Baby Reindeer's Jessica Gunning 'fiercely protective' of co-star Richard Gadd
Baby Reindeer's Jessica Gunning is "fiercely protective" of her co-star Richard Gadd.
The 'Outlaws' actress appears as stalker Martha in the Netflix series, in which struggling comedian and barman Donny is stalked, which reflects Richard's own real-life ordeal, in which a woman allegedly stalked the comedian.
Since the seven-part series aired, Scottish lawyer Fiona Harvey has come forward as the "real-life Martha", and threatened legal action against Netflix.
But Jessica insists anyone searching for the real-life identities of the show's characters "almost undermines" his experiences.
She told Radio Times magazine: "I think he was incredibly brave to bare all. He really did put everything in that show, warts and all, errors, mistakes that were made.
"I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.
"I’m always fiercely protective of him and I want to make sure that none of this is upsetting for him, really, so I try and keep out of any of that stuff.
"Me and Richard have this close connection and I’m very concerned about anything that might upset him.
"He’s a survivor of sexual assault, and he was stalked, and I think that any search for real people almost undermines that slightly."
'Trollied' star Jessica played Martha as a "character" rather than a real person, and insisted Richard is "playing a character as well", because the show isn't a documentary.
Asked if she ever found it problematic that Richard based Martha on a real person, she added: "I wouldn’t use the word problematic, I would say, maybe, sensitive.
"I absolutely saw Martha as a character, I wasn’t doing an impersonation of a real person. She was very clear to me in the script, but I genuinely didn’t know anything about the real person.
"But Richard is playing a character as well. When I was acting with him, I felt like he was a character. I didn’t feel like we were re-enacting scenes for some documentary, it felt like we were doing interpretations of these characters in this emotionally true world."
