Baby Rena: 41 thousand emails, intriguing destiny and compassion: the real story of the stalker from the most watched series in Brazil

[Alerta spoiler!] At the top of Netflix’s most watched series in Brazil, “Bebê Rena” has shocked viewers with a true story. The production revolves around the experiences of Richard Gadd, a comedian who was pursued by a woman for four years. With 7 episodes, the series is emerging as the new streaming phenomenon and will have a reinforced campaign for the Emmy.

The attraction is an adaptation of Gadd’s play of the same name, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019. The name of the series, in fact, was the way the stalker called him. In the plot, Richard is portrayed as Donny Dunn, a waiter who tries to make a living as a comedian in his spare time in London. One day at work, he meets Martha (Jessica Gunning), an initially harmless older woman who ends up becoming his biggest stalker.

During the years of persecution, the artist received 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters. In an interview with The Times, the comedian, who played the character himself, said that everyone found the situation funny at first, however, the stalker’s actions got out of control.

“At first, everyone in the pub thought it was funny that I had an admirer. Then she started to invade my life, following me, showing up at my shows, waiting outside my house, sending thousands of voicemails and emails.“, he said, who was responsible for the script for the entire series.

“Stalking on television tends to be very sexual. It has a mystique. It’s someone in a dark alley. It’s someone who is very sexy, very normal, but then gradually becomes strange. But stalking is a mental illness. I really wanted to show the layers of the chase like I’ve never seen on television before“, he added.

Is everything in the series real?

Although based on his traumatic experience, Richard decided not to reveal his stalker’s real name. “There are certain protections, you can’t just copy someone else’s life and name and put it on television. And obviously we were aware that some characters are vulnerable people, so you don’t want to make their lives more difficult. So you need to change things to protect yourself and others“, explained the artist to Variety.

To the magazine, Gadd also revealed that he also made some changes to make the story more attractive. “Also, for artistic reasons, a lot of chasing is sometimes quite boring, like it’s a repetitive, ‘Oh God, text from this person again’ kind of action. And, of course, in television, especially in a thriller, you need to move certain timelines, you need to move certain points so that the end of the episodes has a little better outcome. In addition to a true story, you need to make it visually interesting. I wouldn’t be able to put it in terms of a percentage, but it’s a very true story – it comes from an emotional truth, and I think that’s what people relate to most.“, he pointed out.

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What happened to Martha?

At the end of “Baby Rena”, the stalker is arrested for stalking and harassment. She admitted guilt and was sentenced to nine months in prison and given a restraining order. In life, however, what happened to the stalker is uncertain. In an interview with The Independent, Gadd demonstrated, as in the series, his empathy and indicated that he did not want the woman to be arrested.

“I can’t emphasize enough how much of a victim she is in all of this. Stalking and harassment are a form of mental illness. It would have been wrong to cast her as a monster because she is not well and the system failed her“, he declared.