Baby Reindeer is the new Netflix show that has found popularity for all sorts of reasons. It’s not just the content that has the audiences intrigued, but the real incident itself. Then there’s the aftermath of the show, which has considerable details. If we look at the bigger picture, there’s just too much to follow and making sense of the timeline is going to be a task.
Here, we put things together so you know what has been happening:
The miniseries that released in April of this year was conceived by lead actor Richard Gadd, and features him as Donny Dunn, a character based on himself. It is inspired by Gadd’s real-life experiences of being stalked by a woman while he was trying to make it big in the comedy scene. The show has found a lot of attention for how it is made; however, audiences have been keen on finding more about the real people who have inspired the show.
The show incorporates actual messages and emails that Gadd received from his stalker, which some viewers verified on social media. Within a month of the show’s release, people claimed to have identified the woman who stalked Gadd. There was also speculation that the character who assaulted Donny was based on writer, actor, and producer Sean Foley. Gadd then had to ask viewers to not speculate around who the characters were based on.
After all these assumptions that surrounded the show, Piers Morgan announced on May 8 that he had interviewed the real-life Martha. Fiona Harvey, who’s allegedly the real Martha, shared her side of the story during the interview. She says that she studied law in Aberdeen. During the interview, Fiona initially denied any exchange of emails, but later mentioned that she did send a few of them.
While promoting the show, Gadd had said that he associates a sense of toxic empathy with Martha. He said, “I saw someone who was lost by the system, really. I saw someone who needed help and wasn’t getting it. At the end of the day, she’s just someone who’s in a lot of pain.”
The aftermath of the release of the show and everything else that has happened around it, has raised a number of questions as well. A number of people think that following the real-life Martha and extracting content from her is ethically problematic. All of this makes sense, and it comes down to drawing the line between being mere observers and holding a media trial.