Darrien O’Connor is a reputed comedy writer who takes a liking to Donny in Baby Reindeer. Tom Goodman-Hill plays the character.
Donny met Darrien O’Connor when he attended the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to pursue a comedy career.
Darrien was the head writer of a show called ‘Cottonmouth’ that Donny was a huge fan of, and he offered to help Donny with his stand-up act.
They worked together for several weeks as Darrien improved Donny’s act, and they spent the evenings chatting about the industry at one of Edinburgh’s high-profile clubs.
Darrien invited Donny to London so that they could work together, but he had to leave the festival early and Donny was left with the uncertainty of that offer.
Terrible ulterior motives
Donny doesn’t hear from Darrien for a long time and moves on with his life. After the festival, he gets into acting school and moves to London where he meets Keeley.
Things are going well when he gets a call from Darrien, inviting him over to his apartment. Donny goes over there with a written-out idea, and Darrien says he’ll take a look at it later.
He offers Donny some drugs and they spend the evening getting high. This becomes a pattern as Darrien criticizes his work during the week and then gets high with him on the weekends.
Despite how much energy it took out of Donny and how it negatively affected his relationship with Keeley, Donny continued going to Darrien’s house.
That is until he tried acid with him and finally faced up to the fact that he was getting groomed and sexually abused by Darrien every time they were getting high.
Even though Darrien said that a network had picked up his work and was going to back him, Donny decided not to visit Darrien again.
The experience affected Donny quite severely and it inadvertently led to his issues with Martha and Teri.
When he moves back to Liz’s place, he finds the script he wrote back then and decides to visit Darrien.
Darrien offers him a legitimate writing job with pay this time and Donny accepts before leaving.
He finally gets some closure on the trauma that Darrien had put him through.
Also Read: Baby Reindeer (2024) summary and ending explained