Baby Reindeer wouldn't get made with a female star, says Lily Allen
The chilling Netflix series from writer-star Richard Gadd has been viewed millions of times on the streaming platform since its release in April.
Baby Reindeer wouldn't have become one of Netflix's most talked-about TV shows of the year with a female character at its centre, according to Lily Allen. The 39-year-old singer said she doubted that version would even have been given the green light.
Allen told the Sunday Times about her own experience with stalking, comparing her own story to that of comedian Richard Gadd. Gadd wrote Baby Reindeer based on his real ordeal, which had previously inspired a one-man stage show of the same name.
"I find it interesting that Baby Reindeer has landed so massively," said Allen. "I feel like if it had been a female protagonist it wouldn’t have got greenlit. People will not be remotely as interested in a woman’s story, which is arguably far more common than a male story."
Allen's stalker, Alex Gray, was convicted of burglary and harassment and sentenced to an “indefinite hospital order” in June 2016. Her ordeal came to a head in 2015 when he broke into her house and threatened her life.
The singer has since spoken openly about how poorly she feels her case was handled by the police who, as she explained again in the new interview, didn't seem to take it as seriously as she needed them to.
Allen said: "I remember when I was going through my stalking thing, when I started to come back outside again and go to dinner parties and stuff, and I’d talk about it. There were a handful of occasions with men that I vaguely knew who would be surprised at how I felt I’d been mistreated by the police, because they had had experiences with female stalkers and said the police couldn’t have been more helpful. In contrast to how women feel when it happens to them, it’s quite upsetting."
Gadd has explained that the process of writing Baby Reindeer was a "lifesaver" for him in the wake of his stalking nightmare. The details of the Baby Reindeer true story have since become a source of controversy, with Piers Morgan interviewing the woman who claims to be the 'real' Martha accused by Gadd in the show.
Internet sleuths have falsely identified several men as being the comedy industry figure Gadd claims sexually assaulted him, causing Gadd and Netflix to urge people to stop trying to track down the real people behind the characters.
The series spent several weeks at the top of the Netflix charts, earning tens of millions of viewing hours from audiences gripped by its story.
Allen, meanwhile, now presents the podcast Miss Me? with her best friend Miquita Oliver. She also played one of the lead roles in the Sky Atlantic comedy series Dreamland.
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