‘Baby Reindeer’ Wins Emmy for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series
Marcus Jones
After a tight race up against some of the most beloved shows of the season, Netflix phenomenon “Baby Reindeer” won the Emmy for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series. The win for the record-breaking British dramedy from creator and star Richard Gadd was the last of the TK Emmys it received at the 76th edition of the Emmy Awards, hosted by “Schitt’s Creek” Emmy winners Eugene and Dan Levy.
“Baby Reindeer” was nominated against “Fargo” (FX), “Lessons in Chemistry” (Apple TV+), “Ripley” (Netflix), and “True Detective: Night Country” (HBO) for the award.
Based on his one man show of the same name, which won two Edinburgh Fringe awards in 2019, “Baby Reindeer” tells the story of an aspiring stand-up comic that catches the eye of a female stalker, leading to a warped relationship between the pair that forces him to confront past trauma. “Baby Reindeer” also stars Jessica Gunning, Nava Mau, and Tom Goodman-Hill, who were all just recognized for their work on the seven episode series at the Emmys this September.
The Emmy win is Netflix’s second in the row in the category, with the streaming service having won Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series for Lee Sung Jin’s “Beef,” starring Emmy winners Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, at the postponed 75th Primetime Emmy Awards that happened in January of this year.
Though the runaway success of “Baby Reindeer” came as a surprise to even Netflix, Gadd told IndieWire shortly after the show first received Emmy nominations that he had always felt his deeply personal show had the ability to find a wider audience. “I never really lost faith in it. I maintained my belief that it could be good even through some of the lower points of filming, of which there are many on every single show,” he said.
However, nothing could prepare Gadd for his first produced TV show to be watched by hundreds of millions of people after its April premiere. “Twitter was exploding. It was trending. It was so huge. And then people were hanging around my street. I couldn’t really walk down the street anymore, and I had to kind of disguise myself to a certain degree, and it felt very intense suddenly,” he added.
Ultimately, despite all the noise, Gadd still looks at the success of the now Emmy-winning “Baby Reindeer” in a positive light, saying that he hopes to work with Netflix again in the future, and that he wouldn’t change anything about the experience. “I go back to the charity statistics, and if I need to soak up a bit more pressure or criticism to bring a sense of good around this show, which I do believe it is—the show has done a phenomenal amount of good in the world in terms of changing people’s understanding of things like sexual abuse, mental health and all this kind of stuff—then that’s a good thing, and I can’t regret that,” he said.
