The Sean Foley, Baby Reindeer Theory Speculates About Who The Real Darrien Is
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, StyleCaster may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
As the Netflix series continues to dominate TikTok, fans have a theory about Sean Foley and Baby Reindeer. The show is about a struggling Scottish comedian and a woman who obsessively stalks him, and of course, has audiences buzzing about the real identities of some of the characters.
Actor and writer Richard Gadd conceptualized Baby Reindeer after a woman sent him 41,071 emails, 350 hours’ worth of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, 106 pages of letters, and a variety of weird gifts, including a reindeer toy, sleeping pills, a woolly hat and boxer shorts over four years. It began as a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe and got picked up by Netflix, featuring Gadd as a fictionalized version of himself named Donny Dunn. The show explores his traumas and how the situation affected his career and personal life.
“Stalking on television tends to be very sexed-up. It has a mystique,” Gadd told Netflix’s Tudum. It’s somebody in a dark alleyway. It’s somebody who’s really sexy, who’s very normal, but then they go strange bit by bit,” Gadd explains. “But stalking is a mental illness. I really wanted to show the layers of stalking with a human quality I hadn’t seen on television before. It’s a stalker story turned on its head. It takes a trope and turns it on its head.”
Now, fans on TikTok have a theory about the true identities of Gadd’s stalker, and a Sean Foley, Baby Reindeer theory—with no proof whatsoever, we may add, this is pure speculation—has emerged concerning the true identity of the powerful English TV writer/producer who sexually abuses Donny.
Sean Foley & Baby Reindeer
The real identity of Darrien (played by Tom Goodman-Hill) remains a mystery, however, fans on TikTok and Reddit have theorized (with no proof, FYI) that it could be Sean Foley, a British director, writer, comedian, and actor. In 2019, he was appointed the Artistic Director of Birmingham but in 2024, he stepped down. It’s important to note that no charges have been laid, and due to defamation laws, the identity of Gadd’s abuser may never become public knowledge unless police become involved.
“When it came to the point of going to the police, I just couldn’t stand the irony of reporting her but not him,” Donny says in the show. “There was always a sense that she was ill, that she couldn’t help it, whereas he was a pernicious, manipulative groomer. To admit to her was to admit to him, and I hadn’t admitted him to anyone yet.”
Gadd also took to Instagram to defend Foley, saying: “People I love, have worked with, and admire (including Sean Foley) are unfairly getting caught up in speculation. Please don’t speculate on who any of the real life people could be. That’s not the point of our show.” Foley himself announced on Twitter that: “Police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory abusive and threatening posts against me.”
On a Reddit thread speculating who the stalker Martha is, one user wrote: “Can we pretty please put this energy into finding the real-life Darrien? Because unless all of that was fictionalized, he’s likely still working in the industry and has a long list of victims outside of Gadd.”
Another observed: “I’m fine with not knowing who Martha is, maybe because her portrayal was rather sympathetic at times. But also she at least had to answer for her issues at some point. Darrien basically got away with it and could still be doing that shit.”
Similarly, Gadd has not disclosed the identity of the real-life Martha due to privacy and legal reasons. “We’ve gone to such great lengths to disguise her to the point that I don’t think she would recognize herself,” he explained to GQ. “What’s been borrowed is an emotional truth, not a fact-by-fact profile of someone.”
Gadd himself doesn’t know her whereabouts either. He had a restraining order against her but did not want her to go to prison. According to an interview with The Times UK, he “didn’t want to throw someone who was that level of mentally unwell in prison.” He felt “mixed feelings about it” but that the situation was now “resolved.”
On why he felt a sense of empathy for the real-life Martha, he told GQ UK, “Someone comes in who seems very normal, they seem perfect, but bit by bit they get weirder and weirder. Stalking is a mental dysfunction, it’s an illness and I wasn’t dealing with someone who felt calculated or insidious. I felt I was dealing with someone who was vulnerable, somebody who was mentally ill, someone who couldn’t stop because they believed what was in their head.”
Baby Reindeer by Richard Gadd
For more on Baby Reindeer, check out Richard Gadd’s book and play that inspired the Netflix series. The script, which won an Olivier Award in 2020, “is described as a chilling story about obsession, delusion and the terrifying ramifications of a fleeting mistake.” Gadd writes in Baby Reindeer, “I looked at her, wanting her to laugh. Wanting her to share in the joke. But she didn’t. She just stared. I knew then, in that moment – that she had taken it literally…”
