On a bright August afternoon, the British actress Jessica Gunning is “up north,” talking through one of the pieces of art displayed in her mum and dad’s northern England home. “This is fascinating,” she says with an affectionate smile, pointing to a craftsy relief of a wintery landscape. “The twigs stuck to it always make me laugh.” Thanks to her indelible performance in Baby Reindeer, the bolt-from-the-blue breakout TV show of the year, Gunning’s life has taken a 180 turn. Yet it was in this cozy home that she received the news of Baby Reindeer’s 11 Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series for creator and star Richard Gadd, and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series for Gunning, which she won. “It felt very surreal,” she says. “I was looking out at somewhere where, not to be cheesy, but when I was a teenager I daydreamed about wanting to be an actor.”

Baby Reindeer’s success is something like a dream itself. Upon its release in April, the show was met by critical adulation, prompted a deluge of op-eds that wrestled with its knotty themes, and became a runaway smash with audiences. (With over 80 million views to date, it is among the most-watched shows in Netflix’s history.) The show is adapted from Gadd’s stage play of the same name and takes inspiration from his personal experience with a stalker in an ordeal that Gadd has called the worst period of his life. Netflix’s Baby Reindeer centers on Donny (Gadd), an aspiring comedian and bartender whose life is turned upside down by the arrival of Martha (Gunning), a wayward loner whose crush on Donny soon curdles into obsession. She is the dictionary definition of “a lot,” and is given to violent outbursts and breaking bottles. But she’s also clearly been dealt a rough hand by life and takes solace in her overactive imagination, and is perhaps even a victim in her own way. In a lesser actor’s hands, Martha could be something of a two-dimensional villain. Gunning portrays her as far more complicated than that, as a person who feels much truer to life. 

In a recent conversation, Gunning opens up about the challenges of the role, the importance of capturing Martha’s multifacetedness, and how it feels to enter into a new professional chapter 17 years into her acting career.

An edited version of the conversation follows.

Martha (Jessica Gunning)

Owen Myers: Baby Reindeer has a specific vision, but it’s clearly chimed with so many people. What would you put its universality down to?
Jessica Gunning: It’s still a bit of a mystery to me. Even now, people come up to me from all different backgrounds and age ranges. I went to Wales recently and a group of school kids, who were probably about 15, ran over. They said, “Are you in Little Reindeer?” which made me laugh. I was like, “Yes . . . ” They were like, “We watched the whole thing.” Then I rounded the corner, and genuinely, a man was walking with a [walker], and he said, “Congratulations on the Reindeer show.” I was like, “How the hell have these two groups of people seen the same thing and responded to it?”

Richard says a sad but lovely thing, which is that maybe the world’s hurting a little bit more than we realize. But I think that audiences are ready to take on difficult stories. We patronize audiences sometimes, saying, “I don’t think they’ll be able to handle this.” But as Baby Reindeer shows, they can, as long as the story is told with care.

When I was watching the show I went from being endeared by Martha to being scared of her to hating her to feeling sorry for her. How did you go about wrapping your head around her complexity?
JG: Lots of it is down to Richard and his amazing writing. I remember rehearsing the scene [between Donny and Martha] where she says she wants to zip him open and climb inside him, with a friend of mine. I said to her, “This is my favorite scene so far, it’s so romantic.” And she was like, “She wants to zip him open? This is terrifying!” I had not thought of it in that way at all. I think I’d have a slightly strange perception of her as a character if I didn’t empathize with her and find the humanity.

When you were filming, did you put any processes in place so that you could walk off set, leave Martha behind, and decompress?
JG: Before Martha, I hadn’t played hugely intense characters. If ever I saw an interview where an actor would say, “It was really hard to shake the character,” I’d be a bit like, “Oh, get over yourself.” [laughs] But it was a really intense time filming Baby Reindeer. I remember filming the sequence where she’s waiting at the bus stop for him, as well as the sequence where he takes her back to her house, and those did really emotionally affect me. I was incredibly moved by her loneliness in those moments, and the sadness that she felt. It did take a while to shift that. You’re in the zone and you’re working from 6 in the morning to 10 at night sometimes, so it’s all-consuming. I’ve got a nice bunch of friends and I’m very close with my family, so I tried to spend time with them on the weekends to get back to normality a little bit. 

Director Weronika Tofilska and Jessica Gunning behind the scenes

Martha has some very memorable character traits to her, from her laugh that can silence a room to her physical presence. How did you go about creating the way that she takes up space?
JG: Fiona [Lobo-Cranston] and Mekel [Bailey], our makeup and costume designers, were amazing. We never wanted it to be like we were making fun of her, but at the same time, she was slightly odd in some instances with her makeup choices or clothes decisions. The only clues from the script were that she would sometimes wear clothes that were a few sizes too small. I really wanted to have an unselfconsciousness to her, and we had these white Crocs that I wore quite often. I loved the idea of her feeling like she could shoot off at any time: court cases to solve, politicians to meet, places to be.

As your highest profile project to date, do you feel that Baby Reindeer has ushered in a new chapter for your career as an actor?
JG: Hopefully I’m on a few more people’s radars. I’m wary to say that it’s been a stepping stone for anything because it’s taken 17 years for the part of Martha to come along. I hope it doesn’t take another 17 for another juicy part to come along! The thing that’s great about Martha is that there are so many sides to her: She’s a comedy, drama, and tragedy all rolled into one. You get a bit of everything with her, which is an absolute treat as an actor to play. It’s given me a taste for complicated characters and for potentially doing more gritty, hard-hitting stuff, as well as the comedies that I also love. 

Martha is a complicated character, but I wonder if there’s anything that you’ve learned from the experience of playing her?
JG: What lingers with me is the journey that’s happened since I got that initial email [about the role]. Usually, I kind of let the outside world decide the fate of a part, and whether I’m right for it. But with Martha, I fought for her. I kept thinking, I feel so connected to this character, and it would be a real shame if the part got into the hands of anyone who saw her as a villain.

I remember I went for dinner with a really good friend of mine who’s an actor, and he gave me some great advice. He just said, “Go for it. Be brave and give something of yourself.” I really went there, which I haven’t done before. It hasn’t been required of me, because a lot of the parts I’ve played haven’t been as deep as Martha. It’s shown me that if I’m a bit braver and a bit more vulnerable, I can get to those places.