Richard Gadd is the creator and star of the British drama television series Baby Reindeer on Netflix. It is directed by Josephine Bornebusch and Weronika Tofilska. Based on a true story, “Baby Reindeer” is about a comedian Richard Gadd who was having a hard time and his scary experience with a stalker named Martha (Jessica Gunning). The story starts when Gadd, who works as a bartender, is nice to Martha, a customer who seems weak. But this act of kindness turns Martha into an obsessive person, and she can’t stop following Gadd.
As the story goes on, Martha’s behavior gets more strange and bothersome. Gadd feels suffocated and scared when she sends him thousands of emails and hours of voicemails all at once. This intense dark thriller looks at traumatic events in a very interesting way. Gadd doesn’t let himself off the hook, which is very important. He sparked Martha’s interest and even followed her home at one point. This isn’t a story about a victim; it’s just about two unhappy lives that get tangled up.
Even though this kind of plot may sound similar, it’s crucial to keep in mind that this is a true story. Because it was so personal, Gadd purposely dodged the simplistic, black-and-white stalker stories that have been written before. He did this to make sure that everyone’s humanity stays intact.
The author and star of “Baby Reindeer,” Richard Gadd, has been open about being stalked and how that experience influenced the show. He says the show is based on his own experience with a woman who has been following him around for years. Gadd talks about the intense time of being stalked during which the woman, whose only skill seemed to be avoiding the law, left him a lot of voicemails. He remembers that when he went to sleep at night, her words would keep going over his mind, reminding him of how badly he was hurting.
The time Gadd spent with Martha had a big impact on him, and it led him to write the play and the series that followed as a way to work through and share his story. Even though it was a very upsetting event, Gadd found a way to use it in his work. In an article for Netflix, he wrote about how he went from being stalked to making a hit show that won awards and got good reviews. He says that when he was feeling hopeless, inspiration struck, and he used his terrible experience to make art.
It wasn’t easy for Gadd to decide to tell his story on stage and then on film. He says he is scared and uncertain, just like he was when the stalking was at its worst. But he thinks that by telling his story, he can bring attention to stalking and how it affects both the victim and the stalker. For Richard Gadd, playing a made-up version of himself in “Baby Reindeer” was hard and stressful. He compared it to running back toward a terrible fire because it made him think of the worst time in his life. “It wasn’t simple to do. You are going back to a time in your life that was the worst time of your life. It’s going back to a terrible fire you were in.”
He says, “I think art is quite interesting when you don’t know who you are on the side of. I wanted it to be layered, and I wanted it to capture the human experience. The human experience is that people are good, but they have bits of bad and they make mistakes.”
“It’s a true story,” Gadd says to Netflix, adding that he always knew it was one he would want to tell. “In a weird way, I first started feeling like this could be a good story during the whole ordeal itself. It was one of the most intense periods, when I was listening to these voicemails. I’d go to sleep at night and these voicemails — her words would bounce around my eyelids. I remember thinking, ‘God, if I was ever to speak about this onstage, I’d fire the words around. Put the voicemails in a big cacophony and fire it.’ That’s how the play was born.”
“Stalking on television tends to be very sexed-up. 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,” Gadd explains. “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. It’s a stalker story turned on its head. It takes a trope and turns it on its head.”
The play that Richard Gadd wrote about being stalked was a big hit at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. There used to be just one actor in this play, but now there are several. It’s called “Baby Reindeer.” Gadd said that making the play into a series was a little crazy and hard. To make the story work for TV, he had to add more to it. Even though there were problems, he found the process fun and a little stressful. “There’s something slightly crazy about it, the whole thing, doing it — the layers upon layers,” Gadd says. “It is a heavy brew and it’s all very challenging for sure.” Visit tvacute.com again soon for more “Baby Reindeer” news, previews, and recaps.
Source: Netflix
