Hit series ‘Baby Reindeer’ tells the true, shocking story of a man who is stalked

It started with a friendly gesture; a bartender gives a sad woman a cup of tea. It ends (for now) with Baby Reindeer, a seven-part Netflix series about a life that turns into a nightmare when this woman turns out to be a stalker. It happened to Richard Gadd, whose life seemed to have reached a dead end, with the distant dream of becoming a comedian, or at least a man who could captivate an audience from a stage.

One of the many bizarre twists in the story is the fact that the greatest torment in Gadd’s life also turned out to be the salvation of his career as an artist. He incorporated the story of his experiences with a stalker (whom he called Martha) into his first theater show and that performance (from 2019) was subsequently picked up by Netflix. In the dramatization he plays the role of Donny Dunn, his alter ego, who relives the experiences completely as if in a psychotherapeutic trip.

Horror, comedy and drama

Baby Reindeer is now one of the most watched series on Netflix worldwide and that is not just a matter of fascination with a personal nightmare that is difficult for outsiders to imagine. It’s also because the series is an irresistible combination of horror, comedy and drama (especially horror, actually). And it is the phenomenal role of Jessica Gunning as Martha, a woman who alternates between extreme moods at breakneck speed and also shows threatening manic behavior for the people around Gadd. Gadd received more than 40,000 messages in three years, which are used with macabre precision in the series; the message ‘sent from my iPhone’ takes on a whole new meaning.

And yet it is Baby Reindeer much more than a story about a mentally unstable woman. It is also a staggering self-examination, with Gadd wondering what part he himself had in this extremely toxic relationship. In the shocking fourth episode, a story from his younger years is told, in which he outlines the abuse by an older comedian. It is an episode that he has never really processed and that also hinders him in his complex relationship with Martha. With her too, he continually wonders what his own part actually is. And isn’t his undeniable desire for self-destruction the reason he waits so long to go to the police?

With the overwhelming success of the series, half the internet is also trying to find out what happened to the ‘real’ Martha. And who is that older comedian? Gadd himself speaks of an ’emotional truth’ that he expresses Baby Reindeer tried to tell. So he cannot answer specific questions about his stalker, but he said yes this week Variety that ‘the way things ended up in real life’ he no longer worries.