Stephen King is the king of horror and, unsurprisingly, an inspirational figure for many filmmakers. This was also the case for Richard Gadd, author of the screenplay and protagonist of “Baby Reindeer”, which arrived on Netflix on Thursday, April 11th.
The inspirations are notable. There is, however, one big difference: the most tense moments are characterized by comedy scenes — something that rarely happens in King’s work. The film stars Jessica Gunning as the stalker and Richard Gadd plays the prey.
“She is a serial stalker with a criminal past. He is an aspiring comedian who works in a bar in London. One act of kindness was enough to generate an unhealthy obsession”, reads the synopsis provided by the streaming platform.
Before being a feature film, “Baby Reindeer” was a play also directed by Gadd, who was inspired by his own story. The objective was to represent this crime in a different way, especially due to the impact that mental illnesses have on it.
“Television stalking tends to be very sexual and is always very mystical. It’s someone in a dark alley, someone very sexy, but then gradually becomes strange”, says the 34-year-old actor to “Hello”. “But stalking someone is the result of mental illness. I wanted to show all these layers that I had never seen on television.”
I didn’t want her character to be just a victim and Martha, the persecutor, to be just a villain. “Art becomes very interesting when we don’t know which side to take. I wanted it to capture human reality. People are good, but they also make mistakes and are evil.”
The series was born from the actor’s trauma, himself a victim of persecution by an obsessed fan. He would fall asleep with the stalker’s voicemails in his head and with the messages playing in front of his eyes. “As time went on, I realized she was a very vulnerable person who needed help. That was the truth I wanted to bring to the screen,” he explains.
Richard began to be pursued by Martha (a false name) after offering her a cup of tea in a bar where he worked. This brief encounter began an unhealthy obsession. Over five years, the actor received 40,000 emails, 350 hours of voicemails and 100 pages of letters.
I knew immediately that this would make a good story. In 2019 she created the play “Baby Reindeer” (“Baby Reindeer”, in Portuguese), the nickname Martha had given her. That same year she won a Scotsman Fringe First Award and a Stage Award for Best Performance.
Like her stage performances, the Netflix series is very personal. When asked if there was anything he would have liked to have left out of the work to protect himself, he was honest: “There were those moments, but I think that as soon as I started to dilute myself, the public would immediately realize that something was wrong. When we are not sincere in what we write, it shows. Sometimes I felt uncomfortable, but I told everything I had to say.”
Writing the screenplay was also a form of therapy for Richard Gadd, who was once raped by a British television scriptwriter. The man invited him to his apartment and drugged him. It wasn’t until the next day that Gadd realized what had happened.
“I don’t want to speak for everyone who has been sexually assaulted, but one of the most common ramifications is that we blame ourselves. Why did I go there? Why did I do this? I lived in a prison of hatred and self-punishment for a long time. But writing chronologically and processing my trauma made me learn to have a little more empathy with myself”, he concludes.
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