Baby Reindeer: The chilling true stalking story behind Richard Gadd ...

Not quite as light-hearted as its name suggests, the new Netflix limited series Baby Reindeer is based on the real-life experience of its creator and star, Scottish writer, actor and comedian Richard Gadd, of being stalked.

The seven-episode series, which arrived as a Netflix original on 11 April, was adapted from Gadd’s 2019 one-man stage play of the same name, with the Scotsman being the creator and executive producer as well as playing the starring role of struggling comedian Donny Dunn.

English actress Jessica Gunning (The Outlaws) plays the role of Dunn’s female stalker, Martha, in the show, with American actress Nava Mau portraying a therapist Dunn meets, called Teri.

Netflix’s describes the series saying: “When a struggling comedian shows one act of kindness to a vulnerable woman, it sparks a suffocating obsession which threatens to wreck both their lives.”

Here’s what we know about the story.

Baby Reindeer is based on Gadd’s real-life experience of being stalked and its traumatic consequences. Gadd says the experience also stirred up trauma from the time he was groomed and sexually assaulted by an older man in the TV industry, which Gadd previously revealed in his award-winning comedy show, Monkey See Monkey Do.

That experience is covered in a flashback episode in Baby Reindeer, while the play and show’s title refers to the nickname his stalker gave him.

Gadd’s real-life stalker, he has explained in previous interviews, was a woman to whom he gave a free cup of tea when she came into the pub where he worked in his twenties, telling him she was a lawyer but that she couldn’t afford a drink.

The woman began to frequent the pub after the gesture, sparking an obsession on her part where she became convinced the two were in a romantic relationship – that didn’t exist.

In the years that followed, Gadd said he received over 40,000 emails, 740 tweets, 350 hours of voicemail, 100 pages of letters and 45 Facebook messages from the woman.

He has said that for years, trying to get the police to do something about it became a “bureaucratic nightmare” as the woman waited outside his home all day, heckled him at his comedy gigs, sent him non-stop messages day and night and directed abuse at Gadd’s parents, included spreading a rumour that his father was a paedophile among his work colleagues.

Gadd told The Evening Standard: “I never want to lambast the police, because I think there is a national acknowledgement at the moment that the police is an institution which needs improvement.

“I have met very good policemen in my time. And, unfortunately, I’ve met some that I feel extraordinarily let down by.”

On screen, we see stalker Martha get hold of Dunn’s email address after which he is subjected to a stream of intrusive messages.

Dunn dreams of being a comedian but is struggling to find success, forced to spend his days working in a north London pub where he tries to fit in with blokey workmates while grappling with his sexuality and self-hatred. It is here that Martha first finds him.

Speaking to Netflix, Gadd said: “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.

“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.”

Describing his experience with his stalker as “almost unbearable”, Gadd told Channel 4: “There’s an issue of co-dependency, of attachment, where this person genuinely believes that the other person is an answer to all of their problems.

“I believe that the person who stalked me was a very vulnerable character. I believe she was someone to be sympathised with.”

This was all happening while Gadd performed various other shows on-stage including 2013’s Cheese & Crack Whores at the Edinburgh Fringe and Breaking Gadd, which he took to the Soho Theatre, as well as his 2015 Edinburgh show Waiting for Gadd and 2016’s Monkey See Monkey Do.

Gadd says he coped via the two-and-a-half-year process of writing Baby Reindeer, saying: “In a weird way, I first started feeling like this could be a good story during the whole ordeal itself.

“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.’ That’s how the play was born.”

The real-life Martha, who Gadd has never named, has now been legally prevented from ever approaching him or anybody who knows him.

Gadd is a 33-year-old Scottish comedian, writer and actor who rose to fame with a series of Edinburgh Fringe and other dark comedy stage shows over the past decade.

The stage version of Baby Reindeer won him an Olivier among several other industry accolodades, while Monkey See Monkey Do, the 2016 show during which he discussed his mental state following the sexual abuse he suffered, all while running on a treadmill, won an Edinburgh Comedy Award.

Gadd also has writing credits on Sex Education and previous on-screen acting experience in the Bafta-nominated BBC Two programme Against the Law.

He was born in Wormit, Fife, and is both a recognised ambassador and outspoken advocate on behalf of the UK charity We Are Survivors, which helps male survivors of sexual abuse break their silence.