‘Baby Reindeer’s Richard Gadd & Jessica Gunning On The Radical Honesty Behind The Year’s Most Talked About TV Series: “It Would Be Of Benefit To Society If People Stop Being So Apparently Perfect All The Time”
Richard Gadd’s Netflix hit, Baby Reindeer, produced for a song and released with little fanfare, beat the odds to become a surprise sensation. It made overnight stars of Gadd and his co-star Jessica Gunning, who have been adjusting to life in the spotlight ever since. With the tabloid press, particularly in their native Britain, stirring up reams of controversy, Joe Utichi travels across London to meet Gadd and Gunning, as they place their emphasis on the lives their show is changing for the better.
Richard Gadd is doing his best to stay anonymous, though it’s no longer all that easy for him. Since April 11, his has been one of the world’s most recognizable faces. He transformed physically for Baby Reindeer, losing weight to better recall the gaunt version of his younger self on which he based his new show, but his large blue eyes and high cheek bones are unmistakable now to anyone who welcomed him into their home on screen — or, perhaps, that he welcomed into his psyche — in the months since the show debuted.
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We meet in North London, where Gadd has suggested a walk and talk around a local park. He moves at a pace, a large baseball cap pulled down low, and drops his volume whenever others get too near. He’s not hiding — a conversation like this could easily have been conducted in a private room somewhere if that was his preference — but he wasn’t exactly expecting the nosebleed adjustment to global fame that has followed Baby Reindeer’s huge success.
Anyone who has seen Baby Reindeer, which tells a haunting story of the abuse and stalking Gadd faced when he was an aspiring comedian in his 20s, will understand his trepidation; there’s a sense life was probably a little like this for him even before the show’s outsized reception. And the courage with which Gadd transposed his story to screen, reliving the worst of his trauma through his fictional alter-ego Donny Dunn, has been met with vast swathes of controversial stories stoked by the tabloid press. There is irony to their cries that Baby Reindeer is an irresponsible retelling of real events, given they have been the ones to spend intervening months turning the show into — in Gadd’s words — a “whodunnit,” determined as they are to uncover the real identities of the other characters in the piece.
In part, their fervor might be fueled by the organic way Baby Reindeer broke out. The show received very little in the way of press ahead of its launch, yet audiences embraced it long before many journalists caught up. But another reason might be that Gadd’s self-critical approach to telling his story has stymied many of their attempts to sling mud. Over the course of its seven episodes, Donny dwells on his own poor judgment as though it is a devil on his shoulders. He is not the hero of Gadd’s story, merely the protagonist, and Martha, his “stalker,” is no villain. Life is too complicated for simplistic judgments like those, despite the desperation of today’s news media to paint such goodies and baddies.
Instead, perhaps, the better story might be to focus on what Baby Reindeer has meant to those who have seen it. The charity We Are Survivors, which dedicates itself to facilitating safe spaces for male survivors of sexual abuse and rape in Greater Manchester in the UK, says it has seen an 80% increase in first-time callers since the show aired, with 53% of callers citing Baby Reindeer as the reason they came forward. The Kent Police, too, said they had seen an uptick in reports, with Detective Chief Superintendent Emma Banks, who heads the force’s Protecting Vulnerable People command, saying, “Men don’t expect to be stalked and it’s not so widely reported on, which is why Baby Reindeer was such a good program to shine a light on that very important area.”
It has also had a profound personal effect on its audience — how else to rationalize the speed with which it picked up steam, or the 11 Emmy nominations it has earned, even though it wasn’t high on Netflix’s priority list going into the season? To the streamer’s credit, they acted fast, mounting a comprehensive campaign in the wake of the overwhelming response to the show. It’s with this response in mind that Gadd and I begin our walk around his local park.
DEADLINE: To lay my cards out from the start, I found the show a deeply cathartic experience, especially as I’ve struggled with my own mental health in recent years. And though I haven’t experienced anything like what you went through, it struck at the heart of my own past traumas. You’ve found universality in something that is also so intensely personal for you. But given it is so personal, how much did all this take you by surprise too?
RICHARD GADD: I’m quite moved, listening to you talk about that. I must try to remember those kinds of things that people say to me, because I do find them quite moving, and obviously there has been quite a lot of noise around the show. When I see the human impact of it, especially on an individual level, it really means a lot to me.
I remember, after the show went out, I was taking a little break, I was on holiday, and this guy came up to me and said that he’d been through something similar, though not exactly the same. Then, a little while later, he came back, only it wasn’t the same guy; it was his twin brother. He said, “Our family has been through hell, and [the show] allowed us to finally have a conversation about it.” It’s stuff like that that really helps me weather the storm, in a lot of ways.
I appreciate what you say about finding the universality in it, because I think a lot of people see it as “a stalking show,” but it’s really a show about loneliness, isolation, and the desperate need for connection. It’s not just Donny looking for that, either; it’s Martha too, and all of the characters.
