‘Baby Reindeer’ Actor Who Played Richard Gadd’s TV Abuser Still Hasn’t Watched the Show

Tom Goodman-Hill is a face you should already know — because he’s done it all.

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An actor who has been in the game for 30 years, Goodman-Hill’s résumé includes appearances on staple British television shows such as Doctor Who , Silent Witness , Call the Midwife and Doc Martin . The 56-year-old also appeared in Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror and the 2014 period thriller The Imitation Game .

But a role unlike he’s ever played before came to fruition with Richard Gadd ‘s wildly successful Netflix series Baby Reindeer , which follows Donny, an amateur comedian played by Gadd, as he is stalked and harassed across several years. In the show, his stalker, Martha ( Jessica Gunning ), sends Donny over 41,000 emails, 744 tweets, 100 pages of letters and 350 hours of voicemails. Audiences watched in horror as she sexually assaulted him, derailed his relationships and threatened his family. Eventually, she is jailed.

Inspired by Gadd’s stage show of the same name, Baby Reindeer also follows Donny’s relationship with a top TV writer named Darrien O’Connor, who, with the promise of helping advance Donny’s career, for a period of time drugs and rapes him. The extent of the sexual abuse Donny suffers at the hands of Darrien is revealed in a particularly shocking episode — episode four — which evoked some visceral reactions from fans of the show.

Baby Reindeer is based on Gadd’s real life. The show’s popularity — it’s the Netflix’s 10th most-watched English-language program ever — is aptly reflected in its whopping 11 Emmy nominations , with nods for Gadd, Gunning and Goodman-Hill in their respective categories. Producers on the show have picked up some criticism for failing to disguise the real-life inspirations for Gadd’s characters, which has landed them in a $170 million lawsuit .

Goodman-Hill has now landed his first Emmy nomination playing Darrien. In the category for outstanding supporting in a limited anthology series or movie, the British actor is up against some formidable competition: Robert Downey Jr., ( The Sympathizer ), Jonathan Bailey ( Fellow Travelers ), Lamorne Morris ( Fargo ), Treat Williams ( Feud: Capote vs. The Swans ), John Hawkes ( True Detective: Night Country ) and Lewis Pullman ( Lessons in Chemistry ).

Goodman-Hill talked to The Hollywood Reporter about why he has so far shied away from interviews about the “difficult” character, leaning on Gadd’s real-life — and often extremely triggering — experiences, and how shooting the show would leave him “crying in my wife’s lap.”

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Baby Reindeer is, simply, huge. What appealed to you about Gadd’s story and this role in particular?

It’s the same thing with any job, as far as I’m concerned. I always read the script and if it’s a quality script, I’m going to get excited by it. The main thing about the writing was it was just so original. It was completely unique. I’d never read anything like it, and so the appeal first came from the point of view of it as an original script.

I didn’t know anything about Richard’s story really, before doing this — although I was vaguely aware of Baby Reindeer as a stage show and I knew it had come from Edinburgh [Fringe Festival] and been a smash — I didn’t really know anything about it. I knew it was about stalking. But for me, reading episode four, which is what I was sent originally, just the character of Darrien was like nothing I’ve ever read before. It felt like a real human being, it felt like someone you could really get your teeth into. It was an extraordinarily appealing character. The moment I read it, I thought: Nobody else can play this part.

Why did you think that you were the best person for the role of Darrien?

Firstly, it was like nothing I’d ever been asked to do before. And secondly, I think it was really clever of [casting director] Nina Gold to bring me in, because nobody thinks of me for a role like this. What works with Darrien is if you don’t play him as a villain, you have to play him as a man who is incredibly entitled, incredibly sure of himself, utterly charming, and who, somewhere in his head, doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong. So it was a case of playing heavily against type, which appealed to me enormously.

How do you approach playing such an insidious character? Was there any part of you that tried to find a way to like him, or understand him?

I mean, let’s be absolutely clear, he is a villain. [ Laughs ] He couldn’t be more of a villain if he tried. I think the point about him is that his own awareness of himself is so skewed, because his charm and his status have got him through so much that I don’t think he admits to himself exactly how appalling his behavior is. He can gloss over it with charm. It’s psychopathic. The mindset is so completely centered on his own ego that he doesn’t understand that what he’s doing is so completely vile, there’s [no] part of him that knows what he’s doing is wrong, I’m sure. I don’t think even he realizes just how much his entitlement is clouding what he’s doing to people, because the abuse is utterly horrific.

Was it exciting, in a twisted sort of way, because as you said, you’ve never done something like that before? How do you even mentally distance yourself from what he was doing?

