Netflix's Baby Reindeer dropped on 11 April and has got us all thinking.
The new show sees comedian Richard Gadd turn his experiences with a female stalker into a series. In the show, which began as a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe, Gadd explores his own culpability and how the law didn't support him or others like him.
This is amid news that the Metropolitan Police has reported a “stark rise” in the number of stalking cases, and ONS statistics have estimated that 2.5 million people every year experience stalking in England and Wales.
So to what extent is Baby Reindeer a true story?
Here's everything to know about Gadd's story and the real Martha Scott from Baby Reindeer.
What is Baby Reindeer about?
The show sees Gadd's fictionalised character, Donny Dunn, develop a warped and complicated relationship with a woman named Martha after meeting her at the bar where he works. Although she initially appears to be friendly, her behaviour unravels into stalking – in real life and over social media. What begins as an act of kindness soon becomes into something much more sinister for them both.
Although the show certainly explores the dark side of Gadd's story, there is also some comedy — after all, he is a comedian!
Is Baby Reindeer a true story?
Gadd has been very open about the fact that he was stalked for four years by a woman who called him “Baby Reindeer”. Apparently, she constantly followed him to his comedy gigs and even showed up at his house. She sent Gadd a staggering 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemail, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters. She also sent him an array of slightly sinister gifts — sleeping pills, a woolly hat, brand new boxer shorts and a reindeer toy.
As the comedian explained to The Times, his friends didn't initially think anything of it.
“At first everyone at the pub thought it was funny that I had an admirer,” he explained. “Then she started to invade my life, following me, turning up at my gigs, waiting outside my house, sending thousands of voicemails and emails.”
Baby Reindeer episode 6 is dedicated to Harrison.
In another interview with The Guardian, Gadd explained that he was far from perfect during this time of his life. “I did loads of things wrong and made the situation worse," he said. "I wasn’t a perfect person [back then], so there’s no point saying I was. And I know as I’m doing those sections that people are thinking I’m not a nice person – which make them difficult to perform.”
Although Baby Reindeer is mostly true, Gadd admitted he did amp up the tension and suspense for the sake of the show. “The feeling you get most of all when you’re getting harassed is relentless tediousness and frustration," he said. "I didn’t want the audience to feel that.”
Based on this experience, Gadd said he wanted to create something to tell his story and represent stalking in a different way – particularly how it is rooted in mental illness.
“Stalking on television tends to be very sexed up. It has a mystique. It’s somebody in a dark alley way. It’s somebody who’s really sexy, who’s very normal, but then they go strange bit by bit,” Gadd said in an interview with Netflix's Tudum. “But stalking is a mental illness. I really wanted to show the layers of stalking with a human quality I hadn’t seen on television before. It’s a stalker story turned on its head. It takes a trope and turns it on its head.”
He added that he didn't want to write a “victim narrative” for his character. “I think art is quite interesting when you don’t know who you are on the side of. I wanted it to be layered, and I wanted it to capture the human experience. The human experience is that people are good, but they have bits of bad and they make mistakes.”
Gadd was also clear that this story has been one that he's wanted to tell for a long time. “In a weird way, I first started feeling like this could be a good story during the whole ordeal itself," he said. "It was one of the most intense periods, when I was listening to these voicemails. I’d go to sleep at night and these voicemails — her words would bounce around my eyelids.
"I remember thinking, ‘God, if I was ever to speak about this onstage, I’d fire the words around. Put the voicemails in a big cacophony and fire it.’ That’s how the play was born.”
Martha was a victim, not a culprit, according to Richard Gadd.
Baby Reindeer cast
Joining Gadd will be Jessica Gunning as Martha (who stalks Donny), Nava Mau as Teri and Tom Goodman-Hill as Darrien.
Baby Reindeer trailer
Here's a taster of the show:
