Baby Reindeer: What is true and what is fiction in Richard Gadd’s Netflix series

It is relatively low-budget and was launched with minimum fanfare and very little promotion, but in just three weeks Baby Reindeer has become one of the most talked-about TV sensations of the year.

The Netflix drama about a struggling comedian targeted by an obsessed and deranged female stalker is the number one show globally.

Part of the fascination, it seems, is the fact it’s billed as “a captivating true story”.

What’s more, the lead actor and scriptwriter Richard Gadd is the person it happened to.

Gadd used his real-life experiences with stalking and sexual abuse to create a chilling one-man show for the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

It later became an Olivier Award–winning play in London and was quickly snapped up by the streaming giant.

Gadd was not just the victim of a stalker. With unflinching honesty, he also reveals the disturbing story of his grooming and rape at the hands of a predatory TV comedy writer and producer.

All this has created something of an online frenzy among armchair sleuths desperate to identify the real-life characters, locations and events. Here we try to separate what in the show is fact, what may have been embellished, and what is pure fiction...

1. THE REAL DONNY DUNN

No amateur sleuthing is required to learn that the main character in Baby Reindeer, Donny Dunn, is Richard Gadd, who plays himself and wrote the series.

Gadd, now 34, is re-enacting a period from his early 20s when he was the victim of both a stalker and a rapist.

Gadd dieted down to 10 and a half stone to play his skinny, tormented, neurotic younger self.

Like Donny, Gadd is a Scottish stand-up, originally from Fife, the middle-class son of a microbiologist dad and secretary mum.

He graduated from Glasgow University with a degree in English literature and theatre studies.

Although Gadd did move to London and work in a pub, his comedy gigs were more successful than Donny’s — although Donny tells many of the same jokes Gadd has used in his own comedy routines.

Gadd won the New Act of the Year Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2010 when he was just 21 and unlike Donny — who regularly played to empty pubs and unamused audiences — YouTube videos show Gadd’s comedy was popular and well-received from early on in his career.

2. THE REAL MARTHA

It took internet sleuths a matter of days to unmask the identity of Gadd’s real-life stalker, who goes by the name of “Martha” on the show.

Played by actress Jessica Gunning, 38, Martha is depicted as an older, overweight Scot with brown curly hair, who says she’s a lawyer and makes fanciful claims about having a huge salary (despite not being able to afford a drink), famous contacts and homes dotted around the world.

Prior to broadcast, Gadd was insistent that he and Netflix had done all they could to make the TV character different from the real stalker, saying: “We’ve gone to such lengths to disguise her, I don’t think she’d recognise herself.”

Gadd explained that he had to make the character of Martha different from the real Martha for “legal reasons”, but added that what he was looking for was an actress who could capture that “kind of energy”.

However the woman believed to be the real Martha is also an older, overweight Scottish woman with brown, curly hair and a law degree.

The woman, whom the Daily Mail is choosing not to name, is 58, originally from Stirling, and lives in a council flat in London.

Social media users have uncovered the woman’s obsessive tweets to Gadd from 2014, her demands to know whether he received her letters and gifts, and her boasts that she has a 26-year-old “toyboy”.

There are also tweets where she makes a reference to “hanging her curtains” — the same phrase (used as sexual innuendo) in Baby Reindeer.

The “real Martha” gained a law degree from Dundee University and began working as a trainee solicitor.

Over the past fortnight she has written a series of angry and confused Facebook posts denying Gadd’s portrayal of her as a stalker and told the Mail in an interview that she is now the victim.

This week she claimed she will be doing a TV interview to tell her side of the story.

3. THE PUB WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

Donny Dunn is shown working as a barman at a London pub called The Heart, the place where he first encounters Martha.

Many believe the pub where Gadd actually worked and met the real Martha is The Hawley Arms in Camden, North London.

The hipster venue was highly popular at the peak of the Britpop scene, and regulars included Amy Winehouse, Kate Moss and Noel and Liam Gallagher.

Neither Gadd nor staff have confirmed he ever worked there, but that hasn’t stopped fans of Baby Reindeer flocking there, especially after the “real Martha” wrote Facebook posts about visiting The Hawley Arms and made accusations about its staff.

4. THE SCALE OF THE STALKING CAMPAIGN

In Baby Reindeer Donny tells the police his stalker has been pursuing him for six months. In real life, Gadd was targeted for more than four years.

“It’s very emotionally true,” says Gadd of the Netflix series.

“I was severely stalked and severely abused. But we wanted it to exist in the sphere of art and protect the people it’s based on.”

Martha is shown deluging Donny with emails. Gadd claims to have received more than 41,000 as well as 350 hours of voicemail messages , 744 tweets , 46 Facebook messages (from four separate accounts) and 106 pages of letters.

As in the show, the real Martha disrupted Gadd’s comedy gigs and targeted his family.

She accused his father of being a paedophile and obsessively called his parents and their places of work.

Gadd says: “My biggest regret is putting my parents through some of the things I put them through. I couldn’t help it, but I feel bad about it. I regret the worry I’ve caused them.”