DEADLINE: It feels like the world is in a more robust place to have these conversations, despite the tabloid reaction to the show. As you say, experiences like these are isolating, and the revelation of recent years, as people have begun to talk about their traumas, is that there’s a whole world of survivors out there.
GADD: Absolutely. Honestly, when I first set out, I thought what I was doing was stupid — in terms of owning up to the flaws in my own personality, and the things I got wrong — and that the easier thing to have done would have been to have Donny say, “Here’s a free cup of tea,” and then be like, “Oh, woe is me, I did this amazing gesture and now my life is falling apart.” But I guess I was bored of artistic narratives where the central person is nothing but good. Life is very complicated, and people are a mixture of positive and negative. I wanted to show that, to bring that out in the world.
I think we live in an age of almost moral enlightenment right now, where everyone is terrified of saying the wrong thing. So, to put my hand up in that age of moral enlightenment and be like, “Oh, yeah, I made these f*cking stupid mistakes,” was very daunting, and it’s still daunting in the aftermath in a lot of ways. But I think, at the same time, it has led to an appreciation of bringing the nuance back to the discussion about people, and people not being either good or bad, but being a little more nuanced than that.
DEADLINE: Perhaps it’s just my British self-deprecation, but I think most people struggle to see themselves as heroes all the time, so how can we relate? We dwell on the things we feel we got wrong, especially when it comes to trauma. Baby Reindeer isn’t the first show to pick at the artifice of what you’re describing, but at the same time, did it require a lot of courage to be that self-critical?
GADD: I do think there was a leap of faith element to doing it, especially given the sort of outrage culture we live in right now. But most people are appreciative or grateful for it, I think.
Now, I don’t consider myself a celebrity — perish the thought — but in celebrity culture there’s this disconnect, where we look at the people sitting on [UK chat-show host] Graham Norton’s couch, and they’re describing their perfect lives. But everyone, at any stage in life, has struggles, and I think being honest about them, and especially being in the public eye and being honest about your struggles, and your personal battles, is a good thing to do. I think it would be of benefit to society if people stop being so apparently perfect all the time. I hoped it would benefit television, to present a narrative where somebody makes mistakes, and owns up to them.
People are scared to own up to their mistakes, for whatever reason. I know loads of famous people, and I know they are all struggling, but then everyone is so tightly zipped up in public. I don’t see why, because a lot of people sitting at home are going through those same kinds of struggles, thinking, “God, if I were just famous, all my problems would go away.” And that’s a key part of Baby Reindeer; Donny thinks fame will be his solution, but nothing external will ever solve something internal, and that’s something I’ve learned in life.
So, I think communicating these struggles to the world is good, because it breaks down a barrier that I think is helpful for people.
DEADLINE: We equate happiness with money, but there are a lot of very rich people who probably thought becoming rich would solve all their problems.
GADD: It probably adds to them, right? Ambition is great, but sometimes setting those kinds of goalposts for yourself is dangerous. Buying a flat is a good example, where you think, “I’ll buy a flat, I’ll pick up the keys, twist the lock, and then my life will all come together.” It never works like that.
When you put work out into the world, even if it’s just as simple as sending an email, you think, “That’s it, everything is going to make sense. Everyone is going to understand me, and everything will be fine.” It doesn’t work like that. Going through a trauma — or really, any internal struggle, it doesn’t even have to be that severe — the solutions have to come from a certain sense of self. Ambition can bring a lot of happiness, but I think internal satisfaction and happiness does come from having a certain ease on yourself, and a certain way of thinking and receiving the world.
It’s an ongoing process for me. I don’t act like I’ve found the secret sauce. I still struggle with a lot of things, but I’ve certainly learned that no external thing can be the solution. Baby Reindeer is one of the biggest shows in Netflix history, and I still struggle with some of the themes in it, despite the fact there’s been a lot of acceptance around them. I still have my dark days.
DEADLINE: In terms of the trauma?
GADD: Yeah. It’s still there, even though I’ve achieved a certain level of catharsis. The live shows I did [that preceded the show] were very cathartic, because I was doing them in front of 200 people. The show has obviously gone on to receive a lot of critical and audience praise, and it has been viewed so many times, but there are still days where, despite the fact I’ve now got nothing to hide because I’ve explored every dark corner of myself and put it on screen, I wake up and I struggle with the trauma. Like it’s as fresh as it was when it was happening, when I was young, all the way back then.
DEADLINE: It’s not something you can ever walk away from or put behind you.
GADD: No, it’s not about getting over it. It’s about working to live with it. That’s a phrase that comes up a lot in the work I’ve done. Every person’s journey is slightly different, but there are still tough days. Days you just have to ride out a bit.
DEADLINE: You first grappled with these traumas in art in Monkey See, Monkey Do, a show you premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2016.
