As fans delve into the Baby Reindeer series on Netflix, many ponder what parts are factual and what are fictitious. The show, adapted from Richard Gadd’s play with the same title, portrays the plight of a struggling comedian.
In the act of kindness, he aids a vulnerable woman, inadvertently endangering their lives.
Is Baby Reindeer based on a true story?
The show “Baby Reindeer” on Netflix tells a real story. It is about the creator, Richard Gadd. He went through sexual assault, being bisexual, and having a stalker. In an interview with The Times, Gadd talked about a woman at the bar where he worked.
She said she could not pay for a drink. So, Gadd made her a free cup of tea. After that, the woman became Gadd’s stalker for four and a half years.
Gadd said in an interview:
“At first, everyone at the pub thought it was funny that I had an admirer. Then she started to invade my life, following me, turning up at my gigs, waiting outside my house, sending thousands of voicemails and emails.”
Gadd also talked to The Independent news source about his work. Over three years, he received over 40,000 emails, most of which had grammar and spelling mistakes. His stalker would tease him at his shows and be mean to his parents. The stalker even called Gadd’s dad a pedophile among his coworkers.
Over the years, the stalker sent him many emails with errors. The stalker teased Gadd and insulted his dad at work. Gadd felt the police did not help much. He used some hard test words.
“I never want to lambast the police because there is a national acknowledgment at the moment that the police is an institution that needs improvement. I have met outstanding police officers in my time. And, unfortunately, I’ve met some that I feel extraordinarily let down by.“
What happened to the real Martha Scott?
Richard Gadd obtained a restraining order against Baby Reindeer’s honest Martha.
The actual “Martha” also wasn’t incarcerated for her crimes against Gadd, as he told The Times that he “didn’t want to throw someone who was that level of mentally unwell in prison.”
By the time of Gadd’s interview with The Guardian shortly after the Baby Reindeer stage show premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2019, the honest “Martha” had “finally [been] restrained from contacting [Gadd] himself.”
However, the duration of his restraining order and the exact date it was granted are unknown.
Where is the real Martha today?
Richard Gadd has yet to reveal where the honest Martha is today publicly. Besides the law stopping her and the jail not detaining her, little is known about what happened to the honest “Martha.” Mr. Gadd keeps her real name hidden.
He used the fake name “Martha.” Gadd altered her a lot for the Netflix show “Baby Reindeer.” He thought she would not recognize herself. To this day, he has not revealed her real name or where she is now.
As of 2024, though, Gadd feels the situation is “resolved,” suggesting that this behavior has stopped for good. Although he still has “mixed feelings” about the whole thing, Gadd empathizes with his stalker immensely. “I can’t emphasize enough how much of a victim she is in all this,” he told the Independent in 2019.
Gadd later shared with Radio Times that he “saw someone who was unwell, needed help, [and] was quite vulnerable,” which comes through very clearly and masterfully in Baby Reindeer.
In the show, Richard Gadd plays Donny Dunn. Donny forms a bond with an older and successful TV writer. This writer gives Donny advice about comedy and his career. But they start taking hard drugs together.
Then, the writer drugs Donny with acid and GHB. After this, the writer sexually assaults and rapes Donny.
Donny frees himself after seeing how he was groomed. But this trauma hurts the rest of his life. He deals with a stalking situation. The series also uniquely shows sexuality. Donny is bisexual (like Richard Gadd). The team wanted to show bisexual representation naturally and accurately.
What happens at the end of Baby Reindeer?
Baby Reindeer’s ending shows Martha getting arrested on three counts of stalking and harassment after indirectly threatening to stab Donny and his parents in a voicemail message. Martha is imprisoned for nine months after pleading guilty on all three counts.
Donny is also granted a five-year restraining order against Martha, indicating that her plea hearing was the last time he saw her. However, the outcome of Baby Reindeer is different from how the events played out in Gadd’s real life.
About Baby Reindeer
Baby Reindeer is a British black comedy drama-thriller miniseries created by and starring Richard Gadd.
An adaptation of Gadd’s autobiographical one-man show of the same name, the series is based on Gadd’s real life experience of being stalked and sexually assaulted in his twenties. The series consists of seven episodes, which all simultaneously premiered on Netflix on 11 April 2024
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