In the first minutes of Baby Reindeer, Netflix’s harrowing hit show from comedian and writer Richard Gadd, the words ‘this is a true story’ are shown on screen. It signifies to viewers that the complex tale of a man and his stalker before them is rooted in reality. But in the age of social media sleuthing, some corners of the internet have, naturally, taken things too far, with some viewers going to extreme lengths to find out all the details of the true story behind Baby Reindeer.
From the moment it arrived on the streamer earlier this month, Baby Reindeer was an instant – if somewhat unexpected – hit for Netflix. The show is currently No 1 on the UK Top 10, and fifth position on the global chart, having been viewed more than 2.6 million times in its first week alone.
Award-winning comedian Richard Gadd wrote Baby Reindeer about his own experiences with a stalker, and stars in the dark thriller as struggling comic Donny, a fictionalised version of himself. The show is based on Gadd’s autobiographical play of the same name that ran at the Edinburgh Fringe and London’s Bush Theatre in 2019, and tells the story of Donny and his stalker, Martha (played by The Outlaws’ Jessica Gunning). When Martha comes into the pub Donny is working in and asks for a cup of tea, he takes pity on the older Scottish woman, and chats and flirts with her, giving her the drink for free.
Martha keeps coming back to the pub, and her friendly banter soon becomes more sexual. Soon, she won’t leave him alone. She wheedles her way into Donny’s life and relationships, sending him a barrage of sexual emails, turning up at his work and gigs, and even following him to his house. But after Donny reports her to the police and she stops contacting him, he becomes concerned about her wellbeing and he begins to mimic her obsessive behaviour right back.
Baby Reindeer paints a complex picture of the characters in the show and the cycle of abuse. The narrative is messy, and Gadd isn’t shown in an entire positive light; Donny admits to being flattered by Martha’s attention and encouraging her, taking the wrong path over and over again. While Gadd has described the show as being ‘emotionally 100% true’, names and traits of the characters, like Gadd’s own, have been changed for legal reasons.
It hasn’t stopped viewers in their attempts to track down the real ‘Martha’. Not only have amateur online detectives tried to find the real woman who Martha is based on, they’ve also attempted to hunt down the inspiration for Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill), the character depicted as a TV writer who sexually assaulted the fictional Donny.
You can’t blame viewers for being intrigued by the story behind Baby Reindeer. In our true crime-obsessed age, people want to know the reality behind Gadd’s story, to compare the real-life figures to their fictionalised versions. But the nuance of the show’s narrative makes that desire a lot more complex. In the show, Martha is sentenced to nine months in prison and five years of probation. Gadd won’t say what happened to his real stalker, but we can only assume that she’s now trying to live her life.
When creating both the play and the show, Gadd made it clear that he did not want people to track down the real Martha. Discussing the show he told Variety that ‘both legal and artistic reasons’ prevented him from putting what happened on screen exactly as it was. ‘I mean there’s certain protections, you can’t just copy somebody else’s life and name and put it onto television,’ he said. ‘And obviously, we were very aware that some characters in it are vulnerable people, so you don’t want to make their lives more difficult. So you have to change things to protect yourself and protect other people.’
The need to find the real-life Martha also erases the nuance present in the show. It implies that Martha is simply the perpetrator, the baddie, while Donny is the victim. But throughout Baby Reindeer, those relationships and dynamics become tangled. Discussing the play version in 2019, Gadd told The Independent, 'I can’t emphasise enough how much of a victim she is in all this. When we think of stalkers, we always think of films like Misery and Fatal Attraction, where the stalker is a monstrous figure in the night down an alleyway. But usually, it’s a prior relationship or someone you know or a work colleague. Stalking and harassment is a form of mental illness. It would have been wrong to paint her as a monster, because she’s unwell, and the system’s failed her.'
Donny also shows sympathy towards Martha. She’s frightening and violent, her behaviour often terrifying, but she is clearly mentally unwell, and Donny says that he wants her to get help. In the final moments of the show, it’s revealed that she calls Donny 'Baby Reindeer' after a toy she would cuddle when her parents fought. In Gadd’s eyes, it’s clear that hurt people hurt people – it doesn’t excuse what happened, but it does add some understanding to it.
When the play was first on stage, Gadd made it clear that he did not want to simplify the narrative. ‘If I’d rushed it a year ago, it would have just been a victim narrative. And everyone would have come out saying, “Oh you’re so brave, and well done for doing this,”’ he told The Guardian in 2019. ‘It would be unfair to say she was an awful person and I was a victim. That didn’t feel true.’
Ultimately, what is the point of finding out who the real Martha is? To taunt her? To remind her of what she did? This online vigilante-ism misunderstands the programme's message. And there are real-world ramifications to what some might argue is simply harmless social media sleuthing.
Social media users have pushed things so far that Gadd himself has even asked viewers to cool it with their detective instincts. As speculation reached a fever pitch, he wrote on Instagram Stories, 'Hi Everyone, People I love, have worked with, and admire are unfairly getting caught up in speculation. Please don't speculate on who any of the real life people could be. That's not the point of our show.'
For reasons both legal and personal, Gadd has constructed Baby Reindeer with a desire to separate his real stalker from Martha on screen. Asked whether he worried about the real woman contacting him after the show was released, he told Variety, ‘I can’t answer any of that, really. But yeah, due to where things ended in real life, it’s not a concern for me.’ If it’s not a concern for Richard Gadd himself, it shouldn’t be for the rest of us.
Gunning, who plays Martha in the show, echoed Gadd's words. She told Glamour, 'I would urge people not to be doing that. I think if that is happening, I think it’s a real, real shame, because it shows that they haven’t watched the show properly. That’s not the point of it in any way... Netflix and Richard went to extreme lengths to try and make sure that the identities were kept private for a reason.'