GADD: Yes, that was the kind of career shift where I started to, I guess, embrace personal experience. So, I’ve been doing that for eight years now, and it’s probably time to do something else [laughs].
DEADLINE: The thing that interests me about that timeline is it coincides with everything we learned about Harvey Weinstein, which was in October 2017, and the rise of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements. There was a reckoning, particularly in the creative industries, about how women were being treated especially, and what trauma looks like. Do you think the world has shifted in its understanding of things?
GADD: I think yes and no. When I did Monkey See, Monkey Do, as you say, it was pre-#MeToo, so people really weren’t talking about sexual abuse. Or, they were, but not on a societal level. Especially men would never dare to have those kinds of conversations. I had a phenomenal anxiety about what I was going up to Edinburgh to admit, because I genuinely felt like I was walking out into a wilderness where I felt I was without a lifejacket.
Just before I went out to Edinburgh, I was watching Oz, do you remember that HBO show? I’ve never told this story before, but I was watching Oz, which was an amazing show, and there was a sexual assault in it. It was a very macho show, and afterwards, these two characters discuss it, and kind of make a jokey reference to it.
I remember having this flood of adrenaline just shoot through my body, like, “What am I doing?” We were about three weeks from Edinburgh, and I thought those men were talking like people were going to talk about the show. I had multiple freakouts. I went up to Edinburgh that year convinced it was going to ruin my career. That people would say, “Well, this kind of subject matter has no place on a comedy stage.” But the universal praise I got was crazy.
It went from me thinking it would be a disastrous month to it becoming, still to this day, the best month of my life. It obviously ended with the Edinburgh Fringe comedy award, but also in the texts I got from friends and family, I noticed this kind of acceptance around it. I would say it was probably a year later that the #MeToo movement started to happen, and it felt like there was an understanding around it.
Now, though, I think we’re in a more polarized place as a society. Everything has become very polemical. Society is split down the middle now, and I think some people want to argue against the other side for the sake of it. What I’ve found particularly difficult, especially with Baby Reindeer — which is the first time I’ve really delved deep into the whole of it — is that I felt I was delivering a very truthful exploration of a dynamic like that, and a very truthful exploration of abuse. The kind of odd attachment it brings, and the difficulty you face when you try to extricate yourself from the situation.
To use the show as an example, I have my comments turned off on Instagram, but occasionally I’ll do collaboration posts where the comments can’t be hidden, and some of them are just so brutal. People can’t understand why I would have gone back [to my abuser]. I try not to read the comments, but it can be hard, and occasionally someone will send you something, like, “Ignore this person.” They are so extreme. There have been times where the negativity surrounding the show results in people saying things like, “You knew what you were getting yourself into,” and I think, “God, I put my personal life on screen as a commodity, and will I ever get a sense of privacy back?”
Those have been the daunting times in the past three or four months, where I read something, or someone shouts something at me on the street, and I realize I’m twinned with this now. And that’s fine, because the majority of people are really kind and understanding, but there is definitely a section of society that has splintered off. They don’t want to hear about this stuff anymore, they can’t accept the nuances of it, and they think that I was, I don’t know, asking for it. That’s very hard to live with.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that the debate around the show has become a sort of whodunnit narrative, which is not something I ever wanted. People in the street, or at 7 a.m. on the tube, saying, “Oh, I saw Baby Reindeer. So, who’s Darrien? Who’s Martha?”
DEADLINE: Another part of that has been the suggestion that you must have known people would speculate. As though guessing the identities of people was the point of the show, and the trauma you describe is a b-plot.
GADD: I sometimes think to myself that I don’t know why I expected there to be a sphere of respect around it, because it was so dark, because it was so personal. There are times where I wobble and I think, “God, this is kind of tough,” but I have to remember that other people are responding to it in the way I intended, and I have to cling onto the positives.
If I scroll through the comments — which I don’t, but if I did — I’m sure that for every joke about abuse, for every comment slagging me off, there are two or three that are like, “This changed my life. I spoke to my parents finally about what happened to me,” and I have to remember that.
And then, of course, there are the charity statistics as well, which I know I harp on about, but the coverage around them has been good but not as much as I’d like. It’s something like a 47% increase in stalking referrals, and a 53% increase in sexual abuse charity referrals. That shows a phenomenally positive impact, but I think the show has, at times, been lost in this kind of noise surrounding it. Some of the good of the show’s aims, which I do think were pure, has been masked by that noise.
It’s just a crazy time, and it’s quite a lot to take on because it’s very niche. It’s almost like a British independent film, the show. We shot it on a very small budget, and it went onto have a level of success that I don’t think any of us were expecting.
DEADLINE: The Netflix megahit is not necessarily something that is being curated by the human beings at Netflix. There’s always an element of fate involved in a show catching the zeitgeist, but in the case of Baby Reindeer — or Squid Game was probably another example — there seems to be something about the penetration of the Netflix platform, and perhaps the algorithm, that is quite hard for anyone to understand or prepare for. It does seem to be restoring power to the audience.
