The Baby reindeer phenomenon has landed in Los Angeles.
On the heels of Richard GaddAfter the limited series became a certified sleeper hit by reaching No. 1 on Netlfix's English-language TV rankings for the third week in a row, the streamer welcomed its creator and star to the West Coast. Gadd is making the media rounds this week to discuss the critically acclaimed series, inspired by his real-life stalker of six years, and he's doing it alongside Jessica Gunning, the actress earning raves as the woman who terrorized him.
The pair posted up on stage Tuesday night at the Directors Guild of America with actress Nava Mau and two key members of the Baby reindeer team – director Weronika Tofilska and editor Peter Oliver – for the show's first-ever panel discussion. Moderator Tonya Mosley of NPR's Fresh air led the conversation (in front of a large group of TV Academy members) discussing Gadd's creative process in adapting his one-man show for the screen, his approach to unraveling personal trauma (being stalked and sexually assaulted) in his work, how Gunning landed the plummy part and what the panelists hope viewers take away from what is described as an intense, deep and sometimes comedic watch.
Baby reindeer follows Gadd's Donny Dunn, a struggling comedian who encounters a lonely woman at the bar where he works. The chance meeting, during which he offers her a cup of tea on the house, intensifies when it turns out that Martha is a dangerous, serial stalker. Over the course of several years, she sent him more than 41,000 emails, 744 tweets, 100 pages of letters and 350 hours of voicemails. Mau plays a central role as Donny's transgender friend who gets caught up in the mess.
Baby reindeer crew: star Jessica Gunning, director Weronika Tofilska, creator, executive producer and star Richard Gadd, star Nava Mau and editor Peter Oliver.
Monica Schipper/Getty Images
Gadd answered the first few questions as he began the “huge process” of developing scripts for seven episodes using his eponymous one-man show, which won a whole host of awards in 2019 and 2020. “I had to go to a very obsessive place,” he said of writing. “I spent crazy hours on it. My best writing hours are from 5am and I always got up at 1am [4:30 a.m.] and writing obsessively, almost until I went to bed the next day. It became a real obsession for me and I just knew this was my chance. It just had to be as good as I could make it. I just didn't want to look back and think I hadn't done enough. I probably went too far in the other direction, but I just had to give it my all.”
Gunning gave it all to her long before she got the part. She revealed that she first met Gadd and his work by purchasing a ticket to his other critically acclaimed one-man show, Copycatthe one that preceded it Baby reindeer. “I just thought it was one of the most profound things I've ever seen on stage,” she said. That production, like episode four of Baby reindeer, focuses on Gadd's experiences being sexually assaulted by a man he considered a creative mentor early in his career. 'Then I tried to look Baby reindeerthe play, but it was sold out, so I actually bought the play text, which is a bit Martha of mine.
A still from the series featuring Gadd as Donny and Gunning as Martha.
Netflix
Mau, known from HBO's Generation, said when she first received the script, she couldn't put it down. “I stayed up all night and started blogging about it,” she explained, even going so far as to hound her agents for updates on the casting process. “It really found a place in my head and heart and has never left.”
She also told Mosley how the role helped her process dormant emotions. “I had no idea that I had internalized so much anger and that I had shut it down. As a trans woman, as a Latina woman, I've had to do that to survive, to make my way in the world as much as I have. It's been kind of my responsibility to take care of other people's emotions. Honestly, it was so hard and challenging to play a character who was so entitled to her own emotions and not too worried about taking care of others' emotions. That gave me a lot of strength to get back into harmony with my body.”
Jessica Gunning, Richard Gadd and Nava Mau.
Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images
Baby reindeer debuted on April 11, and as the show exploded in popularity over the past month, it has inspired countless online sleuths to focus on uncovering the real people in the true life story. While Gadd didn't address that during Tuesday night's panel, he did so earlier fans shouted to stop speculating because “that's not the intention of our show” – he did say that he was guided by “emotional truth” while making it.
“I never wanted to lie,” he explained. “I always had to constantly check myself to ask: Does this feel truthful to me and to my entire experience? If it wasn't, I would have to return it. But it was a tight rope. It was a constant process between what works for a TV show and not selling out your own story, and that continued from writing to filming and the whole editing process to find the right balance. I think we did that in the end, but it was a great process.”
Also intense was the filming of episode four, which focuses on the sexual assault committed by the character Darrien, played by Tom Goodman-Hill. “It was tough,” Gadd noted. “We were doing closed sets, but I looked over and you could see the props guys wiping tears from their eyes as they put the props back the way they should be. The show was based on such trauma that everyone on set felt it at times.
Gadd said the catharsis is due to the “incredible response” the show has received in recent weeks. “I always believed in the show and I really loved it, and I thought it might be a little cult, artistic gem on television. Netflix platform maybe,” he said. “But from one day to the next it was crazy. It felt like I woke up one day and everyone was watching it.”
The real stalker, someone Gadd never named but who revealed himself online and through interviews after the show debuted, has also seen him. She's right threatened legal action. During the panel, Gadd reflected on his experience being terrorized by the woman, saying he struggles with a “toxic empathy problem” that even applied to her.
“I remember when I was being stalked, it was relentless and it felt like it was everywhere, and I felt like my life wasn't really functioning. I was still in this incredible pain of feeling sorry for her,” he said, adding that he viewed her as someone who was in a lot of pain. “I've never seen anyone who was a bad guy. I saw someone who was really lost in the system. I saw someone who needed help but didn't get it.”
Gadd also shared why he thinks it has become such a phenomenon. “The world may be hurting a little more than I think we realize,” he said. “If you just look at the state of the world right now, everything feels a little bit wrong. I'm not sure there ever was a TV show Baby reindeer that's kind of a representation of life's dark difficulties and idiosyncrasies. Television has perhaps changed a bit in recent years towards a broader view of things, and that's great, and I love so many of those shows that do that. But I think Baby reindeer is so notable because it goes back to something about the human condition, which is dark and difficult and challenging, and every human being is a mixture of good and bad.
The final question of the evening came when Mosley asked the panelists to share what they hope the audience takes away Baby reindeer. Gunning wants viewers to see it “as kind of a messy story” that doesn't have a bow at the end. “I don't actually think there's a villain or a victim in it. I hope people take away the nuance from Richard's amazing writing and everyone's amazing stories.”
Gadd concluded by saying he hopes viewers draw their own conclusions. “I really like that the message is ambiguous. I sometimes have problems with my work where it's so obvious what it's trying to tell you. I've seen so many different articles about the end of Baby reindeer. That for example [final shot] where Donny looks up at the bar and people say, it means he's a stalker, or he realizes he looks like Martha. I've seen about seven different interpretations of that, and I like that because ultimately I want my people to get what they want out of my work.”
Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning capture their big night with a selfie at the end of the conversation.
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Netflix