The Timeline of 'Baby Reindeer' Explained
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The whole internet is lapping up Baby Reindeer; the Netflix series based on the true story of Richard Gadd, who was stalked by a woman he met in the pub. But when did the incident actually take place?
The eight part series dropped on the streaming platform last Friday [April 12, 2024], and follows Donny, a man working in a pub while trying to make it as a stand up comedian. One day, Martha walks in and sits at the bar, claiming she can't afford to buy a drink. When Donny offers her one on the house, a friendship begins to unfold—but quickly turns sinister when she begins flooding his inbox with unsolicited advances, eventually stalking and sexually assaulting him. But when did this actually happen?
Baby Reindeer timeline explained
Netflix's Baby Reindeer is an adaptation of a one-man play of the same name, which Richard put on at Edinburgh Film festival in 2019. In The Guardian review at the time, they said the ordeal with Martha had taken place "six years" prior to the show, when he had taken pity on Martha when she propped up at the pub bar. That would mean it took place around 2013.
Richard would have been 23 years old at the time—as he's now 34—while Martha was two decades older. Within a year, the situation had worsened; not only had he had to move house, but Martha had been harassing his parents, while she had also sexually assaulted him, and would turn up at all of his comedy shows.
While some reports claim the ordeal took place over three years, others claim it was a four and a half year struggle, until around 2017.
During that time, Martha sent a total of 40,000 emails, 740 tweets, 350 voicemails as well as hundreds of letters in that time. When Richard eventually went to the police, he told The Guardian in 2019 he was "getting told off for harassing the police about being harassed." The police told him that as the messages weren't threatening or violent, there wasn't anything they could do about it.
Instead, The Times say, "he had to prove the threat by recording all her messages and trawling through them for times she was threatening him or people round him—a task that consumed him because there were so many of them."
In the Netflix adaptation, Martha ends up with a three year prison sentence. In real life, Richard's unable to confirm where she is, so it's unclear what has happened to Martha. "[But] it is resolved," he shared. "'I had mixed feelings about it—I didn’t want to throw someone who was that level of mentally unwell in prison."
Baby Reindeer is now streaming on Netflix.
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