GADD: It’s really interesting. There were times when we were making the show where, because it was quite weird and quite dark, and the characters were quite hard to wrap your head around, we couldn’t even believe we were doing it, even for a price. I kept thinking, “Surely the jig is going to be up at some point.”
It’s credit to Netflix for sticking with it — and I say “sticking with it” like it was some sort of awful thing for them to do, but — there could easily have been a point where they’d had all these massive hits, and they could have looked at a small British show made for so little money and thought, “Oh well, let’s just put a red line through that.” But they didn’t, which is great.
I think it gives me hope, in a way, because everyone talks about the algorithm as some ominous thing that’s going to take over all of our lives, and we’ll start to be told what we want, but shows like Squid Game and Baby Reindeer suggest that humans will always be able to cheat an algorithm. It’ll never fully be able to predict human emotion or soul, to the truest extent.
So, yes, it’s given me a lot of hope that it’s taken off like this, but I can safely say on the record that nobody expected this level of take-off. I think it’s the 10th biggest Netflix show of all time now, and that’s mindboggling to me when you consider the budget and the subject matter. People ask me, “What do you think it says about the state of the world?” And I don’t know for sure, other than I think it proves that a lot of people are going through a certain degree of struggle that is quite hard to articulate, and that’s why the show is resonating with them to such a degree.
The bottom line is I always felt there was an honesty to the show, in a way that I hope has been refreshing for people after so many years of disingenuousness, in politics, in television; everywhere. Succession popped off in a massive way, and rightfully so because it’s one of the greatest shows of all time, because I think even though it’s set in a fictional world, there is such truth to each of the characters, in the way they talk, and the way they’re likeable and dislikeable in equal measure. People recognize the characters in that show as human life staring back at them. I think the radical honesty of Baby Reindeer has worked in its favor.
DEADLINE: Precisely, and I think it’s because the audience has made Baby Reindeer a hit against everyone’s expectations that certain sections of the press — perhaps frustrated at not having had the opportunity to crown it themselves — have taken against it and turned it into the whodunnit you describe.
GADD: I’ve done quite a good job of trying to duck out of all that a bit, as you can imagine. But it was surprising, because I was known as the nichest of niche comedians. You see in the show, the kind of comedy I was doing; I was so niche that some people described me as a performance artist. To go from that level of being too niche for comedy, to reach the point where almost everything I do gets written up in the press — I even went to the Euros in Scotland, and that generated stories, for some reason — has been weird. I never, ever thought I would be a selling point for the mainstream. I never thought I would be of tabloid interest to people.
It’s so odd to have been told, throughout my career, that the work I’m doing is too niche and that I need to broaden it up, only to make the nichest of niche shows, and have it become this massive mainstream hit. It took a lot of adjustment. I thought the show would be a success in a critical, artistic sense. I know a lot of people are like, “Oh, I just thought it would go so badly, and then it didn’t,” but no, I believed in the show, and I believed it might generate a bit of conversation. Maybe at a level of like The End of the F…ing World, which is a really great show, with a lot of critical admirers and a real audience, but not this sort of global, talked-about thing.
DEADLINE: What was release weekend like for you? How quickly did you notice the show taking flight?
GADD: I remember thinking, “Maybe some people will watch it this weekend.” It came out on a Thursday, and I thought people would probably catch up with it on Saturday or Sunday, and I might get a few messages on Monday. Maybe a few more the weekend after. My hope was that the reviews would be good enough that perhaps I’d get to make another TV show off the back of it.
So, it went out at 8 a.m. on the Thursday, and I haven’t watched the show since it came out. I probably never will again, to be honest. But I loaded it up on Netflix, pressed play, and muted the television, because I thought, “Maybe the algorithm will catch it.”
I realized by about midday that there was no need to do that, because my phone was just exploding. For the most part, the reviews were very positive. Then weird things started happening, like a famous person would tweet about it, or a big newspaper would blast a positive write-up to their mailing list. I just suddenly became aware that it was getting swept up into this huge thing, and then it was difficult to leave the house without someone lurking outside.
DEADLINE: You mean paparazzi?
GADD: Yeah, I’ve been papped outside the house. Then the odd fan, or the odd person asking about it. My doorbell ringing, or the neighbor going, “There was a gent that wants to know what you’re like to live next door to.” I love LBC [a UK-based talk-radio station], but I remember turning that on, and they were talking about the show. I had to switch it right off. There was a time where I would be stuck inside, but even there I couldn’t escape it. It was this weird feeling that it was becoming too big to control. Not that I wanted to control it, but it was becoming too big for its own good. It just felt like it was everywhere on the news, on the radio, outside my house.
