Baby Reindeer star Richard Gadd’s life after the hit Netflix show based on a true story
- Fame was always going to be interesting for a man who created a TV show about his actual experience dealing with a stalker
A couple of Saturdays after Baby Reindeer premiered on Netflix, its star and creator, Richard Gadd, learned that he was the most Googled man on planet Earth. Or maybe he topped all searches on Wikipedia. Or it might have been both.
It is a lot to wrap your head around. What does it mean? Obviously, people want to learn something about you – who you are, what you have done, if you are in a relationship, that sort of thing.
This kind of massive, collective curiosity can be flattering. Me? You want to know more about little old me? Or, if you, like Gadd, have created a television show based on your actual experience dealing with a stalker and how your own traumatic past informed that experience, you might be a little freaked out.
On a practical level, having the most-watched series on Netflix for a couple of months running means that when you pop over from your London flat to the pub to have a drink with some mates before the Pogues gig at the Hackney Empire, you literally cannot move because people have swarmed you.
Then when Gadd went to the concert, in part a tribute to the band’s late frontman, Shane MacGowan, the same thing happened.
“But I got to meet the Pogues, and that was great,” Gadd says. “And they’d all watched the show, which I couldn’t believe, having idolised them my whole life. [Accordion player] James Fearnley said he was on his second go, which is just crazy.”