Ed Miller/Netflix
Netflix’s “Baby Reindeer” is inspired by star Richard Gadd’s own life experience with an alleged stalker.
The limited series is a major hit, and now the alleged real-life stalker is reacting to the buzzworthy show.
In an interview with DailyMail.com, the woman, who remains unnamed, claimed that she has gotten “death threats and abuse from Richard Gadd supporters” who have figured out her identity.
She argued that Gadd was “bullying an older woman on television for fame and fortune,” adding, “He’s using ‘Baby Reindeer’ to stalk me now.”
The woman claimed, “I’m the victim. He’s written a bloody show about me.”
According to the woman, the character Martha, played by Jessica Gunning, also shares some similarities with her, including their Scottish backgrounds, law degrees, and ages.
The woman told the outlet, “She sort of looks like me after I put on [more than 50 lbs.] during lockdown, but I’m not actually unattractive.”
At the end of the series, it is explained that the fictionalized stalker called her victim “Baby Reindeer” because it was what she called her childhood toy.
The woman insisted that she “never owned a toy baby reindeer,” noting, “I wouldn’t have had any conversation with Richard Gadd about a childhood toy, either.”
Gadd and Netflix have not responded to the woman’s comments, but she is threatening to sue for defamation.
She slammed Gadd, saying, “He always thinks he’s at the center of things. I’m not writing shows about him or promoting them in the media, am I? If he wanted me to be properly anonymous, he could have done so. Gadd should leave me alone.”
Last week, Gadd asked fans not to speculate on the identities of his alleged stalker or of a well-connected man who, in the series, is portrayed as grooming and sexually abusing him.
He wrote on Instagram, “Hi Everyone, People I love, have worked with, and admire (including Sean Foley) 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. Lots of love, Richard x X.”
Gadd recently insisted that the show was “all emotionally 100% true.” He told Variety, “It’s all borrowed from instances that happened to me and real people that I met. But of course, you can’t do the exact truth, for both legal and artistic reasons. I mean there’s certain protections, you can’t just copy somebody else’s life and name and put it onto television. 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.”
Richard also explained that he had to create some differences between his alleged stalker and Martha. He said, “We have to make them different for legal reasons. But what I needed to see was the essence of the person, the kind of energy, and no one did it like Jess. She’s phenomenal. I needed to see someone who was vulnerable one moment, angry the next, volatile but so desperate and sympathetic. I needed to see someone who could capture a full gamut of emotions. When somebody has severe mental health problems, they tend to leap from one emotion to the next, sometimes even quite quickly. And that’s very hard to do from an acting point of view, but Jess seems to have it in her pores, it seems to just fall out of her.”