Richard Gadd's "Baby Reindeer" emerged as a surprise sensation, captivating audiences with its haunting story of abuse and stalking. The show's success has brought overnight fame to Gadd and his co-star Jessica Gunning, transforming their lives in unexpected ways. This article explores Gadd's journey, the impact of "Baby Reindeer," and his personal transformation in the wake of the show's success.
A Walk and Talk with Richard Gadd
In North London, Richard Gadd moves with purpose, seeking anonymity under a baseball cap, his voice dropping as others approach. "Baby Reindeer" tells the story of abuse and stalking Gadd faced as a young comedian, a story so intense that it continues to shape his life. The courage with which he transposed his trauma to the screen has sparked both admiration and controversy, fueled by tabloid stories.
The Organic Rise of "Baby Reindeer"
"Baby Reindeer" defied expectations, gaining traction organically despite minimal pre-launch publicity. Audiences connected with the show's raw honesty, even before critics caught on. Gadd's self-critical approach, portraying himself as flawed and his stalker as complex, has further complicated attempts to sensationalize the story.
The Show's Impact on Survivors
"Baby Reindeer" has profoundly impacted its audience. We Are Survivors, a charity supporting male survivors of sexual abuse in Greater Manchester, UK, reported an 80% increase in first-time callers since the show aired, with 53% citing it as their reason for coming forward. The show's 11 Emmy nominations, despite not being a Netflix priority initially, underscore its resonance.
Finding Universality in Personal Trauma
Gadd expressed that he finds moving those kinds of things that people say to him, and obviously there has been quite a lot of noise around the show. The universality of the show lies in its exploration of loneliness, isolation, and the desperate need for connection.
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Owning Up to Flaws
Richard Gadd thought what he was doing was stupid, in terms of owning up to the flaws in his own personality, and the things he got wrong. Gadd was bored of artistic narratives where the central person is nothing but good. Life is very complicated, and people are a mixture of positive and negative. Gadd put his hand up in this age of moral enlightenment and be like, “Oh, yeah, I made these f*cking stupid mistakes,” was very daunting, and it’s still daunting in the aftermath in a lot of ways.
Struggles and Honesty in the Public Eye
Everyone, at any stage in life, has struggles, and being honest about them, and especially being in the public eye and being honest about your struggles, and your personal battles, is a good thing to do. Gadd thinks it would be of benefit to society if people stop being so apparently perfect all the time. People are scared to own up to their mistakes, for whatever reason.
The Ongoing Process of Healing
Going through a trauma, the solutions have to come from a certain sense of self. It’s an ongoing process for Gadd. Gadd still struggle with a lot of things, but he has certainly learned that no external thing can be the solution. The live shows Gadd did were very cathartic. There are still days where Gadd wake up and he struggle with the trauma. It’s not about getting over it. It’s about working to live with it. Every person’s journey is slightly different, but there are still tough days.
Embracing Personal Experience
Gadd started to embrace personal experience. When Richard Gadd wrote Monkey See Monkey Do for the Edinburgh fringe in 2016, he says, “it was pre-#MeToo; sexual assault wasn’t really in the public consciousness, and male sexual assault particularly wasn’t”.
The Impact of #MeToo
When Gadd did Monkey See, Monkey Do, it was pre-#MeToo, so people really weren’t talking about sexual abuse. Or, they were, but not on a societal level. Especially men would never dare to have those kinds of conversations. Gadd went up to Edinburgh that year convinced it was going to ruin his career. It went from him thinking it would be a disastrous month to it becoming, still to this day, the best month of his life.
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A Polarized Society
Society is split down the middle now, and I think some people want to argue against the other side for the sake of it. Gadd felt he was delivering a very truthful exploration of a dynamic like that, and a very truthful exploration of abuse. People can’t understand why Gadd would have gone back [to my abuser].
Coping with Fame and Controversy
Gadd sometimes think to himself that he doesn’t know why he expected there to be a sphere of respect around it, because it was so dark, because it was so personal. The show has been lost in this kind of noise surrounding it.
The Algorithm and Human Connection
Shows like Squid Game and Baby Reindeer suggest that humans will always be able to cheat an algorithm. Nobody expected this level of take-off. Gadd always felt there was an honesty to the show, in a way that he hope has been refreshing for people after so many years of disingenuousness, in politics, in television; everywhere.
From Niche Comedian to Mainstream Sensation
Gadd was known as the nichest of niche comedians. It’s so odd to have been told, throughout his career, that the work he’s doing is too niche and that he need to broaden it up, only to make the nichest of niche shows, and have it become this massive mainstream hit. It took a lot of adjustment.
