Content advisory: This article contains mention of sexual assault and stalking. Please read with caution.
The Queen’s Gambit, Squid Game, Stranger Things: All cases where Netflix has featured seemingly unassuming dramas that turned out to be cinematic gold. Netflix’s latest buzzworthy series Baby Reindeer has viewers both captivated and disturbed and will definitely be added to that prestigious list. This series is simultaneously unsettling and addictive. My literal and metaphorical buttcheeks are still clenched long after finishing the last episode.
Warning: Spoilers to follow.
The dark dramedy depicts a struggling comedian, Donny, being relentlessly stalked by a woman named Martha after a seemingly innocent act of kindness. Although the opening credits tell viewers that the series is based on true events, we all know that art by its very definition is interpretive, and oftentimes directors may take certain “artistic liberties”. However, you’re going to be shocked at just how much of this insanely disturbing story is real and retells creator Richard Gadd’s real-life stalking ordeal. For anyone who hasn’t watched it, I recommend giving it a watch before you read this because there will be spoilers.
And for those who have and are in their “post Netflix-binge googling spiral”, welcome. You’ve found a support group. I’m here to answer the question that is on the top of your mind.
Is this really a true story?
Based on Gadd’s acclaimed 2019 one-man stage play, Baby Reindeer doesn’t simply take inspiration from the Scottish comedian’s trauma – it serves it to the audience in almost excruciatingly, raw detail.
“By the end, I was performing two shows a day just to cope with demand,” Gadd said of the original play’s runaway success. When the Netflix bloodhounds sniffed out this gem and came knocking to adapt it into a series, he had one priority. What makes this series even more enthralling is knowing that Gadd himself plays the main character, acting out his own past horrors.
“I really wanted to show the layers of stalking with a human quality I hadn’t seen on television before.”
The layers were most definitely layering.
From the very first episode, scenes re-enact how Gadd’s living nightmare began at the London pub where he worked. Just like how his character Donny offers a free tea to an unknowingly unhinged Martha (Jessica Gunning), Gadd also made that fateful gesture to a woman claiming to be a penniless lawyer.
What seemed like basic hospitality soon unleashed a torrent of 40,000 emails, 740 tweets, 350 hours of unhinged voicemails and a delusional belief that she and Gadd were in a romantic relationship.
“At first everyone at the pub thought it was funny that I had an admirer,” Gadd revealed. “Then she started to invade my life, following me, turning up at my gigs, waiting outside my house, sending thousands of voicemails and emails.”
Not only that, every single email depicted in Baby Reindeer is verbatim from messages Gadd actually received from his stalker.
But that’s just a fraction of the traumatic experiences Gadd mines for his punishingly authentic drama.
A standout episode depicts Donny being groomed, drugged and sexually assaulted by a predatory industry veteran — a gutting storyline directly recreated from when Gadd was drugged and raped at the start of his comedy career. “Assault lasts for years,” he has said of the real-life incident’s aftermath.
Gadd has made clear, however, that while the emotional truth in Baby Reindeer is excruciatingly precise, certain narrative embellishments were necessary.
“I’d go to such great lengths to disguise her,” he said of depicting Martha, “to the point that I don’t think she would recognize herself.”
Other storylines, like Donny’s complete inability to get law enforcement to take his stalking seriously, cut chillingly close to Gadd’s “bureaucratic nightmare” of trying to legally stop his tormenter: “Honestly my advice to someone who ever thought of pressing charges would be: it’s a f*cking nightmare process, and it takes years.”
Ultimately, Baby Reindeer does not spare anyone in its level of detail, as its main objective was to subvert Hollywood clichés about stalking. “Stalking on television tends to be very sexed-up,” Gadd noted (perhaps a wink at Netflix’s other stalker-based hit, You).
“But stalking is a mental illness.” By stripping away sensationalism in favor of portraying his personal truth, he’s created a watchable, yet squirm-inducing, vortex of trauma that is rarely seen on TV.
With its stark mix of horror and humor, Baby Reindeer dares viewers to look long and hard at the harsh realities of being a stalking victim.
For Gadd, translating his personal anguish into uncompromising art was perhaps the only way to fully process, and artfully recontextualize, a deeply dehumanizing experience. The result is a captivating, unsettling must-watch simultaneously grounded in brutal authenticity and elevated to realms of artistic brilliance by an undeniable creative vision.
Bravo, Monsieur Gadd.
If you know someone suffering from sexual violence, contact RAINN or the National
Sexual Abuse Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.