Comedy career Gadd began performing stand-up comedy and musical comedy while he was a student at Glasgow University in 2008. He entered the Glasgow heats of the
Chortle new comedian awards in 2009. In 2010 Gadd performed his first
Edinburgh Fringe show,
Richard Gadd: 6 And Half A 7. In 2011, Gadd was a Chortle Student Comedy Awards finalist. In 2012, Gadd co-performed in the Edinburgh Fringe show
Gadd, Kirk And Winning – Well, This Is Awkward…, and trained at the
Oxford School of Drama, completing a one-year course in 2012. He then moved to London to pursue his comedy career. Gadd's 2015 Edinburgh Fringe show,
Waiting for Gaddot, was intentionally more mainstream than its predecessors and gained Gadd more success and wider attention. It was also nominated for a
Malcolm Hardee Award for Innovation and a
Chortle Award for Innovation. Gadd's 2016 Fringe show
Monkey See Monkey Do won the
Edinburgh Comedy Award for
Best Comedy Show and was also nominated for a
Total Theatre Award for Innovation. Later that year, Gadd won a
Chortle Comedian's Comedian Award and was nominated for an
Off West End Theatre Award for Best Performer. The show then had several sell-out runs at Soho Theatre, toured the UK and Europe, and had a run at the
Melbourne International Comedy Festival, where it was nominated for the 2017
Barry Award. In 2017 it was broadcast as part of
Comedy Central's
Soho Theatre Live series.
Baby Reindeer While a jobbing comedian, Gadd worked as a bartender at
The Hawley Arms pub in
Camden Town, London. There he met 'Martha', who became the main character in
Baby Reindeer.
Baby Reindeer began as a 2019 Edinburgh fringe show, a dark comedy chronicling Gadd's experiences of being
stalked by 'Martha' and
sexually assaulted by a man he met earlier in his career. It was Gadd's breakout success and won two Edinburgh Fringe awards:
The Scotsman Fringe First Award for New Writing and a
Stage Award for Acting Excellence. The show then had a five-week run at London's
Bush Theatre, where it won an Off West End Theatre Award for Best Video Design and was nominated in the Best Performer category. The show later transferred to the
Ambassador's Theatre in London's
West End but was cancelled due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. A few months later, the show won the
Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. In April 2024,
Netflix released a
seven-episode drama based on Gadd's play and billed as a 'true story'. Gadd lost 28 kilograms to play the fictionalized version of himself in order to feel "vulnerable and fragile".
Baby Reindeer also featured a fictionalized version of Gadd's parents. The enormous success and popularity of
Baby Reindeer resulted in a notable annual increase in spending on Netflix digital subscriptions. The woman depicted as 'Martha' in
Baby Reindeer, portrayed as having stalked and sexually assaulted Gadd, was quickly identified as Fiona Harvey, a Scottish lawyer. A former colleague has also questioned the version of events in
Baby Reindeer.
Acting and screenwriting As an actor, Gadd had multiple credits in various television series, television films and short films before his breakout success in
Baby Reindeer. His acting career began with a role in a 2014 episode of
BBC Scotland's
Scot Squad and continued in four episodes of E4's
Tripped in 2015. He starred opposite
Daniel Mays in the 2017 BAFTA-nominated
BBC Two single drama
Against the Law. Gadd's other acting credits include BBC Three's
Clique, Sky Arts's
One Normal Night, and Sky One's
Code 404. He has also appeared in several short films. Gadd wrote for Netflix's
Sex Education and has written episodes of
Ultimate Worrier for
Dave and
The Last Leg for
Channel 4. In 2022, Gadd starred as Conrad Lennox in three episodes of the
Disney+ series
Wedding Season. Gadd has written a drama for the BBC titled
Half Man, starring
Jamie Bell. Filming began in Glasgow in February 2025. ==Personal life==