Meet the Real-Life People Who Inspired the Characters in Baby Reindeer

The real Donny

Gadd wrote Baby Reindeer after a woman sent him 41,071 emails, 350 hours’ worth of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, 106 pages of letters, and a variety of weird gifts, including a reindeer toy (hence the show’s name), sleeping pills, a woolly hat and boxer shorts over four years. It began as a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe and got picked up by Netflix, featuring Gadd as a fictionalized version of himself named Donny Dunn. The show explores his traumas and how the situation affected his career and personal life.

“Stalking on television tends to be very sexed-up. It has a mystique,” Gadd told Netflix’s Tudum. It’s somebody in a dark alleyway. It’s somebody who’s really sexy, who’s very normal, but then they go strange bit by bit,” Gadd explains. “But stalking is a mental illness. I really wanted to show the layers of stalking with a human quality I hadn’t seen on television before. It’s a stalker story turned on its head. It takes a trope and turns it on its head.”

Gadd found the experience therapeutic. “I couldn’t keep it all in any more,” he told  The Times in April 2024. Making shows about it was all I had,” he told the outlet. “I was shell-shocked, but by performing it you gain ownership. When you keep it inside for so long it becomes gigantic and insurmountable, but through performance, you can somehow go outside yourself, observe and process it.”

The real Martha

While Gadd never named the people his characters are based on, it didn’t take long for the online community to identify Fiona Harvey as the “Real Martha”, despite Gadd telling GQ that “we’ve gone to such great lengths to disguise her to the point that I don’t think she would recognize herself. What’s been borrowed is an emotional truth, not a fact-by-fact profile of someone.”

X User @MooreFoodPlz pointed out her profile and tweets from 2014 quoting one of them: “@MrRichardGadd your tweets cheer me up. ive not been able to get into hawley past three saturdays.your timeline is good!” The X user also pointed out that Hawley was a bar in Camden in London. Another big clue included a tweet from her saying “@MrRichardGadd my curtains need hung badly” which is referenced in the show.

In a TikTok video by GoldennHourrr that displayed alleged evidence, many fans took to the comments to react. “How tf did they find her??? Man this is scary,” one user commented However many fans also were aware of the privacy that Gadd wanted to provide for his former stalker. “There is no reason for anyone to go looking for her Richard Gadd had said to leave her alone. Why give her the attention she clearly doesn’t need?”

In Baby Reindeer, Martha is shown to be arrested, pleading guilty, and spending nine months in prison. Donny (the fictionalized Gadd) is granted a five-year restraining order and he allegedly never sees her again.

Harvey insists she doesn’t have a criminal record. Speaking with controversial TV host Piers Morgan, she refuted much of what was depicted in Baby Reindeer. “They have billed it as a true story, and so has he, and it’s not,” she said. “He is lying and they are lying.” When it came to her being arrested, charged, or convicted of any crime, she said, “That is completely untrue, very, very defamatory to me, very career damaging.”

This is more difficult to fact-check in the UK than it is in the US. In the UK, criminal records are publicly available and the criminal records office has records of every arrest, charge, caution, and conviction. However, the Human Rights Act states that criminal records are not publicly viewable unless released by the courts. The Freedom of Information Act allows individuals to request information about the criminal justice system from public authorities, including prisons and police forces, but the information may be exempt.

The interview with Piers Morgan has received a strong reaction from the public, with many in the comments section doubting the legitimacy of her story. Others were disturbed by “Piers Morgan conducting one of the most unethical interviews ever.”

On June 7, 2024, news broke of her lawsuit against the world’s biggest streaming service—she’s seeking $170 million in damages. “The lies that Defendants told about Harvey to over 50 million people worldwide include that Harvey is a twice-convicted stalker who was sentenced to five years in prison and that Harvey sexually assaulted Gadd,” her complaint says. “Defendants told these lies, and never stopped, because it was a better story than the truth, and better stories made money.” 

