Baby Reindeer creator and star Richard Gadd has opened up about his experiences of being bullied at school.
Speaking on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, the Scottish actor and comedian revealed how he suffered from crippling anxiety after being picked on daily by older pupils.
“School could be tough in places. I definitely grew up in a neighbourhood where masculinity was at the forefront,” he told Maron.
“The school was a state comprehensive and in my early years I was picked on quite badly there. 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.
“That’s when I realised things had actually got quite bad with the bullying,” he continued. “This one guy gave me a hard time day in and day out and I remember going home sitting with my sister coming 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 and he went right to the front of the bus and beat the hell out of me.”
Gadd’s Baby Reindeer series proved to be a smash hit for Netflix, winning big at the 2024 Emmys and this year’s Golden Globes. The actor is also nominated for a Screen Actor’s Guild award.
The series is a dramatised account of Gadd’s own experience of being obsessively stalked and sexually abused.