Richard Gadd's Baby Reindeer

Or, Pulling Doubles in the Emotional Trauma Mines.

Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer is phenomenal. Let’s get that out of the way. Streaming on Netflix (which has been on a heater; see The Gentlemen and Ripley), the show chronicles what happens when Donnie Dunn (played by writer/creator Richard Gadd) becomes a stalker’s object of fascination. That’s the elevator pitch.

But that’s not what the show’s about.

My wife and I watched all seven episodes in two nights. We don’t binge shows, but Reindeer hooked us from the start. It generated in me a sense of anxiety I tend to get in only tall buildings or dentist’s offices; this tight, bubbling sensation in the pit of my stomach. Credit both Gadd and Jessica Gunning as Martha, Dunn’s obsessive, mentally ill stalker. The two are believable, disturbing, sad, empathetic, and—above all—human. Dunn, working a day job as a pub bartender, offers the pitiful Martha a tea on the house. The kindness triggers an obsession; Martha spends all day at Dunn’s job, spits graphic sexual innuendo at him, and blows up his email with misspelled, disturbing messages one might find in a horror movie. Dunn discovers Martha’s arrests, incarceration, and disbarment, and his concern grows. But he continues to act in ways that allow her to remain in his life. All his efforts to end the stalking are half-measures. Because deep down, Dunn welcomes the attention. He craves it. Because Dunn is a damaged soul processing his trauma.

That’s what the show’s really about.

Baby Reindeer chronicles Dunn’s grooming and eventual rape at the hands of a TV writer, his struggles with his sexuality, his need for attention (Dunn’s standup persona is an over-the-top “anti-comic”), his failure to launch (Dunn’s living with his ex-girlfriend’s mother), his dicey relationship with his father, and his loneliness. Which makes for a compelling fiction.

Thing is, all of this happened, more or less, to Richard Gadd. Reindeer is advertised by Netflix as a true story. Or, as Gadd describes it, “an emotionally true story”. And that’s where this get complicated.

In an interview with Variety, Gadd describes—a bit vaguely, due to British laws—how the seeds of the plot came from his own lived experience. Gadd was the target of a stalker (though he’s not concerned about the show reviving her obsession “due to where things ended”). Gadd dated a trans woman (“…a long time ago. And that’s all I can really say”). Gadd was the victim of sexual assault, an event brutally depicted in Reindeer (hard truth: if you want men to care more about rape, show them episode four; it is harrowing). The attack made Gadd question his sexuality and traditional gender roles. He explored those themes in his 2016 stage show, Monkey See Monkey Do. Then, in 2019 he mounted Baby Reindeer, another raw, honest, art-as-therapy-fest built upon his own life.

Monkey See Monkey Do and the Baby Reindeer stage show brought Gadd a measure of success; the Netflix series has sent him into the stratosphere. As of this writing, the show was the streamer’s most popular title. It has seeped into my social feeds and news subs. My writer and non-writer friends are talking about it. The attention’s well-deserved; as a piece of art, it is stunningly effective. But, knowing its true-ish backstory, as we binged the series I kept bumping against something. Though I couldn’t articulate what.

Then episode six hit, and my issues became clear.

In it, Donnie Dunn performs at a comedy festival in the aftermath of a beating given to him by Martha, his stalker. After his opening jokes bomb, a switch inside Dunn is flipped. Dunn/Gadd settles onto a stool and delivers a ten-minute monologue describing, in gutting detail, his rape, his sexuality, his failings, his emptiness. The writing here is absurdly powerful, as is Gadd’s delivery. But there’s something about this scene, this episode—hell, the entire Reindeer project—that speaks to my reservations about our cultural moment.

In the show, Dunn, struggling to breakout as a “traditional” comedian, pivots to extreme honesty. A patron records his speech, and the video goes viral. Dunn’s career flourishes; he does interviews, books larger theaters. For the first time in his life, he is in demand. All it took was Dunn the Character to share the pain he’s suffered. Which was written by Gadd the Writer, who shares the pain he’s suffered. It’s a hyper-meta dissection of how trauma fuels art, and only by sharing that trauma does Dunn (and Gadd) become successful.

All art comes from personal experience. And all good art, I think, comes from pain. Anyone who creates is processing their lives and place in the world. If you’re content and confident your novel probably sucks. Or maybe you’re just a better writer than me. I don’t know.

I do know we seem to be sliding toward a merging of art and life. We share and overshare on social media (though that wave may be receding). Our therapy-centric culture pushes us to talk (and talk, and talk, and talk…) about our pain. Pain suggests suffering, suffering suggests victimhood, and victimhood offers us a platform. And platforms are inherently appealing. They provide a way to be heard—social media networks are called platforms—something with which many of us are struggling. I sure as shit am; it’s why I’m a writer.

Over two stage shows and one TV series, Gadd has perfected the modern art of trauma mining. I have complicated feelings about this. I admire him. I’m jealous of him. I’m in awe of him. I’m disappointed by him.

Pain creates art, but not all art needs to be about pain.

Even as I complain, I can relate; I’ve been in and out of therapy and have a complicated relationship with my mother. My familial relationships inform everything I write, consciously or otherwise. And great writers have long produced work built on their own lives (Zadie Smith, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Douglas Stuart).

But there is something about Gadd’s success and the resonance of his suffering that I find disturbing. Are we living in a world where our only means of connection is through the recognition and validation of one another’s pain? Has endless doomscrolling produced this need to see someone else scream, “I’m hurting!” as loud as they can, because it will make our own pain inaudible, however briefly? I don’t know. I do know I don’t want all fiction to become some version of memoir.

But even as I write that, I have to reiterate just how compelling Baby Reindeer is. And maybe that, in the end, is all that matters.