During his 10-hour flight from London to Los Angeles, Richard Gadd decided to catch up on the 250 or so unread messages on his phone. He’s been inundated since his Netflix series, Baby Reindeer, reached phenomenon status last month. After stepping off the plane and clearing customs, he then encountered a huge mob of fans. He wondered if someone famous had been on his flight. Then he saw what they were all holding: printout posters of his Baby Reindeer alter ego, Donny Dunn. “They were going crazy,” Gadd says. He signed as many as he could. The crowd followed him as he left.

“It feels like you’ve left your living room window open and there’s a cacophony of people shouting into it,” Gadd says later from a stuffy West Hollywood conference room. “You have to practice self-preservation [in] moments like these.”

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No kidding. As Baby Reindeer, a small-scale British production that was not heavily promoted, has amassed tens of millions of views around the world, crashing this year’s Emmy race in the process, it’s put Gadd and his costars Jessica Gunning and Nava Mau—sitting on either side of him on this sunny Wednesday afternoon—under a microscope. The series is based on Gadd’s actual experience, following a struggling comedian and bartender whose own traumatic past leads to a dangerously toxic dynamic with his stalker, named Martha and played by Gunning in the show.

The empathetic, darkly funny approach to two vulnerable characters finding hope and despair in each other has resonated globally. It’s also caused controversy, as the scale of the show has led viewers to try tracking down the real-life stalker as well as the powerful TV producer who sexually abuses Donny.

Gadd and company have just completed a glitzy photo shoot and are still giddy from the previous evening’s celebratory Baby Reindeer For Your Consideration event. At the same time, a Scottish woman named Fiona Harvey has come forward to claim she was the inspiration for Martha, announcing that she will be speaking out in an extensive video interview with Piers Morgan. (In that interview, which happened after I spoke to Gadd and his costars, she called Baby Reindeer “defamatory” and argued that Gadd is “obsessed” with her. Netflix’s UK policy chief Benjamin King reiterated on Wednesday that the streamer and producers took “every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story.” Vanity Fair has reached out to Gadd for comment.)

Since Reindeer’s premiere, Gadd has consistently said that he cannot and will not talk about the basis for Martha, while emphasizing that the real and fictional versions of her are substantially different. “I think it does a disservice to the art,” he says of the audience’s desire to find the inspirations for Reindeer’s characters. “I’ve spoken out publicly against it and said that I wanted to stop. I think that did have an impact.”

Would he have done anything differently, I ask, if he’d known the show would get as big as it has? “I can’t police the internet, and no matter what I would’ve done, you just don’t know how people are going to react to things. You can never predict the future,” he says. “You can’t second-guess yourself, or spend the creative process second-guessing yourself.”

For everyone involved with Baby Reindeer, the last month has been a lot to take in. “I have had to remind myself that I am not an infinite resource, and I actually am better able to do my work and serve my purpose by protecting my energy and practicing strong boundaries,” says Mau, who plays Donny’s girlfriend, Teri. “But it has overwhelmingly been an outpouring of love that I’ve received from people in all places.”

Mau’s nuanced performance grounds the series, with Teri navigating her affection for Donny as his trauma bubbles to the surface—and the ire of Martha once she becomes aware of the relationship. While Teri doesn’t figure prominently into the series’ endgame, Mau felt a sense of closure after filming a scene that did not make the final cut of the show. In that sequence, Teri leaves Donny a voicemail months after they’ve parted ways, telling him she’s watched his viral video—in which he reveals being sexually assaulted in a stunning stand-up monologue—and that she hopes he is finding peace. “It was a very nuanced, loving, clear, and adult and healed message,” Mau says.

Gadd shares a chunk of Teri’s dialogue from that scene with me: “‘I just wanted to say I saw how much you struggled, and I hope how much you’re going through right now helps you reach some sort of peace in your life. I’ve met a new man now, so don’t call me back. I thought I should let you know. Anyway, good luck, darling. Enjoy it.’” Gadd decided not to include that scene in order to maintain a level of surprise and heartbreak in the edit. We learn about Teri’s future more subtly without that extra context. “You have to kill your darlings,” he says.

It’s one of many specific Baby Reindeer beats that have generated discussion and speculation. Gunning, a British TV veteran who breathes searing life into Martha, has focused largely on defending her polarizing character. “Last night after the event, quite a lot of people were going, ‘You terrify me.’ And I’ve got this really fierce protection of her where I’m just like, ‘She isn’t scary, though!’” the actor says. “But then, of course, I see the show and I forget the bigger picture.”

Gunning is not on social media, but has been confronted with viewers’ opinions in public: “The other day I was walking down the street and I looked like Martha, [because of how I had my hair]. And a lady stepped in front of me and just screamed in front of my face.”

She has adamantly resisted the labeling of Martha as a villain—and labels are something that Gadd has generally hoped to eschew in the making of Baby Reindeer. Another example is Donny’s (and by extension, Gadd’s) sexuality, which is depicted as a profoundly confusing journey in the aftermath of the assault. (An otherwise positive NPR review claimed “the series repeatedly and clumsily conflates the horror of abuse with the simple fact of queer sexuality.”) Gadd, who identifies as bisexual, hoped to honor the many people who experience their sexuality as indefinitely unclear.

“A lot of people don’t fit into gay, straight, bisexual—they actually go through life questioning and wrestling with it almost the whole time,” he says. “When I was going through everything in my early 20s, I remember fundamentally feeling confused: ‘Okay, today I’m going to go down the street and I’m going to be straight today.’ ‘Okay, that didn’t work, I still don’t feel good, so I’m going to get up and I’m going to be gay today.’ ‘Okay, I’m going to get up and I’m going to be bi.’ None of the labels sat right with me.” Of Donny’s particular path, Gadd says, “When it comes to his sense of self, there is no clear answer and definition. Donny struggles with himself in every single respect…. Offering a lack of clarity around that area might provide comfort to people who spend their lives in a state of uncertainty.”

The last time Gadd, Gunning, and Mau were together in person was the night before Baby Reindeer hit Netflix. “Little did we know,” Gunning says, and they all laugh. It’s clear the trio find great comfort in one another as the spotlight settles on them in a way none of them have ever experienced before. Mau reflects on that premiere event, the pride she felt just in the show that they made together: “We watched it on the big screen, and it was special. That felt like, ‘Okay, we did it.’”

Before Baby Reindeer came out, Gadd tells me he had a little less than 4,000 followers on Instagram. He’d feel excited if a post generated more than 100 likes. He chuckles to himself at this month-old version of himself, naive to just how quickly and intensely things can change. He notes that he’s since turned the comments off on his account. That intrigues Gunning, who, again, is not on social media. “How does it work? You can turn comments off, or you can turn notifications off, and it doesn’t keep pinging?” she asks. Gadd nods: “Instagram is quite good in that way.”

Each of these actors has, in their own way, communicated the need to protect themselves amid so much scrutiny. They are riding high off of the prospect of awards attention, rave reviews, and the even shinier career opportunities awaiting them. This is life-changing stuff, in ways both thrilling and potentially unsettling. “Despite sharing my deepest vulnerabilities with the world, I do actually like to keep up a certain level of privacy,” Gadd says. “I’ve been letting it come in when I feel prepared for it.”

He points out his phone again. “It’s back up to about 150 unread messages now already,” he says—in roughly 24 hours. “So yeah, it’s been crazy.”