This article features slight spoilers about Baby Reindeer, so read with caution if you haven't yet watched with a Netflix subscription.
It’s safe to say that Baby Reindeer is making a case for itself as one of Netflix’s best shows at the moment. Scottish talent Richard Gadd created, wrote, and starred in the black comedy drama-thriller chronicling his scary real-life encounters with a stalker named Martha who constantly showed up at his bar. Having made itself at home in the #1 spot on the streaming service's Top 10 series, the show's popularity inspired a woman claiming to be the "real" stalker to call out the series and Gadd himself, saying she's the real victim here.
With Baby Reindeer being viewed more than 13 million times in the past two weeks, which turned it into the number one TV show in at least 13 countries, fans obsessed with the new Netflix series took it upon themselves to be internet sleuths to find out who the real “Martha” stalker was. The alleged real-life stalker, whose name remains unpublicized, has spoken to Daily Mail about Baby Reindeer claiming she received “online threats and abuse from Richard Gadd supporters” and says she's been “bullied” because of the TV show. In her words:
He's using Baby Reindeer to stalk me now. I'm the victim. He's written a bloody show about me.
Within the 2024 Netflix series, Richard Gadd's bartender Donny offers the distraught and lonely Martha a cup of tea on the house, and that small act of kindness sparked an obsessive fixation with Donny that led to him receiving 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, 106 pages of letters, and 350 hours of voicemail messages from Martha, over the course of four and a half years.
The person declaring themselves to be the real “Martha” is a 58-year-old woman who lives by herself in a council flat in central London, with her food budget of £30 a week being noted. While show creator Richard Gladd claimed his “lightly fictionalized” miniseries changed key details about Martha to protect her identity, the two versions do apparently share similar qualifications.
Both Marthas are Scottish, were university law students, and are about two decades older than Gadd/Donny, and both used highly sexualized language in both verbal and written communication. In fact, Daily Mail claimed the physical resemblances are also similar, even though the unidentified woman said the on-screen counterpart would only look like her if she “put on four stone during lockdown.”
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While the two Marthas may share similarities, the alleged “Martha” had disputes of her own about the show. For instance, we find out towards the end of the show that Martha gives Donny the nickname “Baby Reindeer” based on a cuddly toy reindeer she had as a child. The woman who claimed she’s “Martha” said otherwise, claiming the toy reindeer wasn't real, and that such conversations with Gadd never happened.
The alleged “Martha” has also denied claims of being a stalker, and accused Richard Gadd of “main character syndrome” at the point of threatening legal action against him.
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.
Fans have been very supportive to Richard Gadd for reliving his traumatic experiences through the (presuambly) limited series after first bringing the obsession-fueled tale to life through his one-man show of the same name, which turned out to be an award-winning hit. Gadd told The Guardian back in 2019 that he was aware his stage show would possibly agitate his stalker, but felt it was worth the risk.
While publicizing the project elsewhere, the Scottish actor has claimed that issues between him and "Martha" were resolved, but it looks like the alleged real-world stalker doesn't exactly feel the same way if she's claiming to be the "victim" after all that.
