Richard Gadd: Why Baby Reindeer creator will not be returning to the Edinburgh Fringe

Richard Gadd started taking shows to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2010
Richard Gadd won the Golden Globe for best limited TV series for his hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer. Richard Gadd won the Golden Globe for best limited TV series for his hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer.
Richard Gadd won the Golden Globe for best limited TV series for his hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer. | Getty Images

Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd has revealed he will not be returning to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and has put his comedy career on the back-burner.

The writer and performer won the most coveted comedy award at the Fringe before having a hit with the original stage version of Baby Reindeer, before it was snapped up for a Netflix series.

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Richard Gadd attends the Netflix Fall Showcase for "Baby Reindeer" at Netflix Tudum Theater on November 2, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Picture: Presley Ann/Getty Images/Netflix Richard Gadd attends the Netflix Fall Showcase for "Baby Reindeer" at Netflix Tudum Theater on November 2, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Picture: Presley Ann/Getty Images/Netflix
Richard Gadd attends the Netflix Fall Showcase for "Baby Reindeer" at Netflix Tudum Theater on November 2, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Picture: Presley Ann/Getty Images/Netflix | Presley Ann/Getty Images/Netflix)

However the Fife-born star seems set to turn his back on the festival where he struggled to make an impact as a stand-up before becoming one of its hottest tickets.

The 35-year-old has described feeling like a "dad man walking" at the end of his Fringe runs because he found it so "tough" to get through the event.

Richard Gadd is the creator and star of Baby Reindeer. Richard Gadd is the creator and star of Baby Reindeer.
Richard Gadd is the creator and star of Baby Reindeer.

He has recalled having to cancel most of his performances in a pub venue during one Fringe because he did not have an audience.

Gadd has told how he was shunned by fellow comics and abused by audiences on the Scottish stand-up circus because his material was so unconventional.

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Speaking on American comic Marc Maron's podcast, Gadd has suggested he will be focusing on "serious acting" and theatre work in future.

He has also revealed ambitions to play the role in Macbeth, after his appearance in a school production inspired him to be a performer.

However Gadd, who was brought up in Wormit, has spoken about suffering at the hands of school bullies, and recalled being beaten up after hitting back at jibes over a birthmark on his head.

Gadd started out performing stand-up in student union gigs in Glasgow and at The Stand Comedy Club, before his first Fringe show in 2010.

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He won the main Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2016 for his show Monkey See Monkey Do. He admitted he had told friends that his main aim with that year's festival was to "make it out alive."

Speaking on the podcast, Gadd said: "Even when it goes well, the Fringe can be tough.

“Every time I would gear up to go and think: 'I'm not going to let it affect me this month. It's one hour's work a night and I just need to get through it.'

"But whatever happened, by the end of the month I would be like a dead man walking.

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"I remember doing a month in a pub called the Argyle Bar, which was right out of town. People who go to the Fringe didn't really go to the area.

"I got myself the venue. I was so new. I think they were like: 'Who is this guy? Let's give him a really bad venue.'

“I had to cancel most nights because nobody came. I remember this one time one person turned up and I just took them to the bar for a drink instead.

"But I really feel like I earned my stripes, in a way."

Gadd last appeared at the Fringe in 2019, with the stage play version of Baby Reindeer, which won a Scotsman Fringe First Award before transferring to London and then being snapped up by Netflix.

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He said he was “quite proud” that many of his Fringe shows had existed in a “middle ground” between theatre and comedy, and had “escaped definition.”

However he added: "I've made some of the best friends I've ever had from comedy. But I don't really do comedy very much anymore.

"When the theatre piece (Baby Reindeer) happened, it set me on the path to writing the Netflix show and then doing some serious acting jobs. The comedy is quite in the background now.

"I'd love to write theatre again, I'm definitely going to do live stuff again, 100 per cent. But I think comedy circuit stuff, or doing Edinburgh shows, is probably a thing of the past. Right now, I'm just happy about following the trajectory of where it's going."

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Gadd told Maron that a major inspiration through his career had been The Office, the hit sitcom created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

"I became obsessed with it. I just thought it was the funniest thing and the most moving thing.

"To this day, I still think it is one of the greatest things that has ever been made.

"I researched it and saw that there were these two guys who wrote it, they were in it and they directed it. I just felt that I would love to do my own version of that. That was always my goal, which really kind of got all the way to Baby Reindeer in a way."

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Gadd told the podcast that his early efforts at writing comedy dated back to when he and his friends in Wormit created their own sketches.

He said: "No-one has really heard of Wormit. If you go to Dundee, it is just over the water. It is quite pretty. I quite like it, but it is a very small town. It has one shop and that is it. There was no bar or anything like that.

"In a lot of ways I wouldn't change it for the world.

"Me and my friends would just mess around, kick a football about and write sketches to keep each other entertained. It wasn't really comedy.

"It was a town where nothing happened. You had to wrangle someone's dad to drive you somewhere like Dundee or Andrews so you could have some fun. It was quite a cut-off place."

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Gadd went to high school in St Andrews, around 12 miles away from Wormit, moving to Glasgow to study English literature and theatre at Glasgow.

He said: "I definitely grew up in a neighbourhood where masculinity was definitely at the forefront of some of the kids who were around.

"School could be tough in places. It wasn't the roughest school in the world. In my early years I was picked on quite badly there.

"It's so funny talking about this. It's the first time I've unlocked it in so many years.

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"I had a birthmark on my head, which has actually faded, and it was the shape of Africa. They would call me 'tea stain' because it was like I had dropped a tea bag on my head.

"It got to the point where they were singing songs about me on the bus and stuff like that. They would sing mean songs and I would sit at the front.

"I always remember coming back on the school bus and thinking 'I hope they don't sing about me today'.

"I would start to hear singing but then realise they weren't singing so my anxiety was so great that I had started to hear the singing

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"That's when I realised things had actually got quite bad with the bullying.

"This one guy gave me a hard time, day in and day out. I remember going home and sitting with my sister to come up with something I could say to him the next day.

"I decided to say 'at least when I go on holiday I don't have to drop my mum off at the kennels,' which is obviously not the right thing to say.

"There was about six years between us. He went right to the front of the bus and beat the hell out of me.

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"It's funny talking about this kind of stuff. It causes you to be kind of tough in your neighbourhood, to stick up for yourself and not take much s*** from people. It hardens you."

Gadd said his mother had persuaded him to audition for the lead role of Macbeth when he was around 16 and got the part despite thinking his audition had been a "complete disaster."

He said: "I just got the bug and kind of knew my place in the world.

"I got some kind of adrenalin and affirmation from it that made me think 'this is making me happy now.'

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"To this day, it is still one of the most enjoyable and enlightening experiences of my life. Part of me still wants to go back and do Macbeth. I would love to do Shakespeare. It really was a watershed moment for what I wanted to do with my life."

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