Miranda Cosgrove has opened up about her own stalker nightmare after watching the hit Netflix show Baby Reindeer.
Richard Gadd's popular Netflix series has left viewers fascinated by the notion of somebody having a stalker, but as Cosgrove details, being on the receiving end can be an utterly terrifying experience.
In a candid interview with Bustle, published on Friday, 30-year-old Cosgrove revisited a haunting chapter from 2016 involving her own stalker.
Recounting an unsettling series of events, the iCarly star said an individual who was fixated with her tragically took his own life by setting himself ablaze in her yard.
The actress revealed that the incident left her feeling unsafe in her own home, saying: "That’s another reason why I go back and forth to my parents’ house so much. I just don’t feel super safe in that house."
She confessed: "For two years after it happened, I wouldn’t really stay there."
Cosgrove vividly described how the stalker had buried items in her yard and lurked around her property with a firearm - once opening fire on a stranger.
"Somebody drove up that had a similar car that kind of looks like my car and I guess he got confused and he thought that maybe it was me driving up," she recalled, adding: "He shot at this person six times and he missed because she was in a car. She drove away."
In a bizarre turn of events, the woman the man shot at once approached Cosgrove at a charity event in LA to share her side of the story.
Recalling the moment the two women started talking, Cosgrove said: “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.'”
The Despicable Me star added: “She seemed like she processes things in a similar way that I do.”
Despite her personal ordeal, Cosgrove managed to appreciate the hit Netflix show, remarking: "I didn’t think about it very much."
Acknowledging the bravery of Gadd in revisiting his own traumatic past to bring the story to life, Cosgrove empathized with the challenges of portraying deeply personal experiences.
"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," she said.
Despite the terror she went through, the School of Rock star also admitted that she is curious about learning more about the man, telling Bustle: "I have a fantasy of diving into the story and figuring out exactly why it all happened."
She added: "I don’t know if that’d make it worse or if that’d make it better, but it just seems like it’d be interesting to have more answers."
This is not the first time Cosgrove has spoken out about the terrifying ordeal.
In 2020, she appeared on the Whitney Cumming's Good For You Podcast where she shared more details about the stalker and the moment she found out he had passed away at her home.
"I got a call at 3:00 in the morning that somebody had like, died at my house," Miranda said. "It was the weirdest thing ever because they had caution tape up and and you know, it was right in my front yard."
She then shed more light on the items that were being buried in her backyard, saying: "He was like burying things in my backyard for like, three days and he buried a lunchbox with a milk chocolate inside of it, in my backyard.
"And then he buries like knives and a rope, and a bunch of random stuff.
"I guess he’d been in my backyard, hanging out there and burying things – why I didn’t notice, I don’t know. I’m just apparently not very observant."