Lessons from Baby Reindeer on Portraying Yourself as the Worst
Donny's flaws make me love him more.
I’m a few months late to the hype for Netflix’s, Baby Reindeer, but last week, I got sucked in after seeing an article about Fiona Harvey’s defamation lawsuit over the series. I watched all the episodes in a matter of days then taught a personal essay writing workshop. During class, I had the sudden realization that Baby Reindeer is an amazing example of how to portray yourself and others in stories about your life.
*Disclaimer: spoilers below as well as discussion stalking and rape.*
Baby Reindeer is based on writer and actor, Richard Gadd’s, true experience with a violent serial stalker, while trying to forge a comedy career. Gadd portrays himself in the character, Donny, a bartender who gives stalker, Martha, a cup of tea, which results in her returning to the bar everyday and sending him hundreds of emails per night. Over time, the situation escalates to the point where Martha sits outside Donny’s home all night, heckles him at comedy shows, and physically attacks his girlfriend.
The series is clear in its depiction of Martha as mentally disturbed, and though she upends Donny’s life in terrifying ways, the prevailing image of her is less villainous than it is of someone in need of psychiatric help. What’s more interesting is the deeper story about Donny’s own complicated reactions to Martha, which stem from his past trauma of being groomed and raped by a more established comedian. At first, Donny is flattered by Martha’s attention, her compliments, and how she laughs at his jokes. Her strange emails pique his curiosity, and he follows her home, watching her through her window. He feels sorry for her. Even though Martha is a danger to women in his life, who beg him to take action, Donny waits six months before going to the police. In the silence after Martha briefly ceases contact, he masturbates thinking about her. The series also highlights how Donny’s embarrassment of his failing comedy set, the fact that he lives with his ex-girlfriend’s mom because he can’t afford his own place, and his internalized homophobia over dating a trans woman. Donny’s own shame and self-loathing is constantly at the forefront.
None of this makes Donny any less of a victim, and to me, his faults make him an even more sympathetic character. Audiences can hold multiple truths at once, and the nuance in this narrative—who is obsessed with whom? who is to blame for the situation going so far?—allows for deeper understanding of Donny’s struggle to survive and heal from trauma. Donny can be held accountable for his own actions, while grieving the horrifying ways others have treated him. As a viewer, it can be frustrating to see a character behave in ways that seem irrational, but this frustration also creates the plot of Donny struggling to understand himself. And why do any of us write nonfiction, other than to make sense of ourselves?
An especially devastating moment comes late in the show when Donny revisits the man who raped him years ago. I was holding my breath through the whole encounter, expecting a confrontation that, as a viewer, I very much wanted. Instead, their conversation is polite. They don’t talk about what the man did. Donny holds it together until he’s alone outside. The interaction felt more honest and heartbreaking than what I’d expected.
Overall, the show made me think about something I once heard from another writer, though I forget who, about how writing means doing the opposite of what makes you a likable person. In real life, you can tell funny cocktail-party versions of your stories, but in writing, you have to center the strange, unflattering, and shameful details you avoid talking about.
I’ve been thinking about how I want to show the uglier parts of myself in my own writing. Since I’m writing about coming-of-age experiences in the Catholic Church, a lot of my essays are about about a lack of agency. Sometimes this has made me come off as a passive character, suffocating under a strict sets of rules, but it’s not fun to read a book about a character who let’s things happen to her rather than making active choices. That’s also not the full picture of my experience. I need to show the times I looked down on others, when I overly cared about people’s perceptions of me, when I wanted to get caught breaking the rules, when I let my shame isolate me, when I obsessively idealized friendships, and when I said the biting comment just to get a reaction. These are the details I block out from the prevailing story I tell myself. The real work will be uncovering them and putting them at the center.
Recommended Reading:
My brilliant writer friend, Elise Gorzela, recently had an essay published in The Audacity, Roxane Gay’s newsletter. Read if you like secrets and riddles.
yes!! so, so well said! Mary Karr has an essay on this which I also love :)