Baby Reindeer explained: The chilling true story behind Netflix's new hit

As chilling new drama Baby Reindeer hits our screens on Netflix, audiences from around the country will be able to see firsthand the stuff of nightmares, as a tiny act of kindness quickly snowballs into a dangerous spiral of stalking and obsession.

Penned by and starring Richard Gadd in the lead role of Donny, the series draws on his own harrowing experience of being stalked by a woman named Martha (Jessica Gunning) after he innocently gave a free cup of tea to a woman at the pub where he worked. This single innocuous act led to an unprecedented and intrusive bombardment of over 40,000 emails, 740 tweets, 350 hours of voicemail, 100 pages of letters and 45 Facebook messages in the five years that followed.

Yet despite the sustained obsession, as the woman had never expressed any threats or violence towards him, sadly there was very little that the police could do to protect Richard from her unwanted attentions. Reflecting on this previously, Richard once said: “The laws surrounding harassment and abuse are so stupid because they look for black and white, good and evil, and that’s not how it works.”

Unwilling to become a victim, Richard decided to respond in a way that was far more familiar to him and penned a brand new play that addressed the experience he was living and drew on some of the more intimate details of his ordeal, including the play’s title - Baby Reindeer - which is a nickname his stalker had given him.

Originally the play opened at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to critical acclaim, with several critics even going so far as to describe it as “haunting” before later also travelling to London’s Bush theatre for another successful run. Now, five years later the play has been transformed into a brand new mini series for streaming giant Netflix.

Split across seven episodes in total, each ranging from between 27 and 45 minutes in length, the series aims to shine a light on the “human quality” behind stalking, and offer a far more realistic depiction of being stalked than the usual “sexed-up” depictions seen on screen.

“Stalking on television tends to be very sexed-up,” show writer Richard Gadd told Netflix. “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.”

So what exactly is the chilling true story behind Baby Reindeer?

The real story behind Baby Reindeer starts around ten years ago, when Richard was busy working on the UK comedy circuit and producing a number of hit shows which included Breaking Gadd, Waiting for Gaddot and Monkey See Monkey Do.

Yet despite the success of his stage career, Richard was quietly battling with the unwanted attentions of a stalker, who became unhealthily obsessed with him after he brought her a free cup of tea at his place of work. Immediately after this, the unnamed woman turned his life upside down and began a sustained campaign of pestering and intimidation.

“At it’s height it was almost unbearable,” said the comedian to Channel 4, before going on to explain how she would regularly attend his shows, turn up at his house and bombard him with gifts such as hats and boxer shorts, all while sending him countless messages day and night.

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

After being unable to persuade the woman to stop, Richard later went on to speak to the police to try and find some kind of legal recourse, as the messages, while non-threatening, were so frequent that it slowly made his life feel “suffocating”. Sadly the police were unable to do much, as the nature of the crime meant it wasn’t a high priority.

It was this response that partly led Richard to write Baby Reindeer as penning the play, and later the series, helped him to find a way to cope, while also shining a light on the very real struggles of life as a stalking victim.

Now, a decade on since his ordeal Richard’s stalker has legally been prevented from approaching him or anybody who knows of him - but the experience has undoubtedly left its mark.

Reflecting on his ordeal in an interview with the Telegraph back in 2019, he added: “I think about that rule that you need four things in your life to be happy. Family, love, health, career. She managed to drive a freight train through every single one of those in quite an unbelievable way.”

Baby Reindeer is available to stream now on Netflix