Baby Reindeer has taken the world by storm and is based on a terrifying true story.
Richard Gadd, who also stars as Donny in the miniseries, had a stalker experience while in his 20s and produced the Netflix show to relay his ordeal. Gadd plays a struggling comedian who works as a bartender being stalked by a woman.
Martha and Donny first interact after the kind server offers her a free cup of tea, which he would live to regret. Jessica Gunning, who played Martha in Baby Reindeer, told Tudum: “That one act of kindness changes Donny’s life forever, because for the next three years Martha stalks him. She sends him 41,000 emails and hundreds of hours worth of voice messages, but it’s not your conventional stalker storyline.”
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It has been reported that Martha bombarded him with 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, 106 pages of letters and a number of strange presents. Among those were sleeping pills, a winter hat, underwear and a toy reindeer.
(Image: Netflix)
However, it didn’t stop there – Martha followed Donny to his house, watched him perform at his shows and even contacted his family and friends to try and get closer to the bartender. Richard has spoke out about his experience with the woman and admitted that people didn’t take his concerns seriously at first.
The actor spoke to The Times and said that “everyone at the pub thought it was funny” and just assumed she was a harmless “admirer,” but when she “started to invade his life and follow him,” things became serious.
(Image: Netflix)
In the show, Donny has an on-stage breakdown due to the stress, although there is no evidence to suggest that this happened in real life and may have been a dramatised event for the story.
However, when he tried to take things further with two police investigations he had a “hilarious, fly-on-the-wall terrible” experience. His advice to people in the same situation? “It’s a f***ing nightmare process and it takes years.”
(Image: Netflix)
Richard decided to keep Martha’s real name and other details about her private. He was sure to “go to great lengths” to disguise the woman and quipped that she “wouldn’t even recognise herself”.
In the show, Martha is eventually arrested and charged with three counts of stalking and harassment to which she pleads guilty. She is sentenced to nine months in prison and a five year restraining order is issued.
(Image: Netflix)
Gadd is sympathetic toward the stalker and has suggested that in real life, she didn’t go to prison and he “didn’t want to throw someone who was that level of mentally unwell” in a cell. He told The Independent: “I can’t emphasise enough how much of a victim she is in all this.”
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