Then, it was like everything I would say, everything I would do, would become a news story. I’d get these text messages on my phone; I wouldn’t even recognize the number. “A certain paper has been in touch, what do you want me to say?” I’d be like, “Who’s this?” and it’d be someone I hadn’t seen since primary school. “How did they find you?”
DEADLINE: Was that just in the immediate aftermath of release? Because it feels like the conversation has never stopped.
GADD: It has been so overwhelming that it has felt like almost a blur. I can’t remember when it was at its height — maybe in week three — but it felt like that for a while.
I stopped wanting to get the tube, but I remember I had to, so I went on with a cap, sunglasses, trying to hide as best I could. I sat next to a mum and her son, and then suddenly, they’re discussing the show. I think, “Are they just doing this because I’m here and they recognize me?” But they hadn’t noticed. They were just talking about it, in a really sort of coarse way. “I don’t think they should be putting that sort of thing on television; we don’t want to see that.” And I’m literally there, listening to this. Then I have to get up, and when I’m at the door someone else says, “You’re the guy from Baby Reindeer,” and I look back at the mum and son and they’ve heard it, and … It’s not like I wanted to get away from it, but it really felt like there wasn’t a moment’s peace to be had.
And I think people have a lack of sympathy for people in the public eye who are like, “Oh, it’s so tough being recognized.” It’s just, I wasn’t expecting it to become this phenomenon. As I was talking about earlier, there’s this myth of celebrity, because of all the gloss and all the talk shows, that if you achieve fame then you must be fine, you’ve got nothing to worry about. You’ll have all the money in the world, and you never have to work a day in your life. But I think it adds its own pressure, because people feel, “Well, I’m famous, I need to hide that I’m struggling.”
I think that life exists in a very difficult juxtaposition where they’re kind of falling apart while presenting this perfect image to the world. That’s when you hear of celebrities having extraordinary breakdowns, or addiction issues. They’re scared to admit they’re struggling. And I sort of don’t understand why, because I think I’d find it very refreshing and helpful to society for people to hear, “Well, look, I might have fame, I might be on these shows, but I’m still the same scared person I was four years ago.”
DEADLINE: I suppose, then, the question becomes: has it been worth it?
GADD: I hope so, I really hope so. I think it has. I hope that the legacy of Baby Reindeer that remains is really the kind of good that it did. The charity stuff, the comments from people who were moved by the show, and the way it helped them understand themselves. I think trauma responses are so difficult to understand when you’re going through them. To see a trauma response play out on a television show, I think, has been very comforting to people.
There are others who don’t want to admit that these kinds of things happen in the world. I sort of can’t blame them, to want to live in that kind of ignorance if it helps them. It’s just not how they want to spend their time, and I think that can come down to a bit of self-preservation in them. But there’s that old phrase: disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed. I think that applies to Baby Reindeer, because it has really achieved its aim which is to provoke a conversation. Even when people are like, “If he didn’t want it, why did he go back?” As much as I find that difficult to read when I’m sat on my couch at 7 o’clock at night, at least it has challenged them to ask that question, to have a response of any kind. I think that’s a good thing, even if it can be difficult to read.
JESSICA GUNNING
After a couple of hours recovering from multiple circuits of Richard Gadd’s local park, I find Jessica Gunning in South London. A river separates the real Donny Dunn from his Martha, though Gadd and Gunning are much more inclined to spend time with one another than their onscreen counterparts.
To my immense relief, Gunning has suggested a more sedate coffee at a local gallery where, as we talk, locals pop in to the polling station that has been temporarily set up for the UK’s General Election. Our time together will be interrupted briefly by a group of women who ask Gunning if they can take a photo with her. She chuckles at their request and quickly agrees — she, too, is adjusting to life in the public eye, and there’s a sense she’s bemused by the sudden interest.
Born in Holmfirth in West Yorkshire — a surprise even to Scots who have praised her flawless Scottish accent in Baby Reindeer — Gunning has been acting for nearly 20 years at this point. She started in the National Theatre, and quickly checked off that most reliable of British actor career progression boxes by starring in an episode of Doctor Who in 2008.
Prior to Baby Reindeer, I knew her as one of the ensemble cast of Matthew Warchus’ Pride in 2014, but she was perhaps most recognizable for her role over the three seasons of Stephen Merchant’s 2021 comedy series The Outlaws.
Nevertheless, she hadn’t become a household name. Gadd knew her work and loved her guest appearances. “She would come in and steal whatever show it was,” he notes. But pitching her to executives wasn’t easy, especially when they were already taking a shot with an unknown lead. “We auditioned loads of people for Martha; maybe 20 or 30 people,” says Gadd. “But she came in and played it very much against type. We saw some amazing Marthas — different Marthas who could have been really interesting — but a lot of people played her a little evil, and I never really saw Martha that way. [Jessica] captured her vulnerability.”
