Baby Reindeer star Tom Goodman-Hill was confronted by upset viewers while dropping his children off at school after the hit Netflix series aired, his wife and fellow actor Jessica Raine has revealed.
Goodman-Hill, 57, portrayed Darrien in the Emmy award-winning Netflix show, a manipulative and abusive TV writer who assaults Richard Gadd's character, Donny Dunn, after becoming his mentor. The role earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
Raine, best known for her role in Call the Midwife, described the aftermath of the series' release. "The school run was weird afterwards," she told The Telegraph. "People would say to Tom, 'You're a bad man!' But its critical reception was incredible; we'd never have guessed it was going to turn out this way."
Baby Reindeer quickly became one of Netflix's most-watched series of all time when it debuted in 2024. However, Raine admitted she could not watch the show alongside her husband. "I watched it alone when I was filming away and I was like, 'We'll leave that there,'" she said.
The couple married in 2015 after being cast together in Mike Bartlett's play Earthquakes at the National Theatre. They welcomed their first child, a son, in 2019. Raine and Goodman-Hill attended the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles with their now seven-year-old son, staying in an Airbnb next to a doggy daycare salon. "Dogs are such a big deal in LA," Raine said. "And we had the best time ever."
For the first time since meeting at the National Theatre in 2010, the couple will star together in a new BBC drama series, Two Weeks in August. Set on a sun-soaked Greek island, the drama follows a group of university friends reuniting for a long-awaited summer holiday. Initially, Raine was cast in the lead role, and the couple agreed Goodman-Hill would stay in London to care for their son while she filmed in Malta for five months. However, when Goodman-Hill was later cast alongside her, they scrambled to hire a crew member's girlfriend as their nanny.
"But it was by the skin of the teeth," said Raine. "I always grab other actresses who are mothers and ask, 'How do you do it?'" Their son missed only five weeks of school and was home-schooled by former teacher Goodman-Hill, but Raine said she would not take him out of education again. "People say, 'Oh, acting is a travelling circus,' but I chose this life, not him," she reflected. "Tom's made the biggest feminist gesture of always allowing me to work on incredible things with no chip on his shoulder and take the hit on his career."
Two Weeks in August will air on BBC One on Saturday, 23 May.
