The Fife writer behind Baby Reindeer has revealed the “daunting” moments he has been shouted at in the street over the controversial Netflix show.
Richard Gadd, from Wormit, says he has also received abusive comments online since the series hit the streaming service earlier this year.
The former Madras College pupil became a household name overnight when the show – which claims to portray his real-life experiences of being stalked and sexually assaulted by a woman – became the most-watched show on Netflix in April.
However, it has since been the subject of intense public and media scrutiny after a woman who claimed to have been the inspiration for the stalker character took part in a series of interviews and launched legal action.
Richard Gadd turns comments off on Instagram after ‘brutal’ abuse
In an interview with US title Deadline, Gadd revealed how he has had to cope with his newfound fame.
He said: “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.
“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’.
“I think, ‘God, I put my personal life on screen as a commodity, and will I ever get a sense of privacy back?'”
Fife Baby Reindeer writer ‘shouted at in street’
He continued: “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.”
The 35-year-old, who first launched Baby Reindeer as a one-man theatre show, hopes that the Netflix series will have a positive impact on viewers.
He said: “I hope that the legacy of Baby Reindeer that remains is really the kind of good that it did.
“The charity stuff, the comments from people who were moved by the show, and the way it helped them understand themselves.
“I think trauma responses are so difficult to understand when you’re going through them.
“To see a trauma response play out on a television show, I think, has been very comforting to people.”
Gadd has previously responded to Fiona Harvey’s lawsuit against Netflix – launched after she claimed the show’s stalker, Martha Scott, had been based on her real-life interactions with the Fife actor.
Conversation