly tweaked” – names, details and chronology – “to create dramatic climaxes”, he told UK’s Guardian. “It’s very emotionally true, obviously: I was severely persecuted and abused. But we wanted it to exist in the sphere of art as well as protect the people it is based on.”
In Great Britain This morning, Gadd said the persecution was “relentless” and “an assault on every sense, on every means of communication: email, phones, everything. It felt like a dam, a 24/7 kind of constant problem.” He admitted to making “stupid mistakes” with the stalker because he was “in a bad situation” and “felt like I needed someone to pay attention to me.”
In conversation with Netflix Tudum On the fan site, Gadd said that when she realized it could be “a good story” was “during the ordeal itself,” explaining, “I would go to sleep at night and these voicemails — her words would bounce off my eyelids. I remember thinking, ‘God, if I ever talked about this on stage, I would spread the word. Put the voicemails into one big cacophony and fire away. That’s how the play was born.”
When making the show, he made a point of not glorifying Martha’s behavior, telling the same channel: “Stalking on television tends to be very sexual. It has a mystique. He is someone in a dark alley. He is someone who is very sexy, very normal, but then he gradually becomes strange. But stalking is a mental illness. I really wanted to show the layers of the chase with a human quality that I had never seen on television before. It’s a stalker story turned upside down. It takes a trope and turns it on its head.”
In the series, Martha pleads guilty to stalking and harassment and is sentenced to nine months in prison. In real life, Gadd told UK’s Times just that the situation with her stalker has been “resolved.” He admitted to having “mixed feelings” about it because he “didn’t want to throw someone with that level of mental issues in prison.”
As for whether he’s worried this show might resurrect the chase, he told Variety, “Because of where things ended in real life, that’s not a concern for me.” He said British GQ that the show also went to “so much effort to disguise her to the point that I don’t think she would recognize herself,” adding that “it’s not a fact-by-fact profile of someone.”
In the series, Donny is about to confront Darrien, his sexual attacker, but then changes his mind. Gadd called it “the truest scene in the entire show” in a Esquire UK interview. “What abuse does is create psychological as well as physical damage. There is a pattern where many people who have been abused feel like they need their abusers.”
Although it is unknown what happened to her real attacker, Gadd said the Guardian that turning the story of abuse into art helped “free” him from the trauma. He added that he is proud that the story has “It struck a chord,” saying, “I really believed it, but it took off so quickly that I feel a little windswept.”
Baby reindeer is now streaming on Netflix.
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