Baby Reindeer’s claimed ‘real Martha’ Fiona Harvey breaks silence

The woman who allegedly was the inspiration for the stalker in hit show Baby Reindeer, has laid into it’s creator and star calling him a “liar”.

The so-called “real life Martha” portrayed on smash hit Netflix stalker series Baby Reindeer has spoken out denying she stalked the show’s creator Richard Gadd.

More than that she has accused Gadd of being a “liar,” “completely off his head,” and potentially having made up claims of sexual assault.

Fiona Harvey, 58, from Scotland’s central belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh, spoke to Piers Morgan on his Uncensored YouTube show on Thursday, UK time.

Gadd has not commented so far on Ms Harvey’s allegations.

“You’re 100 per cent it’s not you?” said Morgan asking of she was the inspiration for the character of Martha Soctt in the program. “Yes,” she replied.

She said she would be taking both Gadd and Netflix to court due to the attention the semi autobiographical show had brought onto her.

Ms Harvey also turned the tables on Gadd asking him to “leave me alone,” and claimed the top rating show was merely an attempt for him to make cash because stalking was “en vogue”.

Piers Morgan with Fiona Harvey.

‘Should never have gone to that bar’

Leading man Richard Gadd, who plays Donny Dunn in Baby Reindeer, has said the chilling Netflix black comedy drama-thriller was inspired by real-life events suffered by him.

Gadd claims to have received 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, 106 pages of letters and 350 hours of voicemail from a woman whose real life obsession led to the character Martha Scott.

In the show, Martha developed an obsession with Donny after he gave her a cup of tea for free at the pub where he worked as a bartender because “he felt sorry for her”.

While comedian Gadd, who wrote the show, has pleaded with people not to speculate on who the stalker Martha may have been based on, Ms Harvey’s identity quickly cropped up on social media. She is a similar age to Martha and also has a Scottish accent.

Richard Gadd (L) as Donny Dunn and Jessica Gunning (R) as Martha in Baby Reindeer.

There has been no confirmation Ms Harvey is the person Martha is based on. To Morgan, she denied she was a stalker, that she abused Gadd or assaulted his then girlfriend – all key events in the show.

But she admitted she had met Gadd several times.

“I should never have gone into that bar,” Ms Harvey said of the Hawley Arms pub in Camden, north London, where the accused stalking began.

“I knew that guy, but I didn’t contact him a lot.

“I have never been to his house or attacked a girlfriend or anything like that,” Ms Harvey told Morgan.

“I don’t know where he lives.

“This is a fictional character, it’s hyperbole and exaggeration. This is a fake and it’s based off of his imagination.

“Netflix are about as mad as Richard Gadd.”

Richard Gadd wrote and starred in Baby Reindeer. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images)

Jessica Gunning (L) and Richard Gadd attend the photocell for Netflix's Baby Reindeer at DGA Theater Complex on May 7 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images)

Harvey did send a ‘handful’ of emails

She also said claims that she had gone to jail, as the Martha character did in Baby Reindeer, were “completely false”.

Ms Harvey said she knew Gadd for “two, three months maximum,” when she began drinking in the Hawley Arms.

Ms Harvey insisted she hadn’t sent Gadd the 41,000 emails Martha did in Baby Reindeer.

Morgan pushed her on the number she had sent to which she replied “A handful, 10? Not 41,000”.

Morgan said it would be “easy” to prove if those claims were correct by going to internet providers.

“Even if the email thing was true, the rest is not,” she added.

But Morgan jumped on that comment asking why she would “qualify” her statement seemingly suggesting the email stalking could be true.

“I wouldn’t be suing if there were 41,000 emails out there,” she said.

She hypothesised Gadd could have recorded some of the conversations the pair had in the pub and then passed them off as voicemails.  

Fiona Harvey talking to Piers Morgan.

‘Leave me alone’

When asked by Morgan if she thought Gadd was “mentally unwell,” Ms Harvey said “Yes”.

”I think he always was. Whether that rape was real or conceived in his mind.”

“He completely off his head,” she said. “He’s crazy and wants to make this up”.

“My mind is made up – he is a lair”.

Ms Harvey said Gadd “wanted to make money” and “stalking’s en vogue, going to prison is en vogue”.

Asked by Morgan what her message was to Gadd, she was blunt.

“Leave me alone please. Get a life. Get a proper job. I am horrified at what you’ve done”.

Fiona Harvey said she is not the ‘real life Martha’.

Jessica Gunning playing Martha in Netflix's Baby Reindeer.

Writing on her Facebook social media page after recording the interview with Morgan, Ms Harvey wrote: “Piers is a twerp. But we [already] know this”.

“I’ll let the [interview] speak for itself.

“Piers is a bully, we all know that. He triggers emotions. But this interview will get more views.

In the hours leading up to the broadcast Morgan wrote on Twitter/X that there had not been such a “global build-up reaction to any of my interviews since Ronaldo”.

He added that he didn’t “think anyone will be disappointed”.

Previously speaking to UK newspaper The Times, Gadd said it took years for police to take his stalking case seriously.

Officers told him that his stalker would need to become physically violent before they took action.

Gadd said the years he suffered as the subject of his stalker’s obsession left him with “something like PTSD” and that he has had “every therapy going” to try and resolve it.

The comedian, who is from Fife, in central Scotland, lost weight for Baby Reindeer so he was just 10 and a half stone, the weight he was at the peak of his stalking nightmare.

Baby Reindeer follows Gadd’s one-man show on the same subject matter.

Speaking in 2019 about his stalking ordeal he told The Telegraph: “It was debilitating beyond belief.

“I’d listen to her voicemails and just feel my eyes welling up. They were tears of frustration. Proper brain-heavy stress.”