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.
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. 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.
2. The real MarthaIt 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. The woman, whom the Daily Mail is choosing not to name, is 58, originally from Stirling, and lives in a council flat in London. Donny Dunn is shown working as a barman at a London pub called The Heart, the place where he first encounters Martha.
'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.' 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.
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. 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.
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.
This week author Richard Osman said on his The Rest Is Entertainment podcast that 'people in the industry know who that person is'. 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.