Reliving Trauma and Weight Loss
Richard Gadd went through a big transformation before Baby Reindeer. Speaking to The Times, Richard said that all of those years of being stalked gave him something “like PTSD”, resulting in dramatic weight loss due to stress.
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Navigating Relationships
Richard Gadd is single at the moment and revealed that he is “more cautious” of forming relationships with people following his experience with his real life Martha. Explaining how he navigates relationships with people now, he said: “It takes me a long time to trust them.
The Power of Personal Narrative
The way people received that show, and received me, and accepted what happened to me: it saved my life. Baby Reindeer, where he’s racing up to Scotland to get to his parents and talk to them before Martha calls, is almost unbearably tense, like watching 24 but with meaning.
Breaking the Silence
Gadd has worked with a charity called We Are Survivors. Breaking the silence is the first step. Talk to someone, and if that’s too scary, just write it down, process it into something. Because the more you get it out, the smaller it becomes.
Masculinity and Healing
Gadd grew up with draconian ideas: the prince rescues the princess, to be a man is to have a stiff upper lip, don’t cry, shoulders back. When you go through something like sexual abuse, a lot of the disempowerment can come from these old ideas of what it means to be a man. When Gadd shook off that idea, and realised that speaking out and saying ‘I’m struggling’ is a form of strength, sloughing off the idea that masculinity was the only form of survival - that was very healing.”
The Nuances of Policing
Gadd says: “I’d like to point out that I have met some good police officers in my time, that I did feel care and they did try their best.” Nevertheless, “it is almost common belief now that there is a systemic problem with the police. It is an institution which needs to change. I was always aware of the complete lack of resources available to them, the stress in their eyes and in their bodies - I could almost see it. Our public services are in complete disarray. I don’t want to get too political, but I think it’s shocking that things have been allowed to get to this point.
Catharsis and Self-Sacrifice
To have to re-enact these events with other actors has been “difficult”, Gadd says carefully. “It’s had triggering elements. But you hope that it builds to a catharsis, which doesn’t really come from revisiting it, but the positive response, the acceptance that people show you." Yes, some of the scenes we re-enacted on set were really tough - I could even see that some of the props department were choked up, even the lighting people - but we all knew that we were pushing towards something that was important. I hope the show has a certain degree of greater good, and that it was worth a certain degree of self-sacrifice.”
The Importance of Martha´s Threat
“When we were developing it, there was the note that kept coming in about the show being too dark,” Gadd told interviewer Tony Ayres at ACMI Theatre. Despite initial reasoning for the respite episode, Gadd discovered during editing that removing Martha’s omnipresent threat diminished the show’s tension.
Legal Complications and New Projects
Legal complications now surround the production, with a substantial defamation claim challenging the show’s factual representations. Beyond “Baby Reindeer,” Gadd has completed production on “Half Man,” a new BBC and HBO collaboration featuring Jamie Bell.
Embracing the Complexity of Life
Richard Gadd: I’ve made no secret that I really wanted Jess to play this role. And I totally agree with her-I struggle with pure comedies and pure dramas. If you talk about something like “The Sopranos,” it’s full of humor all the way through.
The Realism of Episode 4
RG: I’m one of those actors who likes to change a certain bit for the role that they’re doing. I want to try and figure out what weight [the character is], how they look, their hairstyle. I was living with severe post-traumatic stress; all the stuff I’d gone through had a severe impact on my body and health. I just remember feeling so vulnerable in my body, feeling so thin. I couldn’t eat; I felt queasy all the time. I wanted to bring a sense of realism [to the episode], so I made myself go back there, in terms of trying to capture the psychological realism of it all. I lost a lot of weight, and I really reminded myself of what it was like [at the time]. I really was throwing myself in the deep end. But it was something that just hadn’t been done on television before. I felt like the whole show hinged on a number of things: Martha’s ability to capture everything in one sentence-scary, vulnerable, sad, angry, unlikable, likable-and Donny’s ability to bring a sense of realism to the experience.
A One-Season Phenomenon
RG: I used to always say, “I’ll leave 0.0001% in the bank as a ‘never say never.’ ” But I’m not even sure I’m willing to do that anymore. I think it works as a limited series. I love the way it starts, love the way it ends, love the mirror there. I’ve always really respected television shows that know when to quit.
