Baby Reindeer’s Richard Gadd bans mother and father from watching Netflix hit
Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd says he has banned his parents from watching his unexpected Netflix smash hit.
The 34-year-old’s darkly comic drama is based on his real life experiences of being stalked by a woman he felt sorry for after meeting her in a London pub where he pulled pints – after being sexually abused by a top figure in the comedy world.
Gadd says in a new interview that he struggled to have his concerns about the woman, named Martha in the show, taken seriously by police because, he says, the idea of a man being stalked by a female admirer can be ‘trivialised’.
But while 14 million people have pored over every detail of the show, Gadd’s parents in his native Fife are not among them – as the comedian has banned them from watching it and pays for their Netflix, so will know if they do.
But he says making the show with Netflix, based on two critically acclaimed shows he wrote and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, was cathartic and helped him come to terms with what happened earlier in his life.
Richard Gadd as his alter-ego Donny Dunn in Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, which has captivated millions
The show is based on his experiences of being stalked by a woman, who is named Martha and played by Jessica Gunning in the show (above)
Gadd says making the drama – based on two critically acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe shows he penned – has been cathartic
A poster for the stage show of Baby Reindeer, upon which Gadd based his Netflix drama
‘If people see it they will know almost everything about me. They might judge, they might not agree, and that innately comes with some degree of anxiety, but that’s what I signed up for,’ he told The Times.
He pitched the show to Netflix after combining two critically acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe shows, Baby Reindeer and Monkey See, Monkey Do, which addressed his stalking and sexual assault respectively.
But the show has sparked interest from would-be social media sleuths, who have tried to identify both the top figure in comedy who allegedly raped him as well as his smitten stalker, played by Jessica Gunning in the programme.
He has begged armchair detectives to stop trawling the internet trying to identify them after theatre director Sean Foley was wrongly identified as Gadd’s alleged rapist.
Richard Osman said on a recent episode of his The Rest is Entertainment ‘people in the industry’ know who the accused attacker is.
But the programme has raised awareness of male stalking – an issue Gadd says is not taken seriously because of traditional assumptions about the balance of power between men and women.
The programme shows Martha’s obsession developing as she emails Gadd hundreds of times a day, turning up outside his house and harassing his family and friends.
Over a period of four-and-a-half years, Gadd says he received 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, letters totalling 106 pages and 350 hours of voicemail messages.
Despite this, he told the Times police did not take his concerns seriously despite his worries about how far the real-life Martha might go in her twisted pursuits.
‘When a man gets stalked it can be portrayed in films and television as a sexy thing, like a femme fatale who gradually becomes more sinister. It doesn’t carry as much threat of physical violence, is less common and can be trivialised,’ he said.
He now says he is less likely to trust people after his adverse experiences with both men and women.
Gadd concluded: ‘I used to enter situations with such abandonment, never thinking ahead and throwing my trust into people, and I got burnt. Now getting close to people can be hard.’
Aside from the social media sleuthing, however, the woman believed to be the real Martha – who the Mail is choosing not to name – has blasted the show on social media and claims she is in fact the victim.
But a woman who claims she was also stalked by ‘Martha’ told the Mail she recognised the behaviours of Gadd’s admirer, now 58, straight away.
Lawyer Laura Wray said her ‘jaw dropped’ as she watched the show, recognising the woman immediately despite Gadd’s efforts to disguise her identity.
‘I feel sad that she managed to slip through the cracks for so long when she’s clearly unwell,’ Laura says.
She’s dismayed, too, that the woman has now been identified on social media as a result of the Netflix show – despite Gadd’s insistence that he had obscured her identity.
Laura said: ‘They could have changed things without diluting the content, but they’ve made it so realistic. They have portrayed her absolutely spot on, it is so obviously the woman who stalked me. It is so uncanny.’
