Baby Reindeer’s Richard Gadd on the “Borderline Unbearable” Scrutiny of Fame, Plus What’s Next

Richard Gadd has changed. Physically, the man sitting down in the corner of a bougie London hotel lobby this past Sunday, on the morning of the BAFTA TV Awards, is more than 50 pounds of muscle heavier than the character that first brought him to the world’s attention in the unexpected Netflix megahit Baby Reindeer. He’s in a compression shirt and shorts, ready for the daily gym session he has made a part of his routine over the past nine months as he has bulked up for a new show he’s creating for the BBC and HBO. Half Man has been shooting in Glasgow in between his stops on the Baby Reindeer awards circuit.

Mentally, he’s adjusting to a life that shifted overnight in April of last year, a nosebleed transition from jobbing comedian and actor to one of television’s most scrutinized creators. It hasn’t been an easy shift; he has endured paparazzi on his doorstep, reporters tracking down his exes, and the hit of a lawsuit filed against Netflix by Fiona Harvey, the woman who claims to have been misrepresented as a stalker in Baby Reindeer, a show drawn heavily from Gadd’s past.

But Baby Reindeer’s success has been driven by the audience that discovered it on Netflix, and it has weathered the “hurricane”—as Gadd calls it—to gather up gold from awards shows, so he’s trying hard to focus on the positives. Six Primetime Emmys, including three for Gadd himself, two Golden Globes, a BAFTA craft award for Gadd’s writing (later this same evening costar Jessica Gunning will pick up a BAFTA of her own), three Independent Spirit awards, a Peabody, and wins and nominations from just about every other organization keeping an eye on the small screen. Gadd has lived a lifetime in the span of a single year, and he’s ready to get some things off his chest about the road he’s taken to get here.

Vanity Fair: You appeared on the red carpet at last year’s BAFTA TV Awards as a presenter, amid the first flush of success for Baby Reindeer. A year later, you return as a multiple nominee. How has it felt?

Richard Gadd: I was so new to the whole thing—I had no idea how any of this would work. I remember they told me, “We’re going to do an Emmys campaign.” I was like, “What’s a campaign? What does that mean?” I didn’t really understand the whole process around it, and I didn’t know how many [award shows] there were. I had obviously heard of the Golden Globes, the Emmys, and the SAG Awards, but there were so many great individual ones along the way as well.

It’s cliché, but “the best of times and the worst of times” always comes to mind when thinking about it. I always think that the industry never lost sight of what we set out to do, which was to make an interesting and important story. I’m so glad that didn’t get lost along the way, because there were times where the hurricane around the show was so great that I questioned if people would ever be able to see it the same way again, as a standalone piece of art. There were times when I honestly felt like the whole world was talking about me, or the show, or both.

Did it feel overwhelming to suddenly be the name on everyone’s lips?

There was a moment one of the tech [people] at Netflix told me, “The past couple of days you’ve been the most googled man in the world.” I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but that level of visibility was quite scary. I think it would have been scary if everything was positive, but it was positive and negative all at once, and that was very difficult to come to terms with. I’m probably still processing it to a certain degree, even if I can acknowledge and appreciate the fact that it’s calmed down a lot.

They talk about press fatigue, don’t they? I never thought I’d want press fatigue to exist around something, but I felt like I was so in the public consciousness for three to four months, and when the press fatigue did happen around Baby Reindeer, I was a bit relieved. I remember going to [UK supermarket] Sainsbury’s, still adjusting to the fame, and the puzzled looks when you passed people—people photographing you as you took eggs from a shelf. In the front, there was a Daily Mirror, and [the headline] was, “Richard Gadd’s Struggle to Cope With Fame.” How did they know that? It makes you paranoid about who’s saying what, and much as I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening—that I would soon fade back into fringe obscurity—I just couldn’t escape it.

Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons where Marge has got that Chanel dress, and she traps it in the sewing machine, and it rips? She says, “I suppose all you can do now is laugh,” and then she just stays staring out, not laughing. I genuinely would sit in my living room and feel like I was Marge in that episode. Just staring out with a thousand-yard stare, and then I look at the clock and realize an hour has passed.

