Richard Gadd On Life After Baby Reindeer
November 07, 2024 at 06:25AMUnless you have been under a rock, you will have seen, or at least heard of, Baby Reindeer. This surprise Netflix hit—an autobiographical portrayal of being stalked, written by and starring comedian Richard Gadd—took the world by storm. In this thoughtful profile, Hayley Campbell meets a Gadd reeling from his success.
The strength it took to be brutally honest about all of this is what audiences felt all over the world. “I feel like Baby Reindeer stood out because a lot of work has become a little bit fearful and a little bit morally forward,” says Gadd, “and I think people are so scared of ruffling feathers and saying anything bad or presenting themselves in negative ways. And I think as a result, some humanity has been lost in some television shows.”
He hopes that the Emmy wins will draw the attention back to what the show was doing artistically, away from the legal fallout currently pending in California. But he hopes its lasting legacy is something else entirely. “A lot of referral rates for abuse charities and stalking charities are up considerably because of Baby Reindeer,” he says, listing the statistics: referrals to We Are Survivors, the male sexual abuse charity of which Gadd is an ambassador, are up 200% in website hits, 80% in referrals – and 53% of that 80% cite Baby Reindeer as the reason why they’re there. Referrals to stalking charities, he says, are up 47% on the whole. “It’s done a phenomenal amount of good in the world. I hope that people remember that as well, you know, in amongst everything.”
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/11/06/richard-gadd-on-life-after-baby-reindeer/
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