Miranda Cosgrove reflects on her horrifying stalker experience after Baby Reindeer comparisons

The ‘Despicable Me’ actor had a stalker who set himself on fire before fatally shooting himself in her yard

Miranda Cosgrove says she reflected on her own terrifying experience with a stalker after watching the hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer.

The iCarly and Despicable Me actor, 30, went through the ordeal in 2016 when a man was found dead in the backyard of her Hollywood Hills home.

The man had set himself on fire before fatally shooting himself. Cosgrove was not at home at the time, but it emerged he had been stalking her for some time.

He had previously shot at a woman who resembled Cosgrove as she drove past the home.

In a new interview with Bustle, Cosgrove recalled later meeting the woman the man had mistakenly targeted at a charity event.

“This girl came up to me, and she was like, ‘I didn’t know if I should tell you this here or how to say this, but I’m actually the girl that was at your house that got shot at,’” Cosgrove remembered.

Miranda Cosgrove in Pacific Palisades, California in May 2024 (Getty Images for Netflix)

She added that the pair managed to find humour in the situation, saying: “She seemed like she processes things in a similar way that I do. She said she’d just gone through a breakup the night before and was going to her friend’s house because she was so distraught.

“When they brought her into the Hollywood Police Station to ask what he looked like and how it all happened, the detectives were like, ‘Start from the very beginning. What happened?’ And she was like, ‘Well, he broke up with me last night,’ and she started telling them all about her breakup.”

Cosgrove went on to make clear that the traumatic incident still affects her, and said she still spends much of her time at her family’s home in Downey, California.

“That’s another reason why I go back and forth to my parents’ house so much,” she said. “I just don’t feel super safe in that house. For two years after it happened, I wouldn’t really stay there. Then I got into a relationship and because that person was there with me, I was less scared. But I don’t really like being there on my own that much.”

Her ordeal has drawn comparisons to Richard Gadd’s viral Netflix drama about his stalker experience. Cosgrove said that after watching Baby Reindeer, she was impressed by Richard Gadd’s willingness to act out his own trauma.

“I feel like if that were me, having to go back through your most terrible experiences and then try to act them [out], that’d be so hard,” said Cosgrove.

Yesterday, Piers Morgan spoke to Fiona Harvey, the 58-year-old lawyer on whom the stalker character of Martha in Baby Reindeer is allegedly based.

The Independent’s Ryan Coogan writes that the interview was another example of irresponsible sensationalism from a man who desperately wants to stay in the spotlight.