Baby Reindeer creator and star Richard Gadd is opening up a bit more about the central storyline. He says he doesn’t see his stalker as a villain but a real three-dimensional person.
Gadd appeared at a For Your Consideration event for TV Academy members on May 7. He sat alongside co-stars Nava Mau and Jessica Gunning as well as editor Peter Oliver and director Weronika Tofilska.
The actor said he’s struggled a bit on the emotional side. For one, Gadd has a lot of empathy for the woman. The actor explained that his empathy can be toxic in its own way. Of the stalking incident, Gadd admitted, “I struggle with a sort of toxic empathy problem.”
Gadd said the stalking was “relentless” with the woman in question feeling like she “was everywhere.” The actor also admitted that he was going through a tough time during this period and “wasn’t really function” as well. Despite all of this, Gadd said he still had “these unbelievable pangs of feeling sorry for her.”
Richard Gadd Talks Stalking
Gadd would listen to her voicemails and feel a lot of pity for the woman. “She’d say something in one of these voicemails, and I would be like, ‘Oh my god, at the end of the day, she’s just someone who’s in a lot of pain,'” he said. He said that it was important to portray the stalker as a person on Netflix. He said “way more important” than presenting the story as “woe is me.”
Gadd concluded, “I never saw someone who was a villain. I saw someone who was lost by the system, really. I saw someone who needed help and wasn’t getting it.”
Meanwhile, the woman who claims to be Gadd’s real-life stalker said that the show had it backwards. She said that he’s using the show to stalk her. “He’s using Baby Reindeer to stalk me now,” she said via Daily Mail. “I’ve never owned a toy baby reindeer and I wouldn’t have had any conversation with Richard Gadd about a childhood toy either.”
She said, “He always thinks he’s at the centre of things. I’m not writing shows about him or promoting them in the media, am I? If he wanted me to be properly anonymous, he could have done so. Gadd should leave me alone.”
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