Baby Reindeer Alleged Real-Life Stalker Files Netflix Lawsuit
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Originally appeared on E! Online
Fiona Harvey is taking legal action.
The 58-year-old—who has claimed she's the real-life woman behind the alleged stalker in the hit Netflix show Baby Reindeer, which claims to be a true story by creator Richard Gadd—has filed a lawsuit against the streaming platform totaling $170 million.
As seen in the suit obtained by E! News, Harvey accuses Netflix of defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, gross negligence and violations of right of publicity.
Citing the series' claim to be a true story—as written in the first episode—Harvey's filing reads, "The above quote from the first episode of the Netflix series, Baby Reindeer, is the biggest lie in television history."
"It is a lie told by Netflix and the show's creator, Richard Gadd, out of greed and lust for fame," it continued. "A lie designed to attract more viewers, get more attention, to make more money, and to viciously destroy the life of Plaintiff, Fiona Harvey – an innocent woman defamed by Netflix and Richard Gadd at a magnitude and scale without precedent."
In addition to the pilot note, "This is a true story," in the credits of each episode there is text that reads, "This program is based on real events: however certain characters, names, incidents, locations, and dialogue have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes."
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Within the filing, Harvey claims Netflix never took action to verify what she says are the show's allegations against Harvey, including that she was convicted and served prison time for stalking, that she stalked Gadd for five years, in addition to previously stalking a policeman, that she physically attacked Gadd in a bar, often stayed outside his hours for hours at a time and that she sexually assaulted him by groping him in an alley.
"The real Martha is reasonably understood by all viewers to have done all of these monstrous things," the filing reads, "because Netflix and Gadd stated this was true."
Neither Netflix nor Gadd have commented on whether Harvey was the inspiration for Martha.
The documents also claim that the writing for the onscreen Martha as well as actress Jessica Gunning's portrayal did not do enough to disguise Harvey's identity, noting how viewers were able to locate her online within day's of the show's release via tweets she'd written to Gadd, still on X, that she says were nearly identical to those used in the show.
"Like ‘Martha,' Harvey is a Scottish lawyer, living in London, twenty years older than Gadd, was accused of stalking a lawyer in a newspaper article, and who bears an uncanny resemblance to ‘Martha," the filing reads. "Further, ‘Martha's' accent, manner of speaking and cadence, is indistinguishable for Harvey's."
The filing claims Harvey has developed physical symptoms since the release of Baby Reindeer—including anxiety, nightmares, panic attacks, shame and depression—and that she is "fearful of leaving her home or checking the news," continuing, "As a direct result of Baby Reindeer, Harvey has become extremely secluded and isolated, in fear of the public, going days without leaving her home."
Ultimately, Harvey's lawsuit requests a trial by jury, that Netflix and Gadd—though he has not been named as a defendant in the lawsuit—appear at the trial, and seeks compensation for actual damages, compensatory damages, punitive damages and profits totaling $170 million, with an exact sum to be determined at trial. E! News has reached out to Gadd's attorneys for comment but has not yet heard back.
When reached for comment, Netflix told E! News, "We intend to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd's right to tell his story."
Following the success of Baby Reindeer, Gadd implored the public not to seek out the real counterparts to his onscreen characters, writing on his Instagram Story April 22,"Please don't speculate on who any of the real life people could be. That's not the point of our show."
The 35-year-old has also been candid about his intentions to remain as truthful as possible to his experiences while maintaining privacy.
"It's all borrowed from instances that happened to me and real people that I met," he told Variety in an interview published April 19 of the show's validity. "But of course, you can't do the exact truth, for both legal and artistic reasons. I mean, there's certain protections, you can't just copy somebody else's life and name and put it onto television. And obviously, we were very aware that some characters in it are vulnerable people, so you don't want to make their lives more difficult."
And during a press event May 7, he further explained, "I always had to constantly check myself to be like, does this feel truthful to me and to my experience all the way through? If it didn't, I would have to bring it back. But it was a tightrope. It was a constant process between what works for a TV show and not selling out on your own story, and that continued all the way from writing all the way to filming and all the way through the editing process in finding that right balance."
And for more on Baby Reindeer, keep reading.
Richard Gadd Takes the Stage
Hailing from the village of Wormit in Fife, Scotland, Richard Gadd is an Oxford School of Drama alum who built a name for himself at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with primed-to-shock shows like 2013's Cheese & Crack Whores, 2014's Breaking Gadd and 2015's Waiting for Gaddot, which won a Scottish Comedy Award for Best Solo Show.
Not one to describe himself as a traditional comedian in any sense of the form, Gadd told The Skinny in March 2016, "I don't think I can stand up and tell a story; I haven't written an anecdote or a joke in my life. What I do is high-concept theatrics; big ideas; in-your-face, smash-mouth comedy."
Still, while he wasn't shy about detailing his personal issues in his work—"If you tackle these uncomfortable zones you become stronger as a person"—he was known for playing more of an outlandish character on stage.
Animal Instincts
But the real Gadd stepped up in Monkey See Monkey Do, which debuted at the Fringe in August 2016.
