The meeting occurs as internet detectives have guessed about the featured characters and tried to figure out who they really are. (Screengrab DCMS/Youtube)
Netflix’s UK policy chief Benjamin King defended the way characters are shown in the new show Baby Reindeer during a meeting on Wednesday about privacy and ethics of storytelling with Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
Baby Reindeer originates from comedian Richard Gadd’s Edinburgh Fringe show and portrays Gadd’s experiences. The meeting happens as internet sleuths have guessed about the characters and tried to identify them in real life, despite Gadd’s request for viewers to refrain from doing so.
When asked about it, King told lawmakers on the committee: “Baby Reindeer is an amazing story, and it is clearly a real story of the terrible abuse that the writer and main character, Richard Gadd, endured from a convicted stalker.
He added that Netflix had taken “every reasonable precaution in concealing the real-life identities of the people involved in that story in the making of the show while also achieving a balance of truth and genuineness of Richard’s story.”
“We didn’t want to make that generic or anonymous to the extent that it was no longer his story, because that would undermine the purpose of the show,” King said. “I personally wouldn’t be at ease with a situation in which we decided it was better for Richard to be silenced and not allowed to tell the story.”
Actor Sean Foley stated that he had been misidentified as the character Darrien, leading him to inform the police while the person who claims to be the real-life version of the character Martha, depicted as a stalker in the show, is set to be featured on Piers Morgan Uncensored on Thursday.
