The alleged real-life stalker from Baby Reindeer has spoken out following the show’s success on Netflix.
An unnamed woman, who claims to be the inspiration behind Jessica Gunning’s Martha in the new, popular series, told the Daily Mail she was considering legal action for defamation following the release of the Richard Gadd project.
Baby Reindeer follows Gadd’s Donny Dunn, a struggling comedian who encounters a lonely woman at the bar where he works. The chance encounter, during which he offers her a free cup of tea, spirals over several months as Martha is revealed to be a dangerous, serial stalker. Over the course of multiple years, she sent him more than 41,000 emails, 744 tweets, 100 pages of letters and 350 hours of voicemails.
While speaking with the tabloid, the woman insisted that Gadd was actually the one obsessed with her. “He’s using Baby Reindeer to stalk me now,” she said. “I’m the victim. He’s written a bloody show about me.”
She claimed that Gadd’s script amounted to “bullying an older woman on television for fame and fortune” and that, despite his attempts to hide her identity, she has received online “death threats and abuse from Richard Gadd supporters.”
While Netflix billed the show as a true story, Gadd previously explained that he couldn’t tell the exact story for legal and artistic reasons, noting that he must take certain protections. The show’s creator even went as far as to ask his followers to stop trying to deduce Baby Reindeer‘s real-life characters, including the successful TV writer who mentored Donny only to take advantage of him.
“People I love, have worked with, and admire (including Sean Foley) are unfairly getting caught up in speculation,” Gadd posted in an Instagram Story on Monday that has since expired. “Please don’t speculate on who any of the real life people could be. That’s not the point of our show.”
Foley also responded to people speculating that he was the person who groomed Gadd and took advantage of him, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that “police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory abusive and threatening posts against me.”