The acutely personal Baby Reindeer has made the Scottish comic the toast of Hollywood. But is he ready for the scrutiny stardom will bring?
Liam Kelly 16 September 2024 6:15pm
Richard Gadd seemed oddly chippy for a man who had just won three Emmys.
The 35-year-old actor and comedian scooped a handful of TV's biggest awards in TV for his Netflix mega-hit, Baby Reindeer, a seven-part drama documenting Gadd's experience of being stalked and the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of a senior comedy figure. Tens of millions around the world were gripped as Donny Dunn, played by Gadd, was tormented by Jessica Gunning's Martha Scott.
He should have been on cloud nine, yet when he was asked about the controversy surrounding the show - such as the fact that a woman who claims she is the "real-life" Martha is suing Netflix for $170 million (£130 million) over her portrayal - after the Emmys ceremony on Sunday night, Gadd visibly bristled.
"This is a night of celebration and I don't think I want to talk about any of that stuff. It's easier in this day and age to focus on the negatives," he said tersely. "What you have to look at is what Baby Reindeer has done globally... It's touched the lives of so many people."
Gadd then proceeded to stumble through a list of facts he had memorised for the occasion, such as that a male sexual abuse charity had seen a surge of first-time callers, more than half of whom cited Baby Reindeer. "But nobody seems to be talking about that," he added. "The show has done some phenomenal things worldwide for so many people, and I'll stand by that to the bitter end."
You can understand why Gadd might just wish to enjoy himself. By his own telling, he had endured six years of torment after meeting "Martha" in a London pub and was on the receiving end of 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, 106 letters (including one with a pair of underwear) and 350 hours of voicemail on his phone. The sexual assaults and rape seem utterly harrowing. So he wrote a stand-up show about it, which debuted to critical acclaim at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe and was picked up by Netflix soon after.
Gadd is something of a paradoxical figure. He has made much about how intensely personal his work is - in the run-up to Baby Reindeer's premiere he said "I've long learned that shame serves you nothing and I've grown up with a lot of shame. The only way to get through these negative emotions is to tackle them head-on" - but also dislikes the spotlight being on himself.
Shortly after Baby Reindeer premiered, Gadd faced further questions about his professionalism when a transgender actress said he dated her while she was auditioning to play his trans ex-girlfriend in the show.
Gadd met Reece Lyons in the bar of London's Bush Theatre in October 2021, after she had performed her one-woman show, Overflow. Lyons said that Gadd approached her and offered to buy her a drink before suggesting she audition for the part of Teri. "He began to tell me about his upcoming Netflix show that he had written. The role in question was that of his ex-girlfriend, a trans woman," she wrote on X. "I told him I was interested in auditioning and asked him to get in touch with my agent."
After that encounter, they continued to talk and eventually went on four dates in the following weeks. Gadd ended the relationship in December. Lyons submitted an audition tape in March 2022, and she was informed three months later that she had been unsuccessful. The show's producer, Clerkenwell Films, investigated her claims and cleared Gadd of any wrongdoing.
Lyons said that she did not feel like a victim, but she was "hurt" by Gadd "conflating a work opportunity with a dating dynamic". In a subsequent social media post, Lyons said others had got in touch with her sharing implicitly negative experiences about dealing with Gadd.
Gadd's upbringing could not be further away from the dark experiences he suffered as an adult. He grew up in Wormit, a small village in Fife, though even his characterisation of his hometown has been the subject of debate. Gadd once described Wormit as being in a "remote part of Scotland" in an interview with The Guardian's Brian Logan, who pointed out "not that remote; he comes from the same village as me, just across the river from Dundee".
His father, Geoffrey, is a Dundee University microbiology professor, while his mother, Julia, worked a succession of school jobs. "I had a happy childhood, it was amazing," he once said. "I wasn't anxious at all." He went to Madras College, a comprehensive school in St Andrew's, where he discovered his love of performance, and took a degree in English literature and theatre studies at Glasgow University. That was followed by a year at the Oxford School of Drama, and he started performing at the Fringe while still a student.
By his own admission, Gadd was an unsuccessful comic. "I was doing really wacky comedy, it was quite anti-comedy and subversive and a lot of it just didn't land."
There was a lot of trauma happening in the background, and he channelled it into his work. This confessional style finally brought him some success. First, in 2016, he performed an Edinburgh show called Monkey See Monkey Do, in which he recounted being sexually assaulted; the one-man show won him the Edinburgh Fringe comedy award and a £10,000 prize. Then came Baby Reindeer.
Though Netflix is being sued by Harvey, the fallout has not damaged Gadd's career - as the 11 Emmy nominations would attest. Ted Sarandos, Netflix's $50 million-a-year co-chief executive, said in an interview last weekend that he had no regrets about the furore - even though it could cost the streamer a small fortune. "It was no one's intent to use a label recklessly," he said. "That is Richard's true story. The fact that you're watching on television says that parts of it were certainly fictionalised and dramatised... I'm surprised that it's a continued debate."
He is currently working on a new six-part series, Lions, about two brothers that explores masculinity and sexuality, for Mam Tor Productions, a subsidiary of the international production giant Banijay. It has been picked up by the BBC and HBO.
Over lunch this summer, I asked Patrick Holland, Banijay UK's executive chairman and a former controller of BBC Two, where he felt Netflix had gone wrong with its handling of Baby Reindeer. He was too polite to directly criticise the streamer. "I think that the debate around how one portrays real life in drama is really, really important," he said.
"Compliance is not the sexiest topic in town, but when you're commissioning factual drama there are people in my experience who are just extraordinary at being able to work through what is and isn't... 'Permissible' is too strong a word. There are certain things that you have to be really mindful of as you're making that drama," he added. "Netflix will answer for themselves on what they think they got right or wrong. But Lions is an original drama and it's not based on any true story."
Holland added: "I have not had a discussion with Richard about his characters, but I'm sure the BBC compliance team have."