The Ambiguous Ending
RG: I fought quite hard for the ending. There were lots of different versions that people were pitching-one of which was to just end on the voiceover as it was and cut out from there. I fought really hard for [the ending I wanted], because it is ambiguous, in my opinion, in a way that is very interesting and open to interpretation. I think that can scare people sometimes because it’s not so clear.
Navigating Fame and Scrutiny
Baby Reindeer’s success has been driven by the audience that discovered it on Netflix, and it has weathered the “hurricane”-as Gadd calls it-to gather up gold from awards shows, so he’s trying hard to focus on the positives. Gadd has lived a lifetime in the span of a single year, and he’s ready to get some things off his chest about the road he’s taken to get here.
The Hurricane Around the Show
I always think that the industry never lost sight of what we set out to do, which was to make an interesting and important story. I’m so glad that didn’t get lost along the way, because there were times where the hurricane around the show was so great that I questioned if people would ever be able to see it the same way again, as a standalone piece of art. There were times when I honestly felt like the whole world was talking about me, or the show, or both.
The Most Googled Man in the World
There was a moment one of the tech [people] at Netflix told me, “The past couple of days you’ve been the most googled man in the world.” I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but that level of visibility was quite scary. I think it would have been scary if everything was positive, but it was positive and negative all at once, and that was very difficult to come to terms with.
Press Fatigue and Public Consciousness
I felt like I was so in the public consciousness for three to four months, and when the press fatigue did happen around Baby Reindeer, I was a bit relieved. I remember going to [UK supermarket] Sainsbury’s, still adjusting to the fame, and the puzzled looks when you passed people-people photographing you as you took eggs from a shelf. In the front, there was a Daily Mirror, and [the headline] was, “Richard Gadd’s Struggle to Cope With Fame.” How did they know that? It makes you paranoid about who’s saying what, and much as I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening-that I would soon fade back into fringe obscurity-I just couldn’t escape it.
Cynicism and Heartfelt Message
There was a lot of cynicism from the press in terms of wanting to see it a certain way and wanting to make it out to be a certain way. The reality is, I think, if you just strip all the noise away, it was a very heartfelt and, in my opinion, nuanced show, that could have been not a very heartfelt, nuanced show. I could have made myself look perfect in it and been all, “Oh, woe is me,” but I didn’t. I think if you strip away all that noise, even the most ignorant can see that the aim of the piece was to send a heartfelt message to the world about the fact that everyone’s kind of damaged, everyone has problems, and we’re all struggling in our own weird ways. And that trauma manifests in very strange ways.
Working on a New Show
It’s been a little surreal working on a new show among all this. It has been two shows back-to-back without even a day’s break, and in the past year, I’ve been writing the [new] show, acting in the show, producing the show, while all this stuff has been going on. It has been so hard amongst press calls, and legal calls, and your neighbors knocking, and your exes messaging you to say the press are at their door. But we’re actually filming now.
Inspiration from Jamie Bell
Jamie is by far the most famous person I’ve ever worked with, and he’s completely reframed my opinion of fame, because he is so humble. He throws in, he takes notes, he brings great ideas, and he has a great attitude. He’s funny, and kind, and all those things. I’ve worked with actors who were one-eighth as famous as he is, who almost derail a set with how difficult they are. And if he can do it, there’s no excuses for anybody.
Half Man: Exploring Masculinity
It’s about two dysfunctional brothers, but their relationship is a little weirder than brothers. You meet them in a very peculiar situation, and you don’t really know why or how they got there, and they’re having a very weird conversation. It then flashes back to six epochs in their lives, six different moments, one in each episode, and you start to understand how they’ve gotten to this point. It’s an exploration of masculinity, and I’m reticent to say toxic masculinity because I think that expression has become quite tired. But, for something to be toxic, it has to be intoxicating first.
Physical Transformation for Half Man
I guess I just wanted to challenge myself by taking on something very, very different to Donny Dunn [in Baby Reindeer]. So, I have put on a lot of mass. I realized I hadn’t ever been this level of in-shape before because I was working out loads, but my diet wasn’t on point, and nothing was changing. Then they got a nutritionist on board, who gave me all this food to eat at certain times of day. And within a month or two, my body had started changing. It’s all about diet.
Navigating Public Life After Baby Reindeer
The beard, the haircut, and the size all have helped. People are now puzzled, because they see a face they vaguely recognize who’s a bit bigger, through a beard, and sometimes through sunglasses. When Baby Reindeer first came out, I looked exactly like Donny Dunn, and it was borderline unbearable.