Distancing myself was incredibly difficult. It was extremely upsetting to do right from the off. Richard and I would talk to each other constantly. Every day on set, we were just talking and talking and talking, and we were trying to do two things. One, we were trying to support each other. And two, we were trying to build a rapport. Because it only really works if there is a rapport between Darrien and Donny. At some level, they have to get on and and excite each other in order to be able to work together. And there has to be something about Donny that appeals to Darrien and there has to be a part of Darrien’s charm that Donny responds to, otherwise it doesn’t work.

Obviously, in episode eight, Donny goes back and agrees to work with Darrien again, which is so appalling you can’t get your head around it. But it’s because it’s a cycle of abuse and Darrien has glimmered Donny. It is sort of vampiric, that glimmering thing that takes a part of Donny’s soul and just tears it away and doesn’t ever want to relinquish it. So it’s an awful cycle that they get into. Approaching it as a role was about trying to make him as believable and human as you could so that you could understand why someone like this could get away with what he was doing. Because if he behaves like an out and out villain, he is so obviously a villain that you know he would never get away with it. But he survives on his charm and his humor.

Being constantly in conversation with Richard, who was not only the show’s star but its creator, was he able to help your performance?

Yeah. We talked to each other the whole time. And the core of doing these scenes was to stay true to the emotional truth of what had happened to Richard in the past. So we were constantly talking about how difficult the relationship was, how symbiotic the relationship was, and we were looking after each other the whole time.

Obviously the whole thing was incredibly triggering for Richard, so I had to be very mindful all the time of the state that Richard was in, and he was also mindful of me. He was incredibly caring with me and understanding when it was upsetting for me to do it as well, which I found extraordinarily magnanimous and compassionate of him. We just had to play it moment by moment, scene by scene, and check in with each other every time, because it was an incredibly intense period of filming. We didn’t see anybody else in the cast the whole time [when] we were doing that sequence which took a couple of weeks to shoot. They were really tough days from top to tail. It was just me and Richard all the way. But [the scenes] were incredibly upsetting.

There were days I would go home and just cry in my wife’s lap, because I’d never experienced anything like it. Rich and I were both in and out of the counselling office. Because you’ve got to have someone to offload to otherwise it’s incredibly difficult to deal with.

I know there have been discussions on social media and elsewhere about how well the characters were disguised from their inspirations. Did Gadd confide in you about the real-life inspiration for Darrien, and how did that inform the way you played him?

We talked about the emotional impact of it on Richard and we would talk about how that kind of abuse manifests, how the behaviors that happen come about. So we had some very detailed conversations about it. But we had to work from an original script. I’d created Darrien as an original character, and I think it was important that I did that from the start. I looked at the scripts and I said to myself, “Who is this man?” I pieced him together purely from the script. Then, in rehearsal with Richard and Weronika [Tofilska], who was our fantastic director, we would make sure that the story made sense from one beat to the next. But Richard would obviously chime in if there was anything that felt off-beat or that didn’t resonate with his real experiences.

Ultimately, it’s a work of fiction, so you have to treat it as an original piece of writing. You can’t be slavish about the way you treat a piece of fictional drama, even if it is based on real life. You have to create something original that audiences will respond to.

As you mentioned, we actually see Donny return to Darrien towards the end of the show, even after the abuse that he suffered. What was your interpretation of that and the cyclical nature of abuse it revealed?

The point of Richard writing this was to raise awareness about male sexual abuse, that was one of the major things that he wanted to bring to the fore, and he works with [U.K. male sexual abuse charity] We Are Survivors and the response to We Are Survivors has been huge. It’s been an 80 percent spike in first-time callers and I think the reason for that is, particularly with relevance to the Darrien story, that sequence in episode eight, when he returns thinking of vengeance or trying to give Darrien an earful on how much he’s done to him. But the moment he sees him, there’s this sense that all that abuse just goes out the window, because Darrien is so charming, so successful in his glimmering that Donny can’t see past that.

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I think that resonated with a lot of abuse survivors, because that’s a huge issue, survivors kind of blame themselves and think, “Well, this isn’t them, this is me. I’ve done this to myself.” You sit there in horror as [Donny] nods his head and [agrees to work with Darrien again]. You can’t quite believe that he’s saying it, but it’s emotionally true and that’s what makes it all the more tragic and horrific.

When you signed on to this project, was there a sense of just how big it would be?

Not at all! I’ve been an actor for 30 years, so every job I approach, I approach because I want to do the script. And you don’t think about how popular it’s going to be. If you think, “Oh, this is going to be huge,” you’re going at it in the wrong way. So the moment I read the script, I just thought it was extraordinary.

