I’ll sue, says woman named as Baby Reindeer stalker
THE woman named as a stalker who inspired Baby Reindeer has said she will sue Netflix, and has accused the show’s writer of being “obsessed” with her.
Fiona Harvey, 58, has broken her silence after fans of the hit series claimed to have identified her as the person who inspired the character of Martha after its release last month. In an interview with Piers Morgan
Uncensored on Talktv, she claimed Netflix had not contacted her, and she had been depicted in a “defamatory” way.
Written by and starring Richard Gadd, 34, a comedian, the drama charts the “suffocating obsession” of Martha towards him “which threatens to wreck both their lives”, as well as his experience of being raped by a man.
Ms Harvey claimed the series was “completely untrue” and “a work of fiction”, despite each of the seven episodes carrying the claim: “This is a true story.”
Asked if she would be taking legal action, she said she “absolutely” would “against both him and Netflix”, adding she had instructed lawyers “in part”.
Netflix and Gadd have been asked to comment. Gadd recently asked fans on Instagram: “Please don’t speculate on who any of the real-life people could be. That’s not the point of the show.”
Ms Harvey denied ever being at Gadd’s home, contacting his parents or sending thousands of texts and emails. But she admitted owning four mobiles and four to six email addresses, as well as having a toy reindeer when she was younger, as depicted in the series.
She told Morgan she was in a fiveyear relationship with a lawyer and had never been charged with a criminal offence. In Baby Reindeer, Martha is given a prison sentence for stalking.
Pressed on the 41,000 emails, 350 hours of voice messages, 744 tweets, 48 Facebook messages, and 106 letters she is alleged to have sent Gadd, Ms Harvey said: “That’s simply not true.”
She accepted sending him “a handful” of emails, which she numbered as “less than ten”, and sent “about 18 tweets” to him “years and years ago” as well as a letter. She said she also went to one of his comedy shows.
Asked about the possibility of Gadd having voice messages from her in real life, she claimed these “would be [from] taping me in the Hawley Arms”.
“My point is, though, even if that were true, I didn’t lunge at him across the bar. I didn’t sexual[ly] assault him in a canal. I didn’t go to jail,” she said.
“On the internet, sleuths tracked me down and hounded me and gave me death threats. So it wasn’t a choice. I was forced into this situation,” she said.
Speaking in Parliament this week, Benjamin King, the Netflix policy chief said that the streaming giant and Clerkenwell Films, which made the show, took “every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story”.