Netflix Defends Baby Reindeer’s ‘Disguising’ Of Characters’ Real-Life Identities In Parliamentary Hearing

The hearing comes as online sleuths have speculated on the characters featured and tried to identify who they are in real life. (Screengrab DCMS/Youtube)

Netflix’s UK policy chief Benjamin King defended the approach to character portrayal in new drama Baby Reindeer during a Wednesday hearing about privacy and the ethics of storytelling with Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

Baby Reindeer is based on comedian Richard Gadd’s Edinburgh Fringe show and dramatises Gadd’s own experiences. The hearing comes as online sleuths have speculated on the characters featured and tried to identify who they are in real life, despite Gadd’s plea with viewers to avoid doing so.

Asked about it, King told politicians on the committee: “Baby Reindeer is an extraordinary story, and it is obviously a true story of the horrific abuse that the writer and protagonist, Richard Gadd, suffered at the hands of a convicted stalker.

He added that Netflix had taken “every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story in the making of the show while also striking a balance of veracity and authenticity of Richard’s story.”

“We didn’t want to anonymise that or make it generic to the point where it was no longer his story, because that would undermine the intent behind the show,” King said. “I personally wouldn’t be comfortable with a world in which we decided it was better that Richard was silenced and not allowed to tell the story.”

Actor Sean Foley reported that he had been misidentified as the character Darrien, prompting him to notify the police while the self-identified real-life counterpart to the character Martha, portrayed as a stalker in the show, is set to appear on Piers Morgan Uncensored on Thursday.