Who did you have to help navigate all this? Did you know anyone who’d been through a similar situation?

There were some famous people who I’d never known before who reached out to say, “Hold tight, I’ve been there, it doesn’t last forever.” I probably shouldn’t say their names, but really famous people who didn’t need to do that. They gave me pep talks. I remember one very famous person said, “I haven’t seen the press treat anyone this bad since [the way they treated] me.” He said, “Hold tight, I got through it, you’ll get through it, and remember you’ve done a good thing.” I’ll never forget that call. And I have a great team of agents and publicists, and they were protecting me from it too.

There was a lot of cynicism from the press in terms of wanting to see it a certain way and wanting to make it out to be a certain way. The reality is, I think, if you just strip all the noise away, it was a very heartfelt and, in my opinion, nuanced show, that could have been not a very heartfelt, nuanced show. I could have made myself look perfect in it and been all, “Oh, woe is me,” but I didn’t. I think if you strip away all that noise, even the most ignorant can see that the aim of the piece was to send a heartfelt message to the world about the fact that everyone’s kind of damaged, everyone has problems, and we’re all struggling in our own weird ways. And that trauma manifests in very strange ways.

The sheer level of interest certainly made me question the whys and hows of how it all happened, but I always tried to bring myself back to the positives as well. That got me through it, because I still get messages every single day from people saying how it affected their lives or allowed them to have conversations they couldn’t have had before. That’s the thing that has outlasted a lot of the negatives.

You offered to testify in the lawsuit filed against Netflix, right?

I’m under such strict instructions not to say anything about it, but it is surreal, and a big pressure in my life.

In the middle of all this, you’ve been working on a new show for the BBC and HBO called Half Man. Was that a helpful distraction?

It’s been a little surreal working on a new show among all this. It has been two shows back-to-back without even a day’s break, and in the past year, I’ve been writing the [new] show, acting in the show, producing the show, while all this stuff has been going on. It has been so hard amongst press calls, and legal calls, and your neighbors knocking, and your exes messaging you to say the press are at their door. But we’re actually filming now.

You’re costarring with Jamie Bell, who found fame when he was 13 in Billy Elliot.

I was 34 when Baby Reindeer came out, thinking, “God, this is crazy. I don’t feel ready for this.” He was 13 years old, having delivered one of the best performances ever by a child actor, and he’s a total gent.

I’m such a control freak when it comes to my work, though I’ve been told not to use that phrase…I’m very fastidious, or obsessive, or whatever. And I’ve always felt resistant to fame in my shows, because sometimes famous actors come with certain caveats or demands. Jamie is by far the most famous person I’ve ever worked with, and he’s completely reframed my opinion of fame, because he is so humble. He throws in, he takes notes, he brings great ideas, and he has a great attitude. He’s funny, and kind, and all those things. I’ve worked with actors who were one-eighth as famous as he is, who almost derail a set with how difficult they are. And if he can do it, there’s no excuses for anybody.

I think he’s really going to shine in the show, and there are times when I look at him and think, Oh, wow, people are going to see a very new Jamie Bell.

You haven’t revealed much about the show. What can we expect?

I’m under some quite strict embargoes, but I’ll tell you more than I’ve told anyone else. It’s about two dysfunctional brothers, but their relationship is a little weirder than brothers. You meet them in a very peculiar situation, and you don’t really know why or how they got there, and they’re having a very weird conversation.

It then flashes back to six epochs in their lives, six different moments, one in each episode, and you start to understand how they’ve gotten to this point. It’s an exploration of masculinity, and I’m reticent to say toxic masculinity because I think that expression has become quite tired. But, for something to be toxic, it has to be intoxicating first. Drugs are toxic, but they’re intoxicating. I really wanted to get some sort of understanding back into male camaraderie and male relationships. The euphoric, captivating, and exhilarating parts of that, as well as how it all goes wrong.

Tonally, is it similar to Baby Reindeer?

