The “real-life Martha” from Netflix’s ‘Baby Reindeer’ is threatening to sue the streamer.
The ‘real-life Martha’ from Netflix’s ‘Baby Reindeer’ is threatening to sue the streamer
Scottish lawyer Fiona Harvey says the show – billed as a “true story”, and which provides a brutally honest account of comedian Richard Gadd’s experience with an alleged stalker known as Martha – paints an “obscene” and “defamatory” account of her character.
She told Piers Morgan during an interview on his ‘Uncensored’ show about how she has been targeted with death threats since it became one of Netflix’s biggest hits: “I find it quite obscene. I find it horrifying, misogynistic.
“Some of the death threats have been really terrible online. People phoning me up. You know, it’s been absolutely horrendous.”
Fiona added Netflix did not contact her before ‘Baby Reindeer’ was first aired worldwide in April, and added it raised duty-of-care questions.
She also said she had been “forced” into telling her side of the story after the series shot to popularity, branding it a work of “hyperbole” “fiction”.
Internet sleuths identified Fiona within days of the series starting.
Netflix has stood by ‘Baby Reindeer’, stating it was a “true story” and that it took “every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved”.
Fiona added she had never been charged or received a jail sentence for stalking, as depicted in the final episode of ‘Baby Reindeer’, and denied sending Richard, 34, around 41,000 emails or contacted his parents and never heckled the comic at his stand-up gigs.
She also denied assaulting Richard’s former girlfriend and said she did not sexually assault him on a canal path.
Fiona did admit she met Richard in a London pub but said she had only seen him “five (or) six times” in her life and said she had sent him some “jokey banter emails”.
She added: “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.”
‘Baby Reindeer’, which stars actress Jessica Gunning, 38, as unhinged stalker Martha, has racked up nearly 54 million views since its April debut and has been Netflix’s top English-language series for three weeks in a row.
Tagged in Piers Morgan