The woman believed to be the inspiration for Richard Gadd‘s Netflix megahit “Baby Reindeer” has denied being a stalker.
Fiona Harvey, who is said to have inspired the character of Gadd’s stalker Martha, appeared on Piers Morgan’s YouTube talk show “Piers Morgan Uncensored” in a pre-recorded interview on Thursday evening U.K. time, where she told Morgan she is taking legal action against both Netflix and Gadd and the truth will come out during the legal process.
“I didn’t write him the emails,” she told Morgan, denying that she had sent over 41,000 emails and 100 letters to Gadd while allegedly stalking him.
When asked by Morgan who did send Gadd the emails, Harvey replied: “I think he probably made them up himself, I’ve no idea.”
She also described the situation as “obscene” and “horrendous,” although said she hadn’t watched the show but had been told about scenes from it by her friends and a number of reporters who’ve approached her.
“It’s a work of fiction, it’s a work of hyperbole,” Harvey said during the one-hour special, which attracted over 500,000 viewers to Morgan’s channel as it was broadcast for the first time.
Harvey did admit to knowing Gadd, having met him in the infamous Hawley Arms pub in Camden (best known as being Amy Winehouse’s favorite pub), where Harvey says she ordered a lemonade rather than the signature Diet Coke Martha asks for in the show.
She also admitted to nicknaming Gadd “baby reindeer,” which she said became a running “joke” after he’d “shaved his head,” and that he’d once propositioned her by offering to “hang her curtains,” a scene that is depicted nearly verbatim in the show.
While Harvey repeatedly denied sending Gadd tens of thousands of emails (“How long would that take to type up?” she queried) at one point she admitted: “I think there may have been a couple of emails.”
“Baby Reindeer,” which launched on Netflix last month and quickly rose to the top of the streamer’s list of most popular shows, is a limited series from Clerkenwell Films. It is based on a live show by Gadd in which he recounts the true story of his attempts to transition from barman to comedian — including how he ended up being stalked for six months by a customer and was sexually assaulted by a man in the entertainment industry he had hoped would mentor him.
Gadd claimed he had changed enough details about his stalker, named Martha in the show and played by Jessica Gunning, to ensure she wouldn’t be recognized but fans quickly began combing through the internet and identified a woman named Fiona Harvey as a possible candidate.
In the series Martha is portrayed as a Scottish fantasist who claims to be a high-powered lawyer with impressive political contacts but in real life was a pitiful figure with a conviction for stalking. Over the course of six months she sends Gadd’s character Donny thousands of emails as well as targeting his parents and assaulting his girlfriend.
Harvey, who is Scottish and studied law, was once reportedly given a police warning for stalking.
Harvey told Morgan during the interview: “Even if the email thing was true, the rest is not” adding that she had never smashed up a bar or been convicted for stalking, as Martha is in the show.
She said she first realized she was at the center of Gadd’s work when she saw an advert for his Edinburgh Festival show (on which “Baby Reindeer” is based) in which he was holding up a newspaper article about a previous stalking incident in which Harvey was reportedly evolved and she saw the name of the show.
Morgan pointed out that given Harvey had been identified almost immediately after the show dropped on Netflix, both the streamer and Gadd’s duty of care towards Harvey had been “a spectacular failure.”
Netflix declined to comment. Reps for Clerkenwell and Gadd did not respond to Variety by press time.
From Variety US