In the show, Donny’s dad reveals he was sexually abused by a priest — but Gadd hasn’t spoken about his own father’s experience.

Gadd says that his parents were his “biggest fans” and that his dad was “chuffed to bits” when discussing the emotive scene.

5. HAS MARTHA STALKED OTHERS?

Donny is shown searching Martha’s name online and discovering that she has a history of stalking, having tormented a barrister with a disabled child and her husband.

This week lawyer Laura Wray came forward to reveal that Martha had stalked her and her family for five years.

Laura gave Martha a two-week trial as a trainee solicitor at her legal practice but fired her after a week because of her rude and confrontational behaviour.

After her dismissal, Martha began to bombard the legal practice with threatening phone calls, to the extent that staff were issued with panic alarms.

She also made death threats to Laura’s now deceased husband, Jimmy Wray, a Labour MP.

Things came to a head when Martha contacted social services to falsely claim that Laura was hitting her then four-year-old disabled son Frankie.

Under the Scottish court system, Laura was able to take out a restraining order against Martha.

On her Facebook page, the woman thought to be the “real Martha” has since claimed Laura stalked her.

6. DID MARTHA EVER GO TO PRISON?

In the series, Martha pleads guilty to three counts of stalking and harassment. She receives a nine-month prison sentence and a five-year restraining order.

In real life, Gadd did not want his stalker to go to jail and she was never convicted of stalking in relation to him.

He says: “I didn’t want to throw someone who was that level of mentally unwell in prison.”

Gadd did report his stalker to the police and said the matter is now “resolved” , but has not explained how.

7. THE GROOMING AND RAPE

On screen Donny is shown being groomed by a high-flyer in the comedy world, who initially positions himself as a mentor.

The man, Darrien O’Connor, meets him at a party at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and offers to help with Donny’s career.

Donny starts to visit Darrien’s flat where the pair experiment with drugs, including acid and GHB, before Darrien sexually assaults and rapes Donny in the show’s fourth episode.

Gadd claims he was raped by a senior figure in the comedy world but never reported the incident to the police or named his attacker.

In another of Gadd’s award-winning one-man shows from 2016, Monkey See Monkey Do — where he runs on a treadmill while being chased by a large monkey as a metaphor for the heavy burden of abuse — he tells the story of his sexual assault.

Donny is shown, despite everything, going on to accept a job with his abuser.

Gadd has hinted he did the same, saying: “It was showing an element of abuse that hadn’t been seen on television before, which is, unfortunately, the deeply entrenched, negative, psychological effects of attachment you can sometimes have with your abuser.”

The storyline led to comedy writer and director Sean Foley being falsely identified as the rapist due to his physical similarities to actor Tom Goodman-Hill, who plays Darrien.

Foley, who has worked with Gadd, has called in the police over the claims, while Gadd said his attacker was not Foley and begged the public to stop attempting to unmask his assailant.

This week author Richard Osman said on his The Rest Is entertainment podcast that “‘people in the industry know who that person is”.

8. DONNY’S TRANS GIRLFRIEND

Baby Reindeer’s Donny is shown joining dating sites and falling in love with Teri, a captivating American trans woman, whom he initially treats badly and is embarrassed to be seen with, played by real-life trans actress Nava Mau.

Gadd, who is bisexual, has confirmed that he dated a trans woman and that Teri is based on the real person he was with during a spell he refers to as “the messiness of my early 20s”.

In his Monkey See Monkey Do show he reveals that his rape led to a “masculinity” crisis and that he never considered he was anything other than straight until that point.

He says: “I’d fallen for someone who was trans but with that came a lot of questioning and all that unfortunate shame you have when you are young.”

Just like Teri, Gadd’s real-life trans girlfriend was harassed and targeted by his stalker which eventually led to their break-up.

9. DONNY’S PUBLIC MELTDOWN

Baby Reindeer’s Donny is shown competing in the finals of a comedy competition where he has a complete breakdown.

With his gags falling flat, he instead launches into a monologue detailing his rape and subsequent stalking.

A punter films him on his phone and it goes viral, turning Donny into a star.

This never happened in real life.

Gadd actually spoke out about his experiences of sexual abuse and stalking in Monkey See Monkey Do. Although there are hundreds of videos on YouTube and TikTok claiming to show Gadd’s real-life public breakdown, they are just short excerpts from either the original Baby Reindeer or Monkey See Monkey Do scripted stage shows.

10. THE NAME ‘BABY REINDEER’

In the show’s emotional climax, Donny is seen sitting alone in a bar listening to Martha’s voicemails. In one she reveals the devastating reason why she’s given him the nickname “Baby Reindeer” — as a young girl, she had a little stuffed reindeer that she clung to when her parents fought and took comfort in over years of neglect.

Donny, she says, reminded her of that reindeer right down to its “wee bum”.

But the “real Martha” says she has never owned a baby reindeer toy and never gave Gadd that nickname.

Gadd has never commented on the nickname but has revealed that his stalker sent him many strange gifts including cuddly toys, underwear, a hat and sleeping pills.