The woman who allegedly inspired Richard Gadd’s hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer said she wanted to “set the record straight” in an online interview with broadcaster Piers Morgan.
The seven-episode Netflix show Baby Reindeer stars comedian Richard Gadd as Donny, a character based on Gadd’s own experience of being stalked and the toll it took on his relationships and career.
Jessica Gunning plays the role of Martha, a stalker who becomes infatuated with Donny, including writing threatening emails, following him home and staking out the pub where he works.
In the interview shared to Youtube, Scottish lawyer Fiona Harvey tells Morgan she had been “forced” to respond after internet sleuths “outed” her as the inspiration for the central character.
“On the internet, sleuths tracked me down and hounded me and gave me death threats. So it wasn’t really a choice. I was forced into this situation,” she said.
Harvey denied she was a stalker and has said she will “absolutely” take legal action against both Gadd and Netflix over the damage the show has done to her life.
“It’s completely untrue. Very, very defamatory to me, very career-damaging. And I wanted to rebut that completely on this show. I’m not a stalker. I’ve not been to jail, I’ve not got injunctions. And this is just complete nonsense.”
She told Morgan she hadn’t watched any of the show, and only found out about it two weeks ago.
“I find it horrifying, misogynistic. It’s been absolutely horrendous.”
The show depicts Martha sending Donny 41,000 emails, 350 hours of voice messages, 744 tweets, 48 Facebook messages, and 106 letters.
Harvey denied this, saying she only sent some “jokey, bantery emails”.
“That’s simply not true. If somebody was sending somebody 41,000 emails or something, they’d be doing how many a day? Lots.”
Yesterday, the UK’s policy chief Benjamin King told parliament that Netflix and Clerkenwell Films who made the show had taken “every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story”.
“We didn’t want to anonymise that or make it generic to the point where it was no longer his story because that would undermine the intent behind the show,” the senior public policy director said.
King added: “Ultimately, it’s obviously very difficult to control what viewers do, particularly in a world where everything is amplified by social media.”
