Another day, another series of Baby Reindeer headlines.
The breakout hit limited series from Netflix — created by and starring Scottish comedian Richard Gadd inspired by a traumatic, six-year-long stalking incident — has inspired a flurry of coverage following an April 11 debut as it rocketed to the top of the streamer’s TV viewing charts for three straight weeks. Because Gadd pulled from personal experience to craft the true crime tale, journalists and internet sleuths have attempted to track down the real people behind Baby Reindeer‘s characters.
The focus has fallen on two characters in particular: the stalker Martha, played by Jessica Gunning, and the creative mentor Darrien who drugged and sexually assaulted Gadd, played by Tom Goodman-Hill. The fever burned so hot and inspired so many stories that Gadd took to Instagram to urge fans to stop the speculation because innocent people were getting caught in the mess. “That’s not the point of our show,” he posted.
Not everyone heeded the call. Piers Morgan teased a “world exclusive” interview on Wednesday, announcing that he’s booked a woman named Fiona Harvey who claims to be Gadd’s stalker. “Fiona Harvey wants to have her say & ‘set the record straight,’” Morgan detailed in a post on X, along with a photo of the newsman standing behind Harvey on the set of his Piers Morgan Uncensored. The post went viral and has drawn a range of reactions with some questioning the moral responsibility of engaging with someone who may be suffering from mental illness.
Coincidentally, Morgan’s post came hours after Baby Reindeer came up during a U.K. Parliament hearing focused on British film and television projects and featuring Netflix policy chief Benjamin King. He told lawmakers that the streamer and producers at Clerkenwell Films took “every reasonable precaution” to disguise the identities of the people who inspired Gadd’s work, which started out as a stage play of the same name.
Baby Reindeer follows Gadd’s Donny Dunn, a struggling comedian who encounters a lonely woman at the bar where he works. The chance encounter, during which he offers her a cup of tea on the house, spirals as Martha is revealed to be a dangerous, serial stalker. Over the course of multiple years, she sent him more than 41,000 emails, 744 tweets, 100 pages of letters and 350 hours of voicemails. “It was relentless and felt like it was everywhere, and I felt like my life wasn’t really functioning. I still had these unbelievable pangs of feeling sorry for her,” he said during a TV Academy panel in L.A. on Tuesday night, adding that he never thought of her as a villain in his story. “I saw someone who was lost by the system, really. I saw someone who needed help and wasn’t getting it.”
During Wednesday’s hearing, King also said that while precautions were taken, “We didn’t want to anonymize that or make it generic to the point where it was no longer his story because that would undermine the intent behind the show,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s obviously very difficult to control what viewers do, particularly in a world where everything is amplified by social media. I personally wouldn’t be comfortable with a world in which we decided it was better that Richard was silenced and not allowed to tell the story.”
King appeared on the panel alongside Chris Bird, director of Prime Video U.K at Amazon, Gidon Freeman, senior vp government and regulatory affairs at NBCUniversal, and Mitchell Simmons, vp public policy and government affairs EMEA at Paramount. News of the hearing was first reported by Deadline.
Sophie Anderson, a UK-based writer, is your guide to the latest trends, viral sensations, and internet phenomena. With a finger on the pulse of digital culture, she explores what’s trending across social media and pop culture, keeping readers in the know about the latest online sensations.
