Baby Reindeer: The Real-Life Tragic Story Behind Netflix’s Latest Hit That’s Eyeing an Emmy Win

This article contains spoilers for Baby Reindeer

Behind the epic saga of Netflix’s Baby Reindeer lies a brutal tale of one man’s truth and trauma. A story that is more fact than fiction, the true story that inspired the Netflix show is enough to send chills down the spine. As the author and actor of the show, Richard Gadd moves through life balancing the unfair cruelty bestowed on him, he takes ownership of his life by turning the tragedy into a dialogue on trauma and mental illness.

While Richard Gadd ponders the effects of truth and personal experience coloring the stories of every person around the world, fans ponder the extent of facts that went into crafting Baby Reindeer, even as the show blurs every line between fiction and reality.

The Real-Life Story That Inspired Netflix’s Baby Reindeer

The highly intimate story behind Baby Reindeer hides a brutally detailed truth about Richard Gadd‘s life. Characters in the show, including Martha, Teri, and Darrien each serve a purpose in the overarching plot but all of them can be placed in the real world due to being directly adapted from real people that played a part in Gadd’s life. Gadd himself serves as the inspiration behind his on-screen alter ego, Donny Dunn, who is pursued and haunted by a stalker.

The story highlighted in the miniseries tells the tale of an aspiring comedian haunted by the demons of his past, who meets a woman who would change the course of his life – not in a good way. Despite their meet-cute origin, the woman, Martha, then goes on to stalk him for years, not excluding his family and girlfriends even as she grows increasingly violent and transgressive with time.

In the meanwhile, Donny Dunn faces down the barrel of his past as the series sheds light on his life’s story. Groomed and sexually abused for years by an older comedian, Dunn retreats into his shell, and his inability to move through life as any other regular guy affects his life negatively. As such, the sudden attention and compliments break open a walled-off section in Dunn’s emotional reservoir, making him pity his mentally ill stalker.

For him, the act of turning in Martha to the police is easier than acknowledging his traumatic past by turning in his childhood r-pist. And while the miniseries comes full circle in the end for Donny Dunn, the Netflix project also lends some form of closure to Richard Gadd whose life is reflected in a kaleidoscopic highlight of Dunn’s own past. The trauma of Donny Dunn’s abusive past and his encounter with Martha is directly lifted from Richard Gadd’s real-life experience.

Richard Gadd Fact Checks His Past in His Netflix Miniseries

While Baby Reindeer shows enough of Richard Gadd’s past to incite curiosity about the real identities of Martha and his abuser, the actor/comedian himself takes huge care never to disclose their true selves. Gadd pleaded with the audience in his Instagram Stories (via Deadline):

“People I love, have worked with, and admire (including Sean Foley) are unfairly getting caught up in speculation. Please don’t speculate on who the real-life people could be. That’s not the point of our show.”

As a result, Richard Gadd disguises his perpetrators so carefully that he claims in an interview with GQ 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.” In hindsight, Gadd’s overarching journey from an abusive past to a Netflix series serves as a form of closure to his roller coaster experience by making him take a passive stand against his abuser, even though it’s through a loose adaptation of his life’s events.

Baby Reindeer is streaming on Netflix.