Running on a treadmill the entire time, trying to get the figurative monkey off his back, Gadd unpacked the self-loathing and crisis of masculinity he experienced after being drugged and sexually assaulted by another man four years beforehand, when he was 23. His telling was interspersed with images (the first being video of Gadd vomiting) on a screen and snippets of audio, including recordings from sessions with his therapist that he lip-synced on stage.
The Guardian described Gadd's approach as "open-vein emotional engagement," singling out a moment where he, recalling what happened when he ran into an ex-girlfriend after his assault, revealed himself as "a man unable to conduct the most basic small talk, so consumed is he by self-consciousness and shame."
Gadd told the publication, "I am a completely different person than I was. It changes your life. After it happened, I lost control of myself." Afraid of how those close to him would react, he didn't say anything for a long time, let alone tell the police.
"I was always worried what people would think and that they would judge—but nobody gave a s--t," Gadd said. "I mean, they cared, but they didn't think less of me for it." And once he had told pretty much everyone who mattered to him, it was time to "let it all out."
Monkey Sees Major Success
Monkey See Monkey Do—which Gadd himself described as "dark, off-kilter and weird"—promptly won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Comedy Show. The prize came with a check for £10,000 (roughly $13,500).
"I've hinted at a lot of my problems on stage, I think that's obvious," Gadd told The Scotsman at the time. "But I've always done it in a very heightened way which often obscured the actual meaning and truth a lot of the time...Some of the very real themes I was exploring were almost too loud and in your face to ever be taken seriously."
Monkey See Monkey Do got its title from sports psychiatrist Professor Steve Peters' Chimp Paradox model, he said, the idea that we're basically all "apes trying to be human beings, therefore we think emotionally but have to remind ourselves to think rationally."
Gadd shared that he was prone to anxiety and manic depression, but had been through extensive therapy and was sober, practicing meditation and in the best physical shape of his life. (He started running long distances so that he'd fall asleep easier, too tired to think, and he wanted to incorporate that essential ritual into his show.)
"I always thought I'd tell this story once I had an audience that was going to listen," he said. "But I didn't feel like I could rush the healing process. I had to wait. There's a few nerves and wondering, 'Is this too soon?' But it will hopefully be a good thing."
Audiences came in droves and Gadd spent months performing Monkey See Monkey Do around the U.K.
"I didn't want another miserable year," he told The List toward the end of 2016, "so I wanted to combine the personal goals of trying to find inner peace with the professional goal of getting people to listen to what I have to say."
Harnessing Baby Reindeer
Gadd returned to the Fringe in 2019 with Baby Reindeer, his disturbing account of being stalked for years by an older woman named Martha—which, he stressed, was not her real name—whom he met while tending bar in London in 2013. She seemed down and out and he felt bad for her and gave her a free tea, he explained, and as she kept returning to the bar, he didn't initially discourage the attention.
"I certainly egged the situation on before I realized that it was as dangerous as it was," Gadd told the Independent. "I behaved like a prick at times."
Included in his show's signature multimedia set-up were projected scrolls of Martha's emails (she sent him 41,071 over three years, he said) and samplings of 350 hours' worth of voicemails, as well as testimonials from his parents and other witnesses describing the toll Martha's misguided affections took on all of their lives.
The horror of the situation intensifies when Gadd describes how almost impossible it was to get police to take action, not until after he'd gone through every message she'd ever sent to find the stalking needle in the just-reaching-out haystack.
An Unexpected Sequel
According to Gadd, he had thought this chapter was behind him until Monkey See Monkey Do caused a sensation—and Martha found his number.
"That was the worst part," he told The Guardian after debuting Baby Reindeer. "It felt like I'd expunged the demons of one person who had caused me so much grief, only so that she could take center stage in his place. It felt so awfully ironic."
It was then, Gadd wrote for Netflix, that he started "listening, logging, and annotating every single voicemail she ever left me in the hope of bringing it all to an end. Praying that she would say something incriminating so that the situation could be dealt with properly and effectively."
The situation was dealt with in 2017. During a restless night it occurred to him that he needed to "stage this whole ordeal." But once again, he couldn't force the process.
"I hadn't quite grasped it yet," Gadd told the Guardian. "If I'd rushed it a year ago, it would have just been a victim narrative. And everyone would have come out saying, 'Oh, you're so brave, and well done for doing this.'"
Moreover, he added, "It would be unfair to say she was an awful person and I was a victim. That didn't feel true."
Empathy for Martha
Gadd acknowledged it was obvious to the audience that he should not be engaging with Martha, and that much of the discomfort came from watching him dig himself a deeper hole.
When he'd flirt with Martha (represented by an empty bar stool) in his stage show, "I find that quite awkward, because you can tell that the audience turn against you in those moments," he told the Independent. "And they're right to."
And despite everything she put him through, he felt for her.
"When we think of stalkers, we always think of films like Misery and Fatal Attraction, where the stalker is a monstrous figure in the night down an alleyway," Gadd explained. "But usually, it's a prior relationship or someone you know or a work colleague. Stalking and harassment is a form of mental illness. It would have been wrong to paint her as a monster, because she's unwell, and the system's failed her."
