The creator of “Baby Reindeer” is asking fans to stop trying to unmask the identities of the characters’ inspirations.
The distressing Netflix show is based on creator Richard Gadd’s real experiences with stalking, as its opening title card declares.
Aside from Gadd, the real people’s identities were deliberately masked for “legal and artistic reasons,” Gadd told Forbes, though it’s all “100% emotionally true.”
“There’s certain protections, you can’t just continued somebody else’s life and name and put it onto television,” he continued to Forbes. “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.”
But since its release on Netflix, some fans have attempted to find out who the real people are, including Martha, Gadd’s stalker played by Jessica Gunning, and Darrien, an older TV writer who grooms and assaults Gadd’s character.
Gadd stepped in on April 22, asking on his Instagram Story that people stop guessing who the story is based on.
“Hi Everyone,” he wrote. “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.”
He then signed the message, “Lots of love, Richard x X.”
Foley, whom Gadd mentions in his Instagram post, tweeted on April 23 about receiving defamatory messages, while not specifically bringing up the series: “Police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory abusive and threatening posts against me.”
TODAY.com has reached out to Gadd and Foley for comment.
Gadd has been forthcoming about how the show connects to his personal experiences.
Adapted from a one-man show he did at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Gadd said the show has “never moved too far from the truth” in regard to his real-life experiences.
“Any time it veered too much into embellishment I would always want to pull it back,” he told GQ. “It’s extremely emotionally truthful. Of course, this is a medium where structure is so important, you need to change things to protect people… but I like to think, artistically, that it never moved too far from the truth.”
He declined name for his real-life stalker, but described her as “quite an idiosyncratic person” in the interview with GQ.
“We’ve gone to such great lengths to disguise her to the point that I don’t think she would recognize herself. What’s been borrowed is an emotional truth, not a fact-by-fact profile of someone,” he said.
Writing “Baby Reindeer” served as a “catharsis” for Gadd, who told This Morning that “it’s been the best therapy.”
“I wanted to show the nuances of the human condition, really,” he said. “I wanted to show that people are a mixture of good and bad and I think stalker stories usually tend to be one person is good, one person is bad. And I wanted to kind of get away from that.”
