The Big Picture

• Baby Reindeer is based on real events in Richard Gadd's life, showcasing a dark and gripping narrative.
• The show blurs the line between reality and fiction, with characters inspired by real people but identities carefully disguised.
• Viewers should respect Gadd's wishes and not speculate on the identities of the real-life counterparts in the show.

"I almost think you could have ‘based on a true story’ before every show, because all the best shows come from a certain place within someone." That's what writer and performer Richard Gadd, who plays protagonist Donny Dunn in Netflix's newest hit show, Baby Reindeer, tells The Guardian concerning the topic of getting inspiration from your own self to tell a story. And, yeah, he's right. Most artists go digging through their innermost feelings or even through their darkest experiences when creating a new work. However, there is still a difference between a story based on real events and one completely fictional. While the latter may bear some resemblance, accidental or not, to real people, the former is an account of something that actually happened in the real world.

Gadd's Baby Reindeer is a series based on real events. The eight-episode-long show follows the alter-ego of its creator, Donny Dunn (played by Gadd himself), as he is tormented by a relentless stalker. While names like Martha (Jessica Gunning), Teri (Nava Mau), and Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill) have all been chosen solely for the purpose of telling a story, all of these characters have counterparts outside the screen. This shouldn't come as a surprise: Baby Reindeer is one of those stories that is so intimate and brutally honest that it would be odd for it not to be based on something its writer has been through. Having become a success for Netflix, currently sitting at number 1 worldwide, the miniseries has prompted fans to try and figure out the true identity of the characters that pop up in the show. The problem is, this might not be such a good idea...

'Baby Reindeer' Details the Relationship Between a Man and His Stalker

Baby Reindeer starts innocently enough with a woman walking into a pub with no money and being offered a cup of tea on the house by the bartender. However, for Donny and Martha, this cute scenario proves to be a turning point that would see their lives turned into a nightmare. An aspiring comedian with his email readily available on his website, Donny is immediately flooded with messages from Martha's "iPhone", ranging from charming to sexually explicit to borderline violent. Donny doesn't know at first, but he's got himself a stalker that will plague his life for years on end at the expense of her own mental and physical well-being. With time, she will also come to harass his parents and physically assault his previous and current girlfriends.

Donny doesn't know exactly how to deal with Martha's interest in him. For a while, he even welcomes and encourages it, as he has his own demons to deal with. You see, years before he met Martha, Donny was taken under the wing of an older and much more successful comedian who groomed him, drugged him, and raped him repeatedly. This has left a dent in Donny's self-image, and keeping it all a secret has taken its toll on his relationship with others around him. So when Martha can tell that he has been hurt and when she compliments him on his strong features, Donny can't help but feel seen and even loved. Besides, there's a certain irony in turning in this clearly mentally ill woman to the police, but not the abusive man who hurt him all those years prior.

'Baby Reindeer' Is Based on Two of Gadd's One-Man Theater Shows

Both the stalking and the abuse depicted in Baby Reindeer are real events that happened in the life of Richard Gadd. What's more, Baby Reindeer is not the first time the writer and performer has spoken about his trauma. The Netflix series is an amalgam of two one-man shows that Gadd has put together in the past decade. The first one, in which he exorcises his sexual assault demons while running on a treadmill pursued by a gorilla, is named Monkey See Monkey Do. Critically acclaimed, the show emerged victorious at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards 2016. As for the second one-man show, 2019's Baby Reindeer, it started on the Edinburgh fringe, moved on to the West End, and eventually got its creator an Olivier Award, one of the highest honors in British theater.

These two shows make their way into the Netflix Baby Reindeer miniseries in the form of an unplanned rant that Donny lets out during an ill-fated comedy show. The rant then goes viral, prompting his stalker, who had taken a break from his life, to come back and threaten to tell his parents about what she perceives as flaws in his masculinity: the rape, his sexual experiences with men, his relationship with a trans woman... This is, in fact, a somewhat fictionalized rendition of what happened to Gadd in real life after he premiered Monkey See Monkey Do. To The Guardian, the comedian has spoken about how the play brought his stalker back into his life and how she threatened to resume calling his parents. Still, their support, as well as the warm embrace he received from his audience, helped him to keep going.

How Much Do We Know About the Real Story Behind 'Baby Reindeer'?

This is the case for a lot of what we see in Baby Reindeer: Gadd has altered many facts and events either for dramatic purposes or to keep the identity of others, even his abusers, safe. After all, when talking about the real Martha, whose name might be anything from Abigail to Zelda, he's adamant that she isn't the only person to blame for what went on. “It would be unfair to say she was an awful person, and I was a victim,” he told The Guardian back when the play came out. “That didn’t feel true.” Gadd is well aware that he handled the whole situation extremely poorly, and that his stalker is very much someone with mental issues. Thus, his show is extremely careful never to make her identity known.

"We’ve gone to such great lengths to disguise her to the point that I don’t think she would recognize herself," he told GQ. "What’s been borrowed is an emotional truth, not a fact-by-fact profile of someone." And, so, very little is known about Gadd's stalker apart from the fact that, over six years, she tormented him with 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, and 350 hours of voicemail. And that's not to mention the havoc she wreaked on the lives of those close to him. Not even her fate is known: while, in the show, Martha is arrested and sentenced to prison, Gadd is extremely secretive when it comes to talking about what happened to his stalker.

The same goes for Darrien, the stand-in for the more experienced comedian who abused Gadd early on in his career. What the show tells us is Gadd's emotional truth and a basic outline of events. Real names are never dropped. In the series, Darrien works for a fictional TV show called Cotton Mouth and lures Donny into his world with promises of wealth and fame. Whether the real Darrien had a TV job or not is something that we might never know, and that is by Gadd's own design.

Why People Shouldn't Go Looking for the Real Martha or Darrien

Alas, this has not stopped fans from trying to figure out who the real Martha or the real Darrien are. Even one of Gadd's friends, director Sam Foley, has been accused of being the actual Darrien. "Please don’t speculate on who the real-life people could be. That’s not the point of our show," Gadd has begged his followers on Instagram, a point that Martha's performer, Jessica Gunning, largely agrees with. And, indeed, all it takes is one episode of Baby Reindeer to understand that it is a series about how hurt people interact with one another instead of a matter of pointing fingers. However, there is something about the words "true story" that just doesn't let people rest.

In the end, there are pretty good reasons for viewers not to go looking for Martha and Darrien's real identity. First and foremost, it is a matter of respecting Gadd's wishes. This is his story to tell, and he should be able to tell it according to his own terms. It isn't rare for abused people not to be ready to confront their abusers, and we really shouldn't force them. Furthermore, there's the real Martha's mental state: as Gadd himself repeatedly puts it, she's an ill woman, and deserves her privacy as such.

But, most importantly, we shouldn't go around accusing people we don't know of things we believe they have done because of a TV show. Not only is this cruel, it might be dangerous both for the accused and the accusers: the police have gotten involved in the Sam Foley affair, and the one who contacted them was Foley himself. So, yeah, Baby Reindeer is based on a true story, and no, we don't know all that much about what really happened. But, hey, maybe we should let it rest.

Baby Reindeer is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

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