7 Biggest Differences Between Netflix's Baby Reindeer & Richard Gadd's Original Stage Show

This article contains references to stalking, harrasment and sexual assault.

Summary The original stage show was a one-man performance, while the Netflix series features a full cast.

Martha was not sentenced to prison in reality, and the level of stalking was more severe than portrayed.

The Netflix series adapted the story with significant changes, including alterations to the names of characters.

Baby Reindeer has quickly become a viral hit on Netflix, but the show actually started life as a stage show in the UK, with a few significant differences between the original and the TV show. Baby Reindeer is an original story by director, writer, and actor, Richard Gadd, who stars in the Netflix series. And while the story is sensational, emotional, and incredibly bingeable, part of the craze surrounding the series stems from the fact that it is based on true events from Gadd's own life. Gadd began his career as a comedian, with middling success.

However, when he changed course from performing with props and a brand of satirical anti-comedy, to unloading stories and events from his own life, his career took off in a major way. Gadd had suffered through significant trauma and abuse, but through self-examination and introspection, he was able to use those terrible events to set a new course for his life. He adapted his story into a performative show which he debuted at the Fringe Comedy Festival, before taking the show to the West End in London. And finally, the story has now been adapted for Netflix with several alterations.

7 The Original Is A One-Man Show

One of the most significant changes from the stage show to the limited series on Netflix is how it was actually put together. Baby Reindeer was initially written and performed as a one-man show, with only Gadd on stage, delivering the dialogue and performance as he slowly unfolds his story. He also used elements like audio recordings which were recorded by various other actors, and images projected on a screen to add context throughout, but he was the sole individual appearing in the show and performing each night.

The Netflix series is not a solo show, and it introduces a full cast of wonderfully talented actors to tackle each role. Gadd returns to play his central role, as he interacts with a full cast and set, and his narration continues to be a part of the limited series. In addition, there are also many messages which are added in as a way to break up one part of an episode to the next, or to introduce the episode. But while the stage show uses emails, letters, and various other messages, the show uses only emails.

Related Baby Reindeer True Story: The Haunting Real Stalker & Abuse Behind The Netflix Show Richard Gadd's stalker sent him a total of 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemail, 744 Tweets, and 106 pages of letters over four and a half years.

6 Martha Was Not Sentenced To Time In Prison

The show tells the harrowing story of a three-year-long encounter where a woman becomes overwhelmingly obsessed with a man and begins stalking and harassing him. Throughout the years, the woman frequents Gadd's workplace, his comedy shows, his home, and makes contact with several individuals close to him. Due to the intense, occasionally violent, and frequently threatening behavior of this woman, Martha Scott, Gadd reports her to the police, and ultimately has Martha sentenced to nine months in prison for her actions. However, this is not how the story goes in reality, or in the original stage show.

As Richard Gadd has revealed in several interviews, the real "Martha" was not sent to prison, as Gadd recognized she was a victim of trauma in many ways herself. In addition, Gadd had done several things that made him an unfavorable character at times, and so he felt it would be unfair and unkind to have her imprisoned, although he has said the situation had been resolved several years prior, to which he had generally "mixed feelings" (via Time).

5 The Level Of Stalking

In the Netflix series, Martha is shown to send dozens of emails every day, along with stalking Gadd at his workplace, and occasionally at his comedy shows. However, if anything, the series tones down the overall level of stalking which occurred in the four and a half years when he was the object of Martha's obsession. The show reveals many emails, and makes mention of up to 80 emails being received in a day. Also, the final episode reveals that Martha sent hundreds of hours worth of voicemails.

However, in the stage show and in reality, Richard Gadd was the recipient of 41,071 emails, 350 hours worth of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 messages on Facebook, and 106 pages worth of letters (via Forbes). The series failed to go into any detail around the multitude of methods that Martha employed in an effort to stalk Gadd. The stage show reveals a grander sense of scale behind the stalking, although without visual representations, it could easily be argued that the series delivers the intensity more effectively.

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4 Martha Also Gave Gifts

The stage show also revealed that Martha gave gifts to Gadd over the course of their interactions. The gifts included a toy reindeer, sleeping pills, underwear, and a wooly hat. However, as bizarre and unusual as these gifts may be, it also adds layers to the relationship that was had by the two, with Gadd accepting such gifts and indulging the concept of their relationship being more than what is expected of a barman and a customer.

Baby Reindeer gets to the end without acknowledging the fact that Martha provided gifts to Gadd, instead showcasing her level of poverty as she was unable to afford simple things like a glass of diet Coke. Gadd's character, Donny Dunn, offers these drinks for free to Martha each day when she comes in. However, Martha does leave a raunchy underwear photo of herself in Dunn's room when she manages to come into the house under the guise of joining a cooking class one night. Beyond these, there is no other exchange of gifts in the series.

3 Different Names

As mentioned above, the series did alter the names of individuals that are referenced in the television series. Rather than Gadd using his own name as he did in the stage show, he chooses to identify and separate the character from himself with a new name, Donny Dunn. Other characters, like the successful TV writer who takes him under his wing and abuses him, are also changed from Darren in the stage show, to Darrien in the series. While these alterations may appear insignificant, it does reflect Gadd's desire to protect the identity of those referenced in the story.

The most interesting name change, though, is how Gadd changed his own name. In the stage show, he remained the main protagonist, with his own name unaltered. The stage show was released in 2019. At this point, Gadd may have felt closer to the events of the story, as they had happened much more recently. He continued to use his own name when it was taken to the West End. However, with the passage of time, it appears that Gadd has grown more distant from the events, and potentially wants to separate himself from his character, thus the name change.

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2 It Took Six Years For Police To Step In

The series wraps up with Martha being sentenced to time in prison, but overall, the timeline which appears in the series is shorter than what actually played out. In the series, Dunn approaches the police after six months of interactions with Martha. However, Gadd has revealed that it was longer. While they met for the first time in 2015, Gadd had to push for years to get help from the police. And it wasn't until 6 years had passed that he actually got a resolution, which meant this happened after the stage show was first released (via Daily Mail).

In the series, this timeline is condensed for the benefit of the story, although it still happens over the course of three years. In reality, the situation played out for much longer. This makes sense in a Netflix limited series based on true events, which happen across seven episodes, as there is not a great deal of time to unpack and reveal every detail of what happened, or stretch out the events too long and risk it appearing more unreasonable with a lack of expansion on what happened over the other years that go unmentioned.

1 Martha Is From Northern Ireland

Finally, there is a huge difference between one of the main actors who appears in the series, and the character that appears in the one-man show. Martha appears in the stage show only as a disembodied voice on voicemails, or when Gadd voices her lines. In addition, she has a thick Northern Irish accent, and an incredibly passionate hatred towards England and London in particular. While the characters' erratic and unpredictable behavior remains in both portrayals, the series had the advantage of Jessica Gunning stepping into the role of Martha.

While Gunning is in fact from Yorkshire, she puts on an outstanding Scottish accent for the role, and adds a whole different feel to the character. Rather than being a hot-blooded Northern Irish woman, she has more of an affinity for London. Gunning also adds complexity and drama to the performance as she does a spectacular job appearing opposite Gadd, playing out confrontations and flirtations in a way that the original show simply couldn't do because of the restrictive format of a one-man show. But ultimately, both shows of Baby Reindeer were spectacular representations of Gadd's harrowing true story.