I would say it borrows from the same world of broken people as Baby Reindeer, but it’s probably a little more dramatic—though it still has comedy moments. It borrows from a similar world and traverses the darkest human experiences, but it’s a little more on the dramatic end. Every episode is hourlong, which is a huge challenge in itself because Baby Reindeer was half-hour-ish.

You’re also about three times bigger physically than you were in Baby Reindeer. It looks like you’ve spent a lot of the past year in the gym. Was that for this character?

I guess I just wanted to challenge myself by taking on something very, very different to Donny Dunn [in Baby Reindeer]. So, I have put on a lot of mass. I realized I hadn’t ever been this level of in-shape before because I was working out loads, but my diet wasn’t on point, and nothing was changing. Then they got a nutritionist on board, who gave me all this food to eat at certain times of day. And within a month or two, my body had started changing. It’s all about diet. But it’s my birthday today, so I’m going to have a cheat day. Maybe I’ll have a McDonald’s or something.

Has it made navigating in public easier, given how different you look from the character with whom people most associate you?

The beard, the haircut, and the size all have helped. People are now puzzled, because they see a face they vaguely recognize who’s a bit bigger, through a beard, and sometimes through sunglasses. When Baby Reindeer first came out, I looked exactly like Donny Dunn, and it was borderline unbearable. I’m always fine with people coming up to me, because I know where I stand with them, but what I hate is the secret photos, and the whispering and pointing, because I’m like, What are they saying? Is it something negative?

I still don’t feel like I could go out in public properly, especially by myself. If I’m with someone, people tend to leave you alone. By myself, it’s free rein. Jamie’s really great at going out by himself. I said to him, “Do you not get pestered? Do you not get annoyed?” He’s like, “Yeah,” but he’s cool with it. He’s such a pro.

You’re about to don yet another tux for the BAFTA carpet—do you enjoy that side of fame, getting dressed up?

I’m wearing Dior tonight, and I really do love Dior. They dressed me for the Globes. I loved that outfit, and they gifted it to me afterwards, which I couldn’t believe. Loewe gifted me the kilt from the Emmys, and I almost want to frame it because I’m definitely not going to wear it again. What if I snag it on a park bench or something? I don’t know why I’d be wearing it to a park…

I do like a suit, but tonight I’m going a bit more casual, with a sweater underneath. I think it looks quite classy, and I’m excited to wear it.

I quite like the red carpet. I like it because it feels like this weird escape. I like the buzz of it, and you feel tapped into life, which is quite nice. I’m not a big industry [person], in that I don’t hang out at the private members’ bars or anything like that, so the red carpet is sort of my chance to connect, which feels quite good.

Is the new show also a limited series?

It will be. I quite like a limited series. Baby Reindeer took four years, and I don’t know if it’d have been four years per season, but let’s say it did run—it would have wound up being almost a decade of my life. I like the idea of a limited series defining your life for a period, and then you move on.

There have been so many calls for me to [bring back] the Baby Reindeer live show. Maybe I’ll do it—I’m toying with the idea of a 10-year anniversary [in 2029]. But life is so fleeting, and it would be nice to keep it varied and interesting. I think I’m probably leaning more towards moving on to new things. I do want to get back on stage. I miss live performance.

Maybe an acting gig in a play? Get Sam Mendes on speed dial?

Oh yeah, for sure. I’ve actually had quite a lot of acting offers since Baby Reindeer came out. It’s the crazy twists and turns of, pre–Baby Reindeer, going to auditions for Servant No. 5, and then suddenly, after the show came out, there were straight offers for leads in Netflix shows and films and all this stuff. But I think it has to feel really right.

The biggest challenge is doing all the stuff [in my shows], because I’m so hands-on. It’s like three jobs at once—writing, acting, and show-running. I get in at midnight, and I get up at 4 a.m., and my days repeat like that. So, the idea of being an actor with just one thing on my mind, that feels quite nice to me actually. If Sam Mendes calls, I’ll definitely be returning that call, for sure.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity, and the piece has been updated.