As for how much of Baby Reindeer actually happened, Gadd told the Guardian, "The skeleton of the story is absolutely true."
But, his theatrical account was much more dramatic than how it played out in real time.
"The feeling you get most of all when you're getting harassed is relentless tediousness and frustration," he explained. "I didn't want the audience to feel that."
Baby Reindeer Goes Global
A seven-part series based on Gadd's show of the same name, also incorporating the devastating story told in Monkey See Monkey Do, premiered April 14 on Netflix.
Gadd portrays Donny Dunn, a struggling writer-performer who meets Martha (Jessica Gunning) while tending bar and, feeling sorry for how sad she seems when she comes in, gives her a complimentary cup of tea.
When Martha—who calls him "Baby Reindeer" because he reminds her of a stuffed toy she had as a kid, with "big lips, huge eyes and the cutest wee bum"—sends Donny a friend request on Facebook, he Googles her and finds articles about her checkered past, including one headlined, "Sick stalker torments barrister's deaf child."
He accepts her request anyway and it all devolves from there. Eventually it's revealed that, when he met Martha, Donny was just scraping by emotionally after having been drugged and sexually assaulted by an older man he'd really trusted, writer Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill).
According to Netflix, Baby Reindeer debuted at No. 5 on its list of the most-watched programming of the week with 2.6 million views, then spent the next two weeks at No. 1, amassing 22 million views and 87.4 million hours of viewing.
Reindeer in the Wild
As Gadd soon found out, Netflix viewers are even more interactive than theatergoers.
Hearing the story was rooted in fact, Internet sleuths weren't going to sit idly by while possible real perpetrators were out there, somewhere, unexposed.
And unlike Gadd, who has never publicly named the people on whom Darrien and Martha are based, Reddit users, X posters, et al., have been happy to attempt to fill in the Baby Reindeer blanks themselves. Social media accounts have been highlighted as potentially belonging to the real Martha and speculation has run amok as to who Darrien could be.
Enough so that Gadd pushed back April 22 on his Instagram Story, writing, "Hi Everyone, People I love, have worked with, and admire (including Sean Foley) are unfairly getting caught up in speculation. Please don't speculate on who any of the real life people could be."
Foley, an actor, director and Olivier-winning writer, reposted Gadd's message to X and also wrote, "Police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory abusive and threatening posts against me."
Pleas to Stand Down
The actress who plays Martha said that the people trying so hard to figure out who inspired Gadd's story had "missed the point of the show."
Gunning told BBC Scotland's The Edit, "If you like the show and you are a fan of it, you should stick with the story of Martha and Donny being what connects you, not trying to do any detective work and find out any real identities. I think it is quite sad and I would urge them to watch the show again and see that that was not the point of the show at all."
Gadd did "an amazing job of not making the story so black and white, so there's no goody or baddy or villain or victim, really," she added. "They are just complicated people like humans are."
Gunning found Martha "just fascinating," she said. "One minute, she is vulnerable, the next minute she is hilarious, but vulnerable."
The Real Martha?
Ahead of the series' premiere, Gadd said he wasn't worried about the real Martha trying to reach out, telling Vanity Fair, "The situation did result in a situation, shall we say, where she cannot contact me again." (He's said in multiple interviews since 2019 that he has to choose his words carefully for legal reasons.)
But, he added, "When it comes to stalking, you can never really escape. There's always the nugget of worry in the back of your head."
On April 26, the Daily Mail published an interview with an unidentified woman who said she is the inspiration for Martha and that she is now the victim of Gadd's unwanted attention.
"He's using Baby Reindeer to stalk me now," she told the publication. "I'm the victim. He's written a bloody show about me." The woman said of the actress playing Martha, "She sort of looks like me after I put on four stone during lockdown but I'm not actually unattractive."
She denied stalking Gadd, saying, "Richard Gadd has got 'main character syndrome.'"
Gadd did not respond to E! News' request for comment about the Mail article.
But he previously said that the production took pains to mask identities.
"It's all borrowed from instances that happened to me and real people that I met," he told Variety. "But of course, you can't do the exact truth, for both legal and artistic reasons. I mean there's certain protections, you can't just copy somebody else's life and name and put it onto television. And obviously, we were very aware that some characters in it are vulnerable people, so you don't want to make their lives more difficult."
And he emphasized that real-life events didn't unfold exactly as they do in Baby Reindeer.
Reiterating that "a lot of stalking is quite boring," Gadd explained that "you need to move certain timelines around, you need to move certain points to the end of episodes to make them pay off a little better. As well as a true story, you have to make it visually interesting."
But while there's a psychological thriller aspect to the narrative, he really wanted it to be "an examination of the ramifications of trauma," he said. "And I think that's quite subtle in the show, but a lot of people are really getting that aspect of it. They see Donny and they're appreciating someone's self-destructive tendencies in the wake of trauma. And I think people are finding a great comfort in that, honestly."
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