Baby Reindeer fans divided after Richard Gadd accused of “not doing enough” to protect stalker

After fans tried to find the identity of his real-life stalker, Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd has been accused of not doing enough to protect them.

In the week following the show’s release on Netflix, fans of Baby Reindeer have been intent on unmasking who Richard Gadd’s stalker was in real life, with the limited series based on Gadd’s true experiences.

As a result, people have been publicly named and wrongly accused — which has now led to Richard Gadd himself being accused of “not doing enough” to protect his actual stalker.

“How can he say they went to great lengths to protect her identity?! They literally changed her name and nothing else. Surely they knew this would happen,” one fan posted on X/Twitter in response to the show’s release.

A now-deleted tweet agreed: “It bothers me that the show didn’t do enough to conceal her identity in the first instance. If it’s not her, then they’ve implicated the wrong person. And if it is, well who knows how she would take it. So wrong. And like you say, missed the point of the show.”

Other fans disagreed, stating: “He wrote one of the decade’s most compelling and heartbreaking pieces of television about trauma and its unparalleled ability to manifest itself in our every interaction with the world around us… and people are slamming him for “not doing enough” to hide the identity of his violent, abusive stalker? Wtf?”

Baby Reindeer focuses on the story of Donny, played by Richard Gadd. While working at a pub alongside struggling as a comedian, Donny is stalked by Martha (Jessica Gunning), leading to her eventual jailing. No details of who Martha is based on are revealed in the show — though her real emails are used in between scenes — nor has Gadd directly addressed the subject in follow-up interviews.

However, police investigations are now taking place after Sean Foley was falsely accused as being Gadd’s abuser, which is a plot featured in Episode 4. As a result, Gadd released a statement on social media, commenting: “People I love, have worked with, and admire (including Sean Foley) are unfairly getting caught up in speculation. Please don’t speculate on who the real-life people could be. That’s not the point of our show.”

Gadd also told the Radio Times: “But obviously, we’ve had to protect other people to protect ourselves, we’ve had to change all the specific details of the characters because… it leaves everyone open to too much vulnerability on both sides.”

Actress Jessica Gunning additionally revealed in the same interview that she “decided on purpose not to know much about the real person because it’s not really helpful”.

You can check out our breakdown of Baby Reindeer’s ending and 10 movies and TV shows to watch next.