It is often said that a work belongs to the artist until it is presented to the public. Then he can’t control her anymore. This is what’s happening with Richard Gadd and My Stuffed Reindeer. The creator and protagonist of the Netflix series was inspired by two traumatic experiences of his when writing the story. Although he does not want anyone to look for his attackers, fans do not think the same, and now he has joined the controversy Richard Osman, host of the podcast The rest is entertainment.
“People in the industry know who that person is,” the writer and host explained on his show about the man who sexually assaulted Gadd. And, when in 2016 he presented the show Monkey see monkey do about the sexual assaults he suffered at the hands of another man, Gadd was “very open” to revealing who it was in conversations with those interested in his monologue, which won the Fringe Comedy Award.
For those who are a little lost, in the fourth episode of My Stuffed Reindeer, the character played by Gadd and based on himself is impressed by a comedy producer and scriptwriter who assures him that he has talent and that he can help him become a a gap in the industry. But, between work sessions in which he encourages him to take drugs, the character begins to suffer various sexual abuses, ending with an aggressive rape.
At first, viewers believed they had identified the aggressor by following the trajectory of Gadd and the scriptwriters, producers and directors with whom he had worked: they pointed to Sean Foley, who began to receive insults and threats, and who had to contact the police . ““The police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory, abusive and threatening publications against me,” he indicated from his social networks.
Gadd, in response to fans’ accusations, made a video in which he asked fans to stop speculating. “Please do not speculate about who the real people might be. “This is not the goal of the series,” he stated, at the same time that he denied that Sean Forley was his aggressor.
Now Osman also claims that Forley is innocent: “It now turns out that a completely different person is identified, someone who has produced for Richard Gadd before, but who is clearly not that person in any way.”
He considers it unfortunate, in fact, that the actor who plays the attacker, Tom Goodman-Hill, bears a reasonable resemblance to Forley: “This poor man has received death threats and has had to publish a statement saying “it’s not me.” And it’s not him, definitely not, because people in the industry know who he is. And it’s not him in any way.”
These statements join the media tour of My Stuffed Reindeer, which has become the queen of Netflix word-of-mouth due to the dramatic impact of Gadd’s story. Last week it was Gadd’s alleged stalker who took to the British media to say that she was a victim of Gadd.
“He uses My stuffed reindeer to harass me now,” said the interviewee, who is considering suing the comedian turned genius narrator of trauma for defamation. He is forceful when analyzing the situation: “I am the victim.” She considers it a “bullying” maneuver to make money at his expense.
If she really is Gadd’s stalker, who in fiction is called Martha Scott and is played by Jessica Gunning, she would be the woman who, over a period of four years, systematically harassed him with more than 41,000 emails, 100 pages of letters, 744 tweets and 350 voice messages, in addition to chasing him down the street and harassing him at his comedy shows.
