Reenacting some of the chilling scenes Richard Gadd faced in his real life assault and stalking hell reduced workers on the set of Baby Reindeer to tears.

Although it was “really tough” for the actor, he wanted to do it to provide comfort for other victims suffering abuse. Baby Reindeer has been a huge hit with Netflix fans but that’s not to say it hasn’t shocked and unsettled at the same time. The dark comedy drama follows struggling comedian and bartender Donny Dunn and his dangerous and frightening relationship with a woman named Martha who becomes his stalker.

Donny is played by actor and comedian Richard Gadd, who also wrote the seven part series. It is taken from his show of the same name that he wrote for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which was based on his personal experiences with a stalker.

In the series, Martha, played by Jessica Gunning, repeatedly visits him at the pub he works at, sits at the bar for hours on end and gives him constant, often uncomfortable compliments. She gets hold of his email address and bombards him with hundreds of messages a day, which were all taken from the actual emails Richard received from his real life stalker.

They were sent from a woman who was 20 years older than Richard and who started aggressively stalking him in 2015. The woman, who cannot be named, would shower him with gifts, turn up to his home and comedy shows and message non-stop, day and night. In 2019 he revealed the impact she had had on every aspect of his life: "I think about that rule that you need four things in your life to be happy," he told The Telegraph. "Family, love, health , career. She managed to drive a freight train through every single one of those in quite an unbelievable way."

Despite it being "almost unbearable," Richard, was and is, acutely aware that she had very serious issues and needed help. "There's an issue of co-dependency, of attachment, where this person genuinely believes that the other person is an answer to all of their problems," he told Channel 4. "I believe that the person who stalked me was a very vulnerable character. I believe she was someone to be sympathised with."

In the show, Donny falls for trans woman Teri, played by Nava Mau, which is also one of Paul's personal experiences. The relationship fell apart under the stress caused by his stalker, and Paul previously told the Independent that he regretted how things ended.

"It's in the public consciousness now, but it wasn’t back then, when I was dating," he explained. "It felt so new that it added a certain pressure, to me, that I really regret now. But that's what it explores in the show. This story was set back in a time when things were very different.

"We had all kinds of advisors – diversity advisors, trans advisors – to make sure that what we were doing was gonna be the right thing. But not in a way where the art felt compromised or anything was watered down. They were very good in terms of knowing the kind of complicated story we were trying to tell."

In the fourth episode of the series, Donny is seen on stage, spontaneously revealing he was raped. It happened at the hands of Darrien, a TV comedy writer played by Tom Goodman-Hill, who repeatedly assaults him and supplies him with drugs.

In real life, Richard revealed his abuse, three years before Baby Reindeer, in another Edinburgh Fringe show called Monkey See Monkey Do. It was a harrowing account of being exploited, manipulated and raped by an older man, early on in his career.

At the time in 2016 - pre #MeToo - Richard says sexual assault wasn’t really being talked about, especially male sexual assault. But he believes speaking out about it and sharing it saved him. "The way people received that show, and received me, and accepted what happened to me: it saved my life. It’s mad that it happened that way," he told The Guardian.

Richard, who didn’t report his assault, has worked with a charity called We Are Survivors and sometimes speaks to male victims. "I’m not an advice giver or a professional, but the first advice is: break the silence," he says. "Talk to someone, and if that’s too scary, just write it down, process it into something. Because I think the more you get it out, the smaller it becomes."

Although the actor found revisiting his trauma in the series cathartic, it has also been "triggering" and upsetting for others on set. "Yes, some of the scenes we re-enacted on set were really tough – I could even see that some of the props department were choked up, even the lighting people – but we all knew that we were pushing towards something that was important," he recalls. "I hope the show has a certain degree of greater good, and that it was worth a certain degree of self-sacrifice."

Ten years on, Richard’s stalker is now legally barred from approaching him or anyone he knows and he’s stressed how he doesn’t want anyone to attempt to track down his stalker or abuser. He's asked viewers to stop trying to become online sleuths and look for clues in the series.

"It borrows completely from an emotional truth and a lot of the instances that happen in Baby Reindeer are very truthful," he told the Radio Times. "I never really compromised on that, the energy of the characters. But obviously, we've had to protect other people to protect ourselves, we've had to change all the specific details of the characters because... it leaves everyone open to too much vulnerability on both sides."

Baby Reindeer is available to watch on Netflix now.

If you need support or advice with any of the issues raised in this article, help is available at the following organisations:

In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. The National Stalking Helpline is on 0808 802 0300 or email via their inquiry form.