Netflix’s Baby Reindeer hung onto the top of the streaming charts for over a month while people were transfixed by creator, writer, and star Richard Gadd’s confessional adaptation of his personal experience with trauma and being stalked. The experience of watching the show can be triggering, but the package (and gripping performances, especially from Jessica Gunning as Martha and Gadd as Donny) compelled to such a degree that people couldn’t wait to hear what Gadd would create for his next project after taking weird plane rides and seeing his whole life transformed.
That series, Lions, is currently in the works. However, Gadd already completed an acting stint in a short film that will arrive this month for streaming. Let’s have a quick chat about this abbreviated project while acknowledging that even a tiny amount of Gadd content is better than none.
Plot
Oliver Shuster wrote the script that revolves around a housewarming party gone bad, according to the logline: “When ugly truths start to emerge, chaos reigns and threatens the relationships of old friends.” Yup, somebody (Gadd’s Jimi, maybe) dropped a mysterious drug into the mix. Via Variety‘s first-on-the-scene reporting on the project, “Gadd’s character of Jimi is friends with the host couple; he is described as a ‘liability’ whose ‘self-destructive behavior masks deep self-loathing and a secret that’s not ready to come out.'”
Yep, Truth Serum (directed by Vika Evdokimenko) revolves around Gadd’s character, who appears to have few things in common with Donny of Baby Reindeer. That would include a taste for drugs, and in Jimi’s case, he seems more gleefully chaotic during the experience, but that is apparently not the entire truth, which does come out for better (and mostly) worse.
Cast
Gadd leads the project with his costars: Olivia Vinall, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Umi Myers, Killian Kyle, Danny Ashok, and Miranda Beinart-Smith.
Release Date
Truth Serum will stream on the Omeleto YouTube channel beginning on June 17.
Trailer
Please don’t test out substances from random droppers, but dammit, this does look like fascinating viewing material.
