Netflix’s new thriller drama Baby Reindeer stuns audiences with its unexpected progress.
Baby Reindeer, based on Scottish comedian, actor and writer Richard Gadd‘s experience with a stalker in his 20s, was released on April 11.
Gadd plays Donny Dunn, who is stalked by a woman named Martha, whom he meets at the bar where he works.
Tracked for 4 years
Netflix summarizes the synopsis of the series, which is not suitable for those under the age of 18, as follows:
When a failed comedian makes a goodwill gesture to a vulnerable woman, he ignites a suffocating obsession that could ruin both their lives.
Gadd said he was stalked for four years by a woman who called him a “baby reindeer”.
Initially, both Gadd and his friends didn’t mind, until things started to heat up.
Gadd was harassed with 41,71 emails, 350 hours of voicemail, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters.
His persistent follower also sent him gifts such as a reindeer toy, sleeping pills, a wool hat and boxer shorts.
“At first everyone in the bar thought it was funny that I had a fan,” Gadd said in an interview with Britain’s The Times newspaper.
Then he started invading my life, following me, coming to my shows, waiting outside my house, sending thousands of voicemails and emails.
Gadd, 34, told the Guardian, one of the UK’s leading newspapers, in an interview in 2019 that he had done some things wrong and could have handled the situation better.
“I know people think you’re not a good person”
“I wasn’t a perfect person back then, so there’s no point in saying I was,” Gadd admitted.
And I know that when I was shooting those episodes, people thought I was not a good person, which makes it difficult to explain what I went through.
Gadd wanted to paint a clear picture of what stalking is with Baby Reindeer, while not romanticizing this behavior.
“Persistent stalking is polished on TV and presented as exciting,” Gadd told Netflix’s fan site Tudum.
He has a mystery. Like someone in a dark alley. He’s really sexy, he’s very normal, but then he slowly gets weird. But stalking is a mental illness. I wanted to show the layers of stalking in a way I hadn’t seen on TV before. It’s a perversion of a stalker story. It takes a cliché and turns it upside down.
Baby Reindeer stars Gadd, Nava Mau and Jessica Gunning. The 7-part miniseries is directed by Weronika Tofilska and produced by Matthew Mulot.
Source: Variety, Guardian, The Times, Tudum
