The former Channel 5 Wright Stuff host has spoken of his experiences…
Today on Lorraine, TV presenter and journalist Matthew Wright joins Lorraine to reveal how the Netflix phenomenon ‘Baby Reindeer‘ has brought back memories of his own traumatic stalking ordeal as the National Stalking Helpline has reported there’s been a 47% rise in the number of calls to stalking helplines.
Discussing the increase in calls to the helpline, Matthew said:
“I have such mixed feelings about this show. But, that’s a positive. I’m not saying that the positives justify the negatives but it is a positive and it shows patterns of behaviour from both men towards women and women towards men. Because he is as much a stalker of her… When I reflected on my stalking situation, I never wanted to go visit my stalker’s house, I didn’t want to buy my stalker a drink, I didn’t want to see this woman or have anything to do with her at all. And that’s where the lines are blurred in Baby Reindeer.”
Revealing how it was difficult to watch the show after having his own experiences with stalking, he said:
“The first moment where it was a real [punches hand] was episode 2 or episode 3 which was when he was doing his comedy act and she was suddenly in the audience. I did a charity fashion awards just locally for my community centre and everybody had glammed up and this woman [was in the crowd] and I didn’t even recognise her because there was this person that I used to see around my TV show and around my neighbourhood but she was very glammed up, all her hair was done and my wife said ‘no, that’s her’.
“It was looking over your shoulder. Every time we went out the front door, you wondered about what you were going to encounter… She would turn up at the letterbox when we had just had the baby. She was banging on the door, trying to take photos through the letterbox demanding that we produced the baby. There was a lot of abuse to Amelia. She had imagined herself as my partner which is kind of what happened in Baby Reindeer but I wasn’t responding in any shape or form.”
Sharing his thoughts on the series, he said: “Richard Gadd has an opportunity with his show where he said he’s written it as a sort of therapy, reconciling the abuse that he had and his experience with the stalker. He’s written it all down and I think it’s a wonderful thing to do, but I’m just not sure if I was him that I would choose to put it on Netflix and sell it around the world. It’s your truth, it’s your story but you’re bringing other people into your truth and we can already see people trying to guess who is who and I am not sure that is very helpful either.”
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