Gadd wasn’t the final arbiter on casting, but he says he “begged” for Gunning to get the role. “Everybody could see how amazing she was, so it wasn’t anything to do with that,” he says. “But questions of star casting came in. She did probably five or six auditions, and most actors would probably have said, ‘To hell with this.’ But, one by one, she just knocked everyone down, including Netflix, and the rest is history.”
History indeed, for Gunning is now the odds-on favorite to make good on her Emmy nomination for Supporting Actress. She will move ahead as a star in her own right, though she admits she didn’t see any of this coming while she shot Baby Reindeer.
DEADLINE: Baby Reindeer has become a hit nobody — not even you and Richard — could have fully foreseen; but how do you rationalize this crazy success?
JESSICA GUNNING: What’s so clever about Richard’s writing is that even at the table read, when Episode 4 came up you could have cut the tension with a knife. Then, when Martha comes back at the end of Episode 4, you felt this collective relief, like, “Thank god he’s got her.” It’s so warped, because obviously that relationship is very messy as well, but I realized immediately how clever that was, because it stops you in your tracks. And I think Episode 4 is really the key to it all, because if you remove that, Donny doesn’t make sense. Suddenly you understand why he does what he does.
I think as an audience, we want messy things. I always remember this great story about [British author and screenwriter] Lynda La Plante, when she was first starting out. She pitched an idea to a big ITV executive about a split-screen show. At the end, she said, all our main characters divide off into corners of the screen and we see them going about their business. The executive said, “Well, I think Mrs. Jones who lives in York might find it quite hard to follow those things.” She said, “How dare you? Mrs. Jones has packed her kids off to school, gone about her day, gone to bingo in the evening, and played five different cards while catching up with her mates. Don’t you underestimate Mrs. Jones from York.”
And I think that’s often what happens. It’s the same with casting names, which is why I’m so pleased they took a chance on me, because if you’d have had anyone well-known in the part, you’d have a stamp on it already that just doesn’t fit with the show. I think you needed to meet Martha as a character and not go, “Oh, that’s so-and-so from whatever.” I’m sure a few people might have recognized me from other things, but I think predominantly they took in the character first, and with Richard as Donny, he was unknown too. In doing that, you’re allowed to see the story for what it is.
I think it’s a myth that audiences will watch something just because there’s a name in it. I think people want to watch good stories, and you’re constantly having to battle with broadcasters and go, “Trust the story.” The irony is they use shows like Fleabag and I May Destroy You as examples, and you’re like, “Nobody in those shows was famous when they made them.”
I think the ambition of making the show was to do a good job — that was literally everyone’s dream, everyone on the crew. As soon as we all read the scripts, we felt we had something special, but in none of our conversations about it was the topic of how many millions were going to watch it, let alone whether it might have any kind of life in awards season or anything like that. It was just about getting it made so that the people we care about could see it. But I hope the success of Baby Reindeer will be used as an example of how stories can be told in a messy way, and that people can not only handle them, but embrace them too.
DEADLINE: The industry has a nasty habit of refusing to learn lessons, but I think the success of Baby Reindeer took even Netflix by surprise. Do you think streaming represents a new paradigm; that perhaps the audience holds more sway than the algorithm does?
GUNNING: I think so, and I think the only way to make something a hit is to focus on telling the story, because as soon as you start to think outside-in, you ruin it. The core team of Weronika [Tofilska], our main director, and Richard, and all of our producers who are on the ground, I think they actively fought against any of those bigger discussions because they wanted to protect, not the smallness of the story, but the preciousness of it, really.
That was the victory, because it kept the focus on what mattered. Nobody was thinking, “Wait ’til the whole world sees this.” It’s why it’s always difficult to do a second or a third season of something, because when an audience loves something, you can’t, as an actor, shake your awareness of that. It’s really hard to forget that people love the show and to focus on telling the story.
DEADLINE: How familiar were you with Richard’s work before the show?
GUNNING: I’d seen his play Monkey See, Monkey Do. I hadn’t seen Baby Reindeer [on stage]. So, I already knew of him, and I’d tried to get tickets to see Baby Reindeer, but it was fully sold out. Back in 2019, I read the play text, and I’m really glad I didn’t see it, actually. I was really intrigued when I read the play about how it would have gone on stage, but I think I’d have started the show with a preconceived notion of who Martha was.
I got an email that said, “Baby Reindeer audition,” and because I knew of the play, I thought, ‘Oh god.’ Then I got sent the sides first, which were the café scene and the scene where she says she wants to unzip him and climb inside. Then I got the rest of the scripts.
DEADLINE: What was your initial reaction?
GUNNING: I read them all in one go, and that voicemail at the end, I just cried my eyes out. The final bit with the barman gave me goosebumps, and I remember thinking it was a genius way to end the show.
