Netflix always has a couple of aces up its sleeve come Emmy season. Last year it was Beef. This year, everything is pointing towards a sweeping victory for Richard Gadd’s controversial autobiographical drama limited series, Baby Reindeer.
The seven-part drama-thriller received a whopping 11 Emmy nominations. The list, which included nods for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, Gadd (as actor and writer), co-stars Jessica Gunning, Nava Mau, and Tom Goodman-Hill, and director Weronika Tofilska, was revealed Wednesday and is already leading the favorites race.
“Baby Reindeer is going to be like Beef last year,” one fan tweeted, while plenty of others predicted the show’s “sweep” in September.
“Baby Reindeer will take all the awards this year,” another hopeful X user claimed. The show is up against FX’s Fargo, HBO’s True Detective: Night Country, Apple TV Plus’s Lessons in Chemistry, and fellow Netflix production Ripley in nearly every category. The competition is fierce enough, but these internet commentators might be right — none have come close to the cultural impact Baby Reindeer has had.
Since its April 2024 premiere, Gadd’s brainchild, adapted from a one-man show with the same title, has been watched approximately 86 million times, entering Netflix’s English-language all-time Top 10 for a brief period in June before it was dethroned by season 3 of Bridgerton.
Baby Reindeer dramatizes real events from Gadd’s life when he moved to London from Scotland to attempt a career as a comedian. Unable to make that work, Gadd (or his fictional counterpart Donny) resorted to working at a Camden pub where he would eventually meet “Martha,” the woman who would become his stalker for months. The limited series is a raw, harrowing look at the mental and physical impact of sexual abuse, centering on the mostly unexplored experience of a male victim.
Before the conversation around the show became dominated by the “hunt” for the real Martha, later identified as Fiona Harvey, and her subsequent accusations of defamation against Gadd and Netflix, Baby Reindeer was acclaimed by critics and named one of the best productions of the year.
The 76th Emmy Awards will take place on Sunday, Sep. 15, 2024.
Published: Jul 17, 2024 01:45 pm