The Allure of the Red Carpet
I do like a suit, but tonight I’m going a bit more casual, with a sweater underneath. I think it looks quite classy, and I’m excited to wear it. I quite like the red carpet. I like it because it feels like this weird escape. I like the buzz of it, and you feel tapped into life, which is quite nice. I’m not a big industry [person], in that I don’t hang out at the private members’ bars or anything like that, so the red carpet is sort of my chance to connect, which feels quite good.
The Future: Stage, Screen, and New Challenges
There have been so many calls for me to [bring back] the Baby Reindeer live show. Maybe I’ll do it-I’m toying with the idea of a 10-year anniversary [in 2029]. But life is so fleeting, and it would be nice to keep it varied and interesting. I think I’m probably leaning more towards moving on to new things. I do want to get back on stage. I miss live performance. The idea of being an actor with just one thing on my mind, that feels quite nice to me actually.
A Night with the Pogues
On a recent Friday, Richard Gadd ducked into a London pub before seeing his favorite band the Pogues hit the stage. A quiet night with friends quickly derailed into a fan frenzy to the massive popularity of Netflix‘s Baby Reindeer, the critically acclaimed limited series that Gadd created and stars in based on traumatic real-life experiences. While Netflix’s global reach has made anonymity a thing of the past for Gadd, the public is just catching up to what live theater audiences in Scotland and England have long known: Richard Gadd is a sensation.
From Trauma to Stage
He’s mounted award-winning, one-man shows for years now by mining those traumas - suffering a sexual assault followed by years-long stalking - and translating them for the stage. First came Monkey See, Monkey Do followed by Baby Reindeer, which Netflix picked up as a television adaptation.
The Turning Point
The turning point for me came when I did a school play. I had these amazing drama teachers [Robin and Patricia], who cared so much. They really encouraged me and wanted me to audition. I didn’t understand Shakespeare at all at that point but I did it anyway and they cast me as Macbeth. I just went on the journey, and started to enjoy learning lines, rehearsing and getting into character.
Comedy and One-Man Shows
One-man shows have been a big part of your career. It’s something that made sense when I was doing comedy. I did the comedy circuit in the U.K., and it never went very well. The representation of that featured in Baby Reindeer is actually very true to life. I was doing really wacky comedy, it was quite anti-comedy and subversive and a lot of it just didn’t land.
Fearlessness and Failure
There was a lot of failure. I just had an innate belief that somehow it would be OK. I actually really struggle with that sort of confidence aspect of performing. I get really, really nervous before I got on stage and I throw up quite a lot before I go out. I could be performing to an audience of five at Aces & Eights in London - a really pressure-off gig - and I’ll be backstage in bits.
Balancing Confidence and Doubt
To be a good artist, you need to straddle the tight rope between confidence and self-doubt. If you have too much of one, you fall apart.
Early Success and Recognition
Any sort of recognition was much needed at the time. I’ve always, always been a workaholic and poured myself into everything. I’d go to the Edinburgh Festival and I’d have these hit shows that would sell out and be really buzzy.
The Grindhouse Trilogy
People dubbed those series of shows the grindhouse trilogy, Cheese and Crack Whores, Breaking Gadd and Waiting for Gaddot. The shows were quite punky, in your face, anarchic and pushed the envelope of what was acceptable. I would joke about themes that I was struggling with in real life, be it breakups or abuse, but not in the meaningful way I did later in my career.
Monkey See, Monkey Do
Yeah, and I think that’s why Monkey See, Monkey Do was such a seminal moment in my career, if not the most seminal moment. People in the industry would come and see the trilogy and maybe they found it funny and entertaining but there’s no way they could’ve seen me as someone they could put on TV. I think they thought, this guy is got to be mad.
Winning and Self-Worth
The worst thing that experience of sexual assault did was take your confidence away from me. I remember when my name was read out, I just heard screaming and people were all over me. If I could bottle an emotion from my life, just to experience it again, it would be when my name was read as the winner. My brain had been so traumatized because of some of the stuff that had happened to me, but that was a flood of adrenaline. I almost felt my brain move into a different space because of the euphoria. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I took to the stage and was already crying my eyes out. It was true, it had destroyed my self-worth.
The Stalker and the Number
The stalking was at its worst when she managed to get my number. I stubbornly refused to change my number, because I believed it was their responsibility to stop calling me.
From Stage to Netflix
It was a Netflix commissioner at the time, Lindsey Salt, who I adore. I owe her everything. She came to see it in Edinburgh and got me in London and said, “If you were to do this as a TV show, how would you do it?” My previous shows weren’t really quite television material but with Baby Reindeer I knew could be an interesting story. It was thrilling, it was tense, it had weird characters.