Even the scene where she says she wants to unzip him and climb inside, I remember telling a friend who was running lines with me, “This is the most romantic scene of the whole thing.” We read it together and she was like, “That’s f*cking freaky.” [Laughs]. I realized I hadn’t read it as creepy. I had just read it as: what a beautiful thing to say to somebody. How lovely that she feels so safe with him [laughs].
In a way, I’m glad I read it like that, because it meant I never saw her as a weird villain or anything. I just saw the human in her, which I think is because he wrote her so well. I think he saw the human in her, too.
DEADLINE: It’s hard not to feel empathetic toward Martha, for sure.
GUNNING: Yeah. When we were going to America to do some promo, the driver I got was this quiet guy, but he was a proper cockney lad, and I just assumed he probably hadn’t seen it. Then, one moment, he said, “I love the show, by the way. We’re all a little bit Martha.” And it’s true. We’ve all had obsessions, or people who we’ve been in love with just a bit too much. It made me quite emotional, because it was true.
DEADLINE: How do you see the moments where Martha blows up at Donny and yells at him? Those are the key signposts of a villain, I suppose, but it feels like she’s expressing a frustration, like a kettle that has boiled over for just a moment.
GUNNING: It’s a definite response to frustration. But I think the show in general is about trauma, and all of the characters in it have experienced some version of that. From my character’s backstory, I thought maybe he had triggered something from her past, where she doesn’t like to be told what to do. She feels quite exposed during those moments, but I think part of Donny’s fascination is how exposed she makes him feel. During that scene in the café, she says, “Somebody hurt you, didn’t they?” She wants to know, and he wants to feel heard. “It was a man, wasn’t it?” He’s thinking, ‘Who is this woman, is she magic?’ She feels that too, about him.
Also, he’s a comedian and she laughs at everything he says. That’s another thing I found fascinating, because when I was doing a bit of research — and I didn’t do a lot, because it was all there in the script — there is obviously the classic movie about stalking, Misery, but I also watched King of Comedy. The thing that fascinated me about that, and also talking to friends of mine in the industry who have experienced stalking, is there’s this knowingness to the people that you forget.
I think if you were to draw a stalker, you’d assume that they’re always sycophantic, always gushing, always praising. If they have fantasies, it’s about that person loving them back. The thing that’s fascinating about Martha, and it’s in King of Comedy too, is that the fantasy is letting the guy down. If you remember, she comes to him and says, “Oh, can you do it?” And he’s like, “I’m a bit busy.” With her, it’s like, “Your comedy’s not actually that great.” There’s a real matter-of-factness and a knowingness to the fantasy, which I found really interesting. She wants to know him better than anyone else, she wants to criticize him. It’s that fantasy of love. Feeling seen, and knowing someone better than anyone else.
I always used to imagine her going home and improvising in her head how the next day might go. The thing about Donny is sometimes he was even better than her improvisations. When she says, “I want the Scotch broth, I’m just trying to figure out if it’s on the menu.” I always imagined she had freestyled that in her head a little bit beforehand, so when he says it’s not, she’s disappointed, but then he goes, “You want to find out the specials?” She wouldn’t have even dreamed he’d say something like that back. I think there are so many moments where it feels inevitable to her that they’re a couple.
DEADLINE: I’ve seen some footage of Richard’s stand-up. Some of Donny’s jokes are lifted wholesale from that. I think he’s being harsh in the way he suggests it is too esoteric for anyone to like.
GUNNING: Have you really seen it, though? I’m not sure he’s being too harsh [laughs]. Oh, don’t tell him I said that.
DEADLINE: No second season for you! But it certainly does play better in context than it does in the show.
GUNNING: Yeah, even on the day in the nightclub with some of those props, he was ad-libbing a bit, and the crowd was really laughing. He is naturally funny, but he does love that kind of anti-comedy bit. One of mine and Richard’s favorite scenes is where Martha comes back in the pub after she’s been banned, and she’s mocking him with the other barman. It’s such a great scene because it’s so charged and revengeful, but it’s funny too.
DEADLINE: How much did it weigh on you that you were helping to tell a story that had personally affected your co-star in such profound ways?
GUNNING: I try hard to articulate how I feel about Richard, and I can’t really put it into words because I don’t have another person I feel the same way about. I think a lot of people who meet him feel an instant protectiveness towards him; you kind of want to make sure he’s OK. I fiercely admire him, and I’m in awe of him really, especially after watching Episode 4, because I obviously wasn’t part of filming those days. I was aware it was happening, and I was checking in on him, and Weronika was obviously amazing throughout all of that. I was checking in on her too, because it was so traumatizing for everyone, really.
The whole of the crew I think found that whole time very, very intense. Tom Goodman-Hill who plays Darrien, who I know as well, he was amazing, but obviously that is a really tough ask of any actor to have to go through that and go home at the end of the day. It’s so strange to do it, especially when they know it’s based on a true thing that happened to the actual person that’s in those scenes.
