The Nightmare Of Netflix's Baby Reindeer Happened To Richard Gadd In Real Life
Content warning: This article discusses topics that may be triggering to some readers, including stalking, grooming, and sexual assault.
In 2019, Scottish comedian and writer Richard Gadd performed a one-man play called "Baby Reindeer" at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, winning the Scotsman Fringe First Award for New Writing and a Stage Award for Acting Excellence for his performance. The success launched an award-winning run of the show, including performances in London's West End, culminating with an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theatre. Now, the hit play is a seven-episode miniseries on Netflix, which has had audiences buzzing since its release on April 11. Gadd once again stars in this story about how a man being stalked forced him to process a long-buried trauma, as well as reflect on his own culpability in a situation where law enforcement is often of little help.
Gadd plays a fictionalized version of himself named Donny Gunn, who shows kindness to a thirtysomething woman named Martha (brilliantly played by Jessica Gunning) at a pub who ends up stalking him for years. To exacerbate things, her harassment starts after Donny has endured countless traumas, including being groomed and repeatedly raped by his television industry mentor, Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill), which Donny hasn't fully allowed himself to process. What makes "Baby Reindeer" so compelling is not just Martha's dangerous, escalating behavior, but the acute ways Donny is shown in a negative light and complicit at times with his interactions with Martha. This makes for a complicated, nuanced, and deeply uncomfortable watch, but one that brings a brutal honesty that could only come from an autobiographical story.
And that's because "Baby Reindeer" is based on true events that happened to Gadd, and this piece is his artistic therapy in processing and making sense of it all.
Of Monkeys and Marthas
When "Baby Reindeer" first debuted in 2019, Gadd hadn't heard or seen Martha in two years. This was a huge difference from when he debuted his top prize-winning comedy show "Monkey See, Monkey Do," which examined his journey as a sexual assault survivor. Martha's stalking was still actively taking place the year of that performance, which is also acknowledged in the Netflix series. "It would be unfair to say she was an awful person and I was a victim. That didn't feel true," he told The Guardian in 2019 after the inaugural run of his one-man play.
"I did loads of things wrong and made the situation worse. I wasn't a perfect person [back then], so there's no point saying I was." The stalking began after Gadd gave Martha a complimentary cup of tea when she came to visit him at the pub where he was working, as an admirer of his work. From there, she began following him, popping up at his comedy gigs, showed up outside of his home, and sent thousands of cryptically misspelled texts and emails.
The emails shown on the Netflix series are the real ones she sent, and Martha's stalking was not isolated. She also terrorized the people close to him, including his parents and a trans woman he was dating at the time (Nava Mau's character Teri in the show). In lesser hands, "Baby Reindeer" would be a sensationalist story about a mentally unwell woman terrorizing an innocent man, but Gadd instead depicts the events with as much accuracy as possible and approaches each character with honest vulnerability. "I can't emphasize enough how much of a victim she is in all this," he told The Independent. "Stalking and harassment is a form of mental illness. It would have been wrong to paint her as a monster, because she's unwell, and the system's failed her."
"Baby Reindeer" is streaming on Netflix.