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On Thursday afternoon, Fiona Harvey came forward to set the record straight about Baby Reindeer, the Netflix sensation, which Richard Gadd reportedly based on his real-life experience being stalked by a woman, called Martha in the series and portrayed by Jennifer Gunning. In a testy YouTube interview with Piers Morgan, she explained her reasons for believing the story is false enough to deserve her filing a lawsuit against Gadd, Netflix, and others associated with the series.
In the nearly one-hour-long interview, Harvey denied stalking Gadd, saying it was “completely untrue” and “very defamatory to me…. I’m not a stalker. I’ve not been to jail. I’ve got no injunctions.”
Harvey complained that she received no apologies from Gadd, the streaming service, or others associated with the show, even after being harassed by “internet sleuths”: “[They] tracked me down and hounded me and gave me death threats, so it wasn’t really a choice [to come forward].”
In late April, shortly after the show’s debut, Gadd did implore audiences not to try to seek out the real-life people who’d inspired the series in a social media post, writing, “That’s not the point of our show.” Meanwhile, Netflix’s policy chief said at a UK Parliament hearing that the streamer took “every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story.”
Though Harvey claimed she had not watched Baby Reindeer, she took issue with the portrayal of Martha, saying, “It’s a work of fiction. It’s a work of hyperbole, as I’ve always said. And there are two true facts in that. His name is Richard Gadd, and he works as a jobbing barman on benefits, in the Hawley Arms. And we met, two or three times.”
She went on to say that she “doubted” he could prove his story by producing hundreds of voicemails from her, claiming that the only way it could happen is if he’d recorded her at the bar. She also said it was “categorically” untrue that he’d ever been caught peeping in her window and it was “simply not true” that she sent the number of emails and social media messages the show claims Martha did — “There may have been a couple of emails,” she said, adding there were “about 18 tweets,” zero Facebook messages, and “a couple of emails” in all. She also denied ever heckling him at a comedy show.
One bit she did concede may be based in reality is the source of the show’s title, admitting that she did have a reindeer toy, and saying, “I had a toy reindeer and he’d shaved his head, that bit is true, and there were reindeers in the shops because it was Christmas time or something. It was a joke. So I have inadvertently penned the name of the show.”
Harvey went on to suggest Gadd had “extreme psychiatric problems.” Her ultimate message to Gadd? “Leave me alone, please, and get a life, get a proper job.”
Watch the full interview in the embed above.
Baby Reindeer, Netflix