Gadd reacts to the real Martha theory

The creator and comedian himself doesn’t know where the real Martha’s whereabouts. He had a restraining order against her but did not want her to go to prison. According to an interview with The Times UK, he “didn’t want to throw someone who was that level of mentally unwell in prison.” He felt “mixed feelings about it” but that the situation was now “resolved.”

On why he felt a sense of empathy for the real-life Martha, he told GQ UK, “Someone comes in who seems very normal, they seem perfect, but bit by bit they get weirder and weirder. Stalking is a mental dysfunction, it’s an illness and I wasn’t dealing with someone who felt calculated or insidious. I felt I was dealing with someone who was vulnerable, somebody who was mentally ill, someone who couldn’t stop because they believed what was in their head.”

“I can think of numerous examples where people have complained to the police about a stalker but because maybe they’ve had a previous relationship the police haven’t taken it seriously. They can look for a concrete reason to arrest… but sometimes situations are more nuanced than that. The first thing the police should do is try to preserve the safety of the person who is making the report rather than going through a long, arduous process to work out whether they should believe them or not.”

The real Darrien: Theory 1

The real identity of Darrien (played by Tom Goodman-Hill) remains a mystery, however, fans on TikTok and Reddit have falsely theorized that it could be Sean Foley, a British director, writer, comedian, and actor. In 2019, he was appointed the Artistic Director of Birmingham but in 2024, he stepped down which fans thought was suspicious timing.

They were also struck by the likeness between Foley and actor Tom Goodman-Hill—and the fact Gadd and Foley had worked together on an episode of Urban Myths in 2018. Sleuths pointed out similarities between their looks and the fact Foley and Darrien are both theater directors in London. 

The real Darrien: Theory 2

Gary Reich was also “falsely accused” of being Richard Gadd’s abuser. Reich is a comedy writer who has worked on Idris Elba’s Netflix show Turn Up Charlie and Noel Fielding’s surrealist comedy show The Mighty Boosh. Again, there’s zero proof Reich is involved in any way.

Gadd reacts to the real Darrien Theories

Gadd took to Instagram to defend Foley, saying: “People I love, have worked with, and admire (including Sean Foley) are unfairly getting caught up in speculation. Please don’t speculate on who any of the real life people could be. That’s not the point of our show.”

Foley himself announced on Twitter that: “Police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory abusive and threatening posts against me.” Indeed, West Midlands Police told the Daily Mail “We’re investigating after a man reported receiving threatening messages on social media. Enquiries are at an early stage and we are in the process of gathering information from the victim.”

The real Teri

There was a TikTok/Reddit theory that the real Teri was a woman called Anna De Simone, but that’s since been debunked. “She put up a insta reel explaining ( in Italian) that its not her but to watch the series as its very good ( from a therapist perspective) … Sorry its not her!, [sic]” one user commented.

Nava Mau, who plays Teri in Baby Reindeer, revealed during an interview with GQ that there’s more to their story—a piece of the script that never made it to the final cut of the show.

“Teri leaves Donny a voicemail five months later. So I think, for me, I got closure because Teri did too,” the actor told GQ. “That’s what gave me so much comfort, knowing that they found peace with regards to their relationship. Teri found a new man, she didn’t lose her friends, she didn’t lose her job, she didn’t lose her smile. She’s good. And I think that is remarkable because so often we’ve seen stories of trans people that end with them broken.”

In an interview with The Independent, Gadd spoke about his relationship with the person Teri is based on, and how attitudes towards trans people were different. “It’s in the public consciousness now, but it wasn’t back then when I was dating,” he says. “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.”

Speaking with The Tab, Gadd explained about the real Teri: “The real-life person always used to call me out on my shit and I always used to find it confronting. My behavior was irrational and so it was very important to have Teri be the voice of reason in the show.” He continued: “I mean, she was the voice of reason in my life at that point as well, not that I listened to her as much as I should have.”