Richard Gadd has admitted there are things he’s still adjusting to in the wake of the Baby Reindeer’s massive success.
The Scottish performer is the writer and star of the Netflix drama, which became a global hit when it began streaming earlier this year.
Baby Reindeer is largely inspired by Richard’s own experiences of being stalked, but also touches on themes like sexual assault, mental health and toxic masculinity.
During a wide-ranging new interview with Deadline, the comedian and writer disclosed that he’s “still struggling” with some of Baby Reindeer’s themes.
“I still have my dark days,” he admitted, adding: “There are still days where, despite the fact I’ve now got nothing to hide because I’ve explored every dark corner of myself and put it on screen, I wake up and I struggle with the trauma.
“Like it’s as fresh as it was when it was happening, when I was young, all the way back then.”
Richard went on to share that being so publicly “twinned” with his past trauma is also a hard adjustment.
“I have my comments turned off on Instagram, but occasionally I’ll do collaboration posts where the comments can’t be hidden, and some of them are just so brutal,” he explained.
“People can’t understand why I would have gone back [to my abuser]. I try not to read the comments, but it can be hard, and occasionally someone will send you something, like, ‘Ignore this person’. They are so extreme.
“There have been times where the negativity surrounding the show results in people saying things like, ‘You knew what you were getting yourself into’, and I think, ‘God, I put my personal life on screen as a commodity, and will I ever get a sense of privacy back?’.
“Those have been the daunting times in the past three or four months, where I read something, or someone shouts something at me on the street, and I realise I’m twinned with this now. And that’s fine, because the majority of people are really kind and understanding, but there is definitely a section of society that has splintered off. They don’t want to hear about this stuff anymore, they can’t accept the nuances of it, and they think that I was, I don’t know, asking for it. That’s very hard to live with.”
“I sometimes think to myself that I don’t know why I expected there to be a sphere of respect around it, because it was so dark, because it was so personal,” he added.
“There are times where I wobble and I think, ‘God, this is kind of tough’, but I have to remember that other people are responding to it in the way I intended, and I have to cling onto the positives.”
Baby Reindeer recently found itself back in the headlines, when a woman claiming to have inspired the Martha character filed a lawsuit worth more than £100,000 in damages against Netflix for “defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, gross negligence” and “violations of [her] right to privacy”.
The streaming service has vowed to “defend this matter vigorously”, insisting they also stood by Richard’s “right to tell his story”.