Richard Gadd on ‘Baby Reindeer’ fame and what he won’t comment on

Richard Gadd as Donny in Baby Reindeer

Ed Miller/Netflix

On a recent Friday, Richard Gadd ducked into a London pub before seeing his favorite band, the Pogues, take the stage. A quiet evening with friends quickly turned into a fan frenzy in the face of Netflix’s enormous popularity. Baby reindeerthe critically acclaimed limited series that Gadd created and stars in, based on traumatic real-life experiences.

“It was chaos, it was chaos,” he says of the scene that unfolded as customers, one after another, rushed to share stories of how whose seven episodes had affected them. “I thought, ‘Oh, I can’t really go to pubs anymore and expect to sit quietly in a corner and eat.’ » A similar situation occurred on the plane when Gadd flew to Los Angeles for press and appearances in early May, as pilots left the cockpit upon learning he was a passenger. “It was quite surreal. I still don’t consider myself famous.

While Netflix’s global reach has made anonymity a thing of the past for Gadd, audiences are catching up to what theatergoers in Scotland and England have long known: Richard Gadd is a sensation. He’s been putting on award-winning one-man shows for years now by harnessing these traumas – experiencing sexual assault followed by several years of harassment – ​​and translating them for the stage. The first came What the monkey sees, the monkey does followed by Baby reindeerwhich Netflix picked up as a television adaptation.

The limited series, created by and starring Gadd, casts him as Donny Dunn, a struggling comedian who meets a lonely woman at the bar where he works. The chance encounter, during which he offers her a free cup of tea, unfolds over several months as Martha (played by Jessica Gunning) reveals herself to be a dangerous serial stalker. Over several years, she sent him more than 41,000 emails, 744 tweets, 100 pages of letters and 350 hours of voicemails.

During this trip to Los Angeles, The Hollywood Reporter got 30 minutes on Gadd’s itinerary for a sit-down interview, which covered the epiphany that led him to become an artist, how he overcame early failures and why he won’t launch into his next TV series for the BBC. The conversation, which took place before his alleged stalker’s on-camera exclusive with Piers Morgan, also allowed Gadd to explain why his characters’ real-life identities are something he plans to avoid for good : ” I do not do it. I think I will comment on this again one day.

When did you first become aware of performance art as an art form?

The turning point for me came when I performed in a school play. I had these amazing drama teachers (Robin and Patricia), who cared so much about me. They really encouraged me and wanted me to audition. I didn’t understand Shakespeare at all at that time, but I understood him anyway and they cast me as Macbeth. I just went on the journey and started enjoying learning lines and rehearsing and getting into character. I think we ended up doing four shows at the Byre Theater in St. Andrews (in Fife, Scotland). I remember it was like a drug, like adrenaline. I had a revelation on stage while playing Macbeth that I wanted to try my life.

How old were you at the time?

I was 16 years old.

Did this revelation lead you to Oxford?

My parents were very keen that I go to university. I thought it also made sense to be able to try to get a degree, so that if something happened, I would have qualifications to fall back on. I went to the University of Glasgow to study English Literature and Drama, but spent much of my time writing plays and performing on stage. That’s where I discovered stand-up comedy. After finishing university I went to drama school and that’s how I found my way to the Oxford School of Drama.

One-man shows have played an important role in your career. When did you discover this as a genre or why were you drawn to this type of performance?

It’s something that made sense when I was doing comedy. I did the comedy circuit in the UK, and it never went very well. The representation of what appears in Baby reindeer is actually very true to life. I was doing some really wacky comedy, it was quite anti-comedy and subversive and a lot of it just didn’t work out. The comedy club crowd in the UK really wants something they can rely on, and I haven’t given it to them.

When it came to creating a number and putting it on for an hour, I felt like I could create an atmosphere at places like the Edinburgh Festival. It’s different from a comedy night where people come in with preconceived ideas of what it was going to be like. I had an hour to work with the audience, and this kind of wacky, subversive style seemed to work for a one-man show format. That’s when I saw my career take off when I started performing on hour-long comedy sets rather than five, ten or twenty minutes.

The representation of these settings in Baby reindeer Made me think about the fearlessness it took to stay up there when things weren’t working out. How did you experience failure?

There have been many failures. I just had an innate belief that one way or another, everything would be okay. I actually really struggle with that kind of self-confidence in performance. I get really nervous before going on stage and I vomit a lot before going out. I could be performing in front of an audience of five at Aces & Eights in London – a truly pressure-free gig – and I’d be backstage within moments. I’ve always had a brain that leads me to catastrophize the worst possible scenario, or suggest that I will have a death so bad that I will never be able to recover from it. I’ve had some pretty serious deaths and I’ve gotten over them. Some actors refused to be in a green room with me because my nervous energy was so contagious. I really believed I would find something that might strike a chord. To be a good artist, you have to walk the tightrope between confidence and self-doubt. If you have too much, you collapse. It’s riding this line that has, in large part, brought me to where I am today.

We talked about failure, but there was a lot of success. You won a Chortle Student Comedy Award in 2011, earning you numerous accolades for your one-man shows. What impact has this recognition had on your work?

Any form of recognition was essential at the time. I have always been a workaholic and put myself into everything. I would go to the Edinburgh Festival and have these blockbuster shows that were sold out and really busy. But I always thought that when September came and the festival was over, the attention would immediately shift away from me. All the little things along the way – the competition finals and the awards ceremony – reminded me that I was on the right track.

Rereading descriptions of your early work, critics called it grindhouse comedy, and one newspaper described you as “one of the UK’s most exciting, unique and troubled comedians.” How did the first shows go, like Cheese and crack whoresdefine what kind of artist you wanted to be?

People have dubbed this series of shows the Grindhouse trilogy, Cheese and crack whores, Breaking Gadd And Waiting for Gaddot. The shows were quite punky, at first glance, anarchic and pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. I joked about themes that I struggled with in real life, whether it was breakups or abuse, but not in the meaningful way that I did later in my career. At the time, I didn’t really know how to articulate what I wanted to say, so I threw it all at the audience in a pretty shocking and upsetting way. They were good shows and I think they were pretty funny but my job changed What the monkey sees, the monkey does From. I think back to the Grindhouse trilogy as I try to find my place.