The Netflix show “Baby Reindeer” has become a sensation, skyrocketing to No. 1 on the streaming service in 30 countries, including the US. Created by and starring Scottish comedian Richard Gadd, the show is based on his real-life experience. The psychological thriller centers around Donny (Gadd), a struggling comedian who meets Martha (Jessica Gunning) during a bartending gig. The encounter quickly spirals into a terrifying stalking case.
The real Martha has now come forward, claiming Gadd’s version of the story is “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,” Fiona Harvey, 58, said on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” which aired Thursday. “I find it quite obscene. I find it horrifying, misogynistic.”
I’ve interviewed a lot of very dangerous people in my career, from serial killers to medically diagnosed psychopaths.
And the common denominator is that they’re invariably very skilled liars, often because their warped minds have made them believe what they’re saying even if facts show otherwise.
Fiona Harvey hasn’t killed anyone.
But if she did all the things she is depicted as doing in “Baby Reindeer,” then she is certainly a very unstable, obsessive and threatening stalker who made Richard Gadd’s life utter hell.
And indeed, the lives of other people she’s accused of harassing too. But IS it all true?
Netflix boasts it’s a “true story” at the start of the series, without equivocation. And lest there be any doubt of the streamer’s position, Benjamin King, Netflix’s senior director of public policy in the UK, told a parliamentary committee this week: “‘Baby Reindeer’ is an extraordinary story, and it is obviously a true story of the horrific abuse that the writer and protagonist, Richard Gadd, suffered at the hands of a convicted stalker.”
Yet Harvey says she’s never been convicted of stalking Gadd, let alone shame-facedly admitted it in court as the show says.
And no journalists have yet found any evidence that she has ever been charged with or convicted of any crime.
Perhaps she’s lying.
But it’s not a difficult thing to check, and if it turns out that Harvey has never been convicted of stalking Gadd or anyone else, then that surely blows a massive hole in “Baby Reindeer’s” credibility.
And it would call into serious question just how much of Gadd’s version of events can be believed.
Netflix also claims it did everything possible to avoid the real people behind the characters in the show being identified.
But the actress they chose to play Martha bears a striking resemblance physically, and in the way she spoke in the series, to Harvey.
And as a result of all the clues they gave, including specific phrases used in tweets and messages purportedly from Martha to Gadd, internet sleuths identified her in about 10 nanoseconds.
This led very quickly to people bombarding Harvey with abuse and death threats.
All of which points to a spectacular duty-of-care failure by Netflix, Gadd and Clerkenwell Films, which produced the series, which I would think carries with it serious legal jeopardy.
Of course, none of this means Harvey told me the truth. I found her to be intelligent, quick-thinking and combative.
And on a human level, I felt sorry for her that she’s been publicly dragged through the meat grinder like this.
Her general behavior, on and off camera, with me and my team didn’t give any of us cause for concern about either her potential danger or her mental state, though it should be said that stalkers can be very convincing in their ability to hide their real personalities or obsessive intent.
But there were moments in the interview when my suspicious alarm bells rang loud, especially when she suddenly said, “Even if the email thing was true, the rest is not.”
The “email thing” is the 41,000 emails she’s said to have sent Gadd. And if that bit is true, then it would suggest she was very obsessively pursuing contact with him.
I also found it very strange that she admitted to having up to six email addresses and four mobile phones, which she “used for different people.”
That’s not normal.
She also made a series of emphatic blanket denials about how long she knew Gadd and how much contact she had with him that are provably false.
The claim that she only sent him one letter, when he says he has 105, seems especially disingenuous.
On balance, I’d say Harvey lied to me quite a lot in the interview, and if her threatened legal action against Netflix and Gadd goes ahead, I suspect it will quickly emerge that she did send all the emails, messages and letters to him.
But that doesn’t mean that she can’t be a victim here too.
Gadd, by his own admission, is a very damaged guy who took a lot of drugs, enthusiastically pursued a chaotic, lurid sex life and did lead Harvey on in a way that may have fueled her obsession. He’s also been accused of propositioning trans actresses whom he was lining up for work.
Frankly, it’s all a mess.
But if Gadd feels entitled to make millions airing his side of the story and make very serious allegations about Harvey in the process, then she is surely entitled to respond and defend herself.
As for who is exploiting whom, I’ll leave that to the court of public opinion to decide.
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