When we were doing the show, I felt a constant connection to Richard just because of the nature of everything, but also being Martha meant I studied him in a way I probably wouldn’t have with most people. I can really read his face now, so I know if he’s doing OK or not. If we’re doing interviews together, I can tell, “Oh, he’s feeling something right now.”
We had an intense seven months together, filming the show, but for him there was the whole aftermath too, because he was really involved in the edit. His life has been Baby Reindeer for nearly two years now. So, it’s great to see him now, while all this praise is happening, because he just feels lighter.
DEADLINE: That’s good to hear given the way the show has provoked discussion in the tabloid press.
GUNNING: Yeah, it’s great to see and I do think he’s in a really good place at the moment. I think we were all worried about how he was doing during the shoot, because he was having to relive it all every day. It would take a toll on anybody, let alone someone who has been through what he’s been through. But I think the response with some of the charities he’s worked with has been immense.
DEADLINE: It’s interesting, because the other conversation has really swallowed those charity statistics, which he spoke about to me, in the press reporting on the show. It’s almost like there’s an agenda there.
GUNNING: I know. That’s why I’m his champion in every interview we have; I just shout it from the rooftops, because I think it required a real sacrifice from him to show us what he showed us. Everything that happened to him, especially in Episode 4, he suffered to relive it, and if it made one person feel less alone, or one person able to go and tell their family what they went through, how amazing is that?
There have been so many shows, films, and plays that I’ve watched that have literally changed my life. I know that’s why I’m in the industry, because the fact that art has changed my life is what made me want to be an actor. You want work, obviously, and when you’re an actor you’re lucky to get what you can, but when you can do work that really changes people’s lives, that’s amazing.
This is an industry that’s seen as entertainment, as escapism, which of course it is. People go to watch those Marvel films to feel great and get sent into a different world. But sometimes people want to watch things to be moved, and challenged, and seen, and all that.
Before Baby Reindeer came out, I think they predicted that 7% of the Netflix audience would watch it. But now that it’s just gone absolutely stratospheric, it’s mad. You realize how many different kinds of people are watching it and feeling something in it. It’s pretty incredible.
Some of the worst parts of the press around the show, I think they can’t possibly have watched it. They’ll say things like, “He led her on,” and you’re like, “Yes, he did, and that’s the point he makes in the show.”
The thing that I hadn’t realized before is how they seem to get away with outright lies. There are quotes from me where I know I’ve never said them, and yet they just put them out as if they’re fact. We’ve deliberately not spoken about any of the stories like that which have circulated, because it’s not the point of the show. Like Richard said in his statement, none of us have made any comment on anything, but there’ve been things that have said we have, and you want to fight and ask for a correction, but actually you just have to throw up your hands and say — whatever the phrase is — “Tomorrow’s chip paper.”
It’s Richard’s life. It’s his story and what happened to him, and I think that’s another way I get protective, because it’s not just trivial stuff. It’s someone being really brave and putting themselves out there. If those stories are misinformation, or they’re wrong, then that’s really frustrating. But you have to just hope that most people are seeing the show for what it is and taking the right things away.
I don’t think anyone expected the show to be as massive as it was, and I think inevitably people want to tear down things that are successful and go, “We’re sick to death of hearing about this now.”
DEADLINE: Richard said he must try and remember that for every negative comment about the show, there are two or three more praising it, or saying that it has helped them.
GUNNING: So many comments like that. In so many directions. Nava [Mau], who plays Teri, says her life has been transformed by the response she’s had from the trans community and the Latin community. We saw her while we were over in New York, and she said she hasn’t seen anything like it. She’s so brilliant in the show, and her character is so refreshing, and she’s the heart of it, really. You root for them so much, and you’re gutted when it doesn’t work out.
This is such a rich show, and there are so many responses to it that aren’t dominating the headlines. But they’re happening.
DEADLINE: Where do you go from here?
GUNNING: Well, I’m slightly worried that nothing will compare [laughs], though I’m hoping that isn’t true. Doing [2014 movie] Pride is a good flag post for me, really, because I’ve done so many things I’m proud to have been a part of, but they’ve maybe been a little lighter on the ground since Pride. When Martha came along, I think that’s why I really fought for her, because normally I am very “what will be will be” with auditions. But with this, I suddenly became a different person who was like, “You have to give this to me because I know how to do it.”
I hope it doesn’t take another 17 years for a character like this to come along, but I fear it may because I don’t know how many parts there are that are this rich. I think the danger now is that I’m not looking for another Martha, but beyond that I’m not going to worry too much about what’s next. Business as usual.
And I’m enjoying the response to the show and enjoying talking about it, which has been great. It opens doors to opportunities and chats with people that you never thought you would speak to, which is amazing because so many people have seen it and want to talk to you about it, which is great. Maybe some sort of collaboration might come from that with a new director or writer or interesting person.
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