To be honest, I didn’t think anybody was going to watch it. I read it and thought, “We have to make this, it’s an incredibly important story to tell.” But I honestly didn’t think anyone was going to watch it. And I said as much to people, my family and friends, I said, “Yeah, no one’s gonna watch, it’s horrific,” you know? So the shock of how much it resonated with people was was huge, but also it was incredibly heart warming because it meant that people responded to Richard’s story and wanted to understand what had happened to him, and that’s all you can really ask of a piece like this. But for it to go global the way it did shows you just what an extraordinary script it is, how well made it is, and what an important story it is.

What do you think it is that makes Baby Reindeer so popular?

I think it’s a mixture of of the originality of the story, the fact that you haven’t really seen a story quite like this, but also the fact that Richard and Weronika always had an eye to how entertaining it had to be at the same time. The epic structure is deliberate and brilliant. You can never see where the story’s going. You just have no idea what’s going to happen next. It works on one level, literally just as an edge-of-your-seat thriller. And that’s incredibly clever of Richard because he understands that it’s one thing to tell a story with emotional truth like this, but it’s another thing to make it entertaining. I think Richard, unlike maybe everybody else who was working on it, understood that if he made it like that, it would be popular.

Have you been subject to any hate for playing this character? Social media users often struggle to distinguish between fact and fiction when actors like you play a role so well.

Brilliantly, I am not on social media, so I have not had to observe whatever there is about that, and I wouldn’t want to.

The school run was fun… There were quite a lot of strange looks and people from across the street going, “Hey, are you that… Oh, no.” There was a lot of that. But on the whole, I think if you play a character like Darrien, people tend not to approach you, because they make the assumption that you must be a bit like that. [ Laughs ]. So for a large part, I escaped. Also I was just at home, I wasn’t working at the time. I was looking after my son. I was doing the school run. I was just going about my daily life. So, luckily, I was able to sidestep most of that reaction.

I hadn’t done any press on this show, I hadn’t done anything beforehand. I’d said that I didn’t want to, because I thought it was difficult to do press. Darrien, I think, was a tricky one to do press on, so I thought it was better just not to do anything at all. So I wasn’t so much in the public eye, whereas Richard and Jess [Gunning] were very much. They’ve done a lot of press for it, so they literally couldn’t walk down the street.

So, your first Emmy nomination, congratulations!

Thank you!

That is extremely cool. Were you expecting it?

Not at all, not for a second. I fully expected Richard and Jess to be nominated, I really did.

The only episode I’ve watched is episode one and a pre-dub, pre-mix edit of episode four. But the moment I saw episode one, I was just like, “Well, they’re gonna get all of the awards.” It was just extraordinary. I never in a million years thought it would come my way, so I did a lot of screaming when I found out.

Why haven’t you watched the full series?

I will get around to it. To be perfectly honest, it was such an upsetting experience, making the show. It was nobody’s fault, it was just incredibly upsetting. I found it hard enough watching the pre-mix edit of episode four. I found that really odd, and I didn’t want to go there again.

What else do you have in the pipeline? Do you feel like Emmy recognition is a great springboard for your career?

It’s funny, because I’m 56 years old, I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I think if I was 26 years old, I would be thinking: ‘Wow, this is it. Push on.’ But at 56 it’s just the happiest, loveliest moment for me. It feels like such a win. I kind of can’t believe it, and I’m just I’m really glad that it’s happened to me now and not when I was younger. I don’t think I could take the pressure of an Emmy nomination when I was really young. I’d have fallen apart. I think I’d have gone completely off the rails. And I love that it’s happened now. I’m really happy with the career I have. I’m really happy with the work that I do, and I just want to carry on doing the scripts that I love, which is all that I’ve ever done. This is just the cherry on the top.

While the nature of it is so upsetting, does Baby Reindeer feel like the highlight of your career so far?

I mean, playing Darrien is undoubtedly a highlight. There are two or three other things that I’ve done that I consider highlights, but I think this [is] just because it’s so far removed from any other character that I’ve ever played. Nobody would expect me to play a character like Darrien and so to do that, and then to get an Emmy nomination for it, it’s just like, ‘Oh, maybe I should have been playing hideous people for much, much longer!’ [ Laughs ]. But it’s an extraordinary thing to happen. Yeah, it’s easily a career highlight, by a country mile.

Are you excited for the Emmys?

I can’t wait. I cannot wait just to be in that room. I can’t believe I’m going to be in the same room as Robert Downey Jr… It’s just like, what?!

Not only are you in the same room as him, you’re up against him!

I know, which is just silly. And it’s lovely to be asked about my work. It doesn’t happen that often, and I don’t seek it. I never really have. So it’s nice to be asked about this in particular, because I am really proud of it, and I’m astonished at how much it’s resonated. I’m really pleased for Richard that it’s had exactly the impact he wanted it to have in terms of the good that it’s doing and the story that it’s telling.

Baby Reindeer is now streaming on Netflix.

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