Richard Gadd of Baby Reindeer addressed his “toxic empathy problem” when discussing his real-life stalker “Martha” in a Netflix panel Tuesday for Television Academy members in Los Angeles.
A Netflix limited series based on Gadd’s endless, real-life encounter with a stalker, Baby Reindeer has hit the cultural zeitgeist since its release on April 11. The series topped Netflix’s Global Top 10 TV Shows chart for the week of April 29 to May 5 with 18.6 million views, equating to a staggering 73.6 million viewing hours.
Based on his 2019 one-man stage play in the UK, Gadd plays a fictionalized version of himself named Donny Dunn in Baby Reindeer, a struggling comedian making ends meet as a bartender.
After being kind to a lonely pub patron whom Gadd dubs “Martha” (Jessica Gunning) for the series, the woman begins her unrelenting pursuit of Donny — who is also being victimized by a TV writer as he tries to further his career.
While the series has been fictionalized by Gadd for legal purposes, he has previously said, “Emotionally, it’s all 100% true.”
During Netflix’s TV Academy panel (via The Hollywood Reporter), Gadd shared how he felt about Martha during the time he was being stalked by her, which he called a “toxic empathy problem” because he feels a lot for people.
“I remember in real life when I was getting stalked, it was relentless and felt like it was everywhere, and I felt like my life wasn’t really functioning,” Gadd said during the panel. “I still had these unbelievable pangs of feeling sorry for her.”
Meanwhile, the woman who claims to be the real-life Martha has come forward and is threatening to sue Gadd.
Gadd Says Listening To Martha’s Voicemails Was ‘Almost Like Poisoning My Brain’
During the four-plus years Richard Gadd was being stalked, Martha sent him more than 41,000 emails and left 350 hours of voicemails.
During the Netflix TV Academy panel, Gadd recalled what listening to Martha’s voicemails did to his psyche.
“I remember even when it was at its worst when she got my phone number and I got advice to listen to the voicemails because if someone is threatening you, things can be sped up where it can move from harassment to an actual dangerous situation,” Gadd said (via THR).
“I remember [thinking] ‘Oh, my God. All I’m doing is listening and it’s almost like poisoning my brain,” Gadd added. “She would say something in one of these voicemails and I would just be like, ‘Oh, my God, at the end of the day she’s someone who’s just in a lot of pain.’”
As such, Gadd said during the Netflix panel it was important to get that point of Martha’s pain across in the story instead of, “Woe is me, isn’t my life difficult. This person is stalking me.”
Ultimately in Martha, Gadd said during the panel, he never “saw someone who was a villain.”
“I saw someone who was kind of lost by the system, really,” he added. “I saw someone who needed help and wasn’t getting it.”
In addition to the millions of viewers who have streamed Baby Reindeer, the series has found its biggest proponent in legendary horror novelist Stephen King, who recently published an essay to discuss how the series impacted him.
Baby Reindeer is streaming on Netflix.
