‘He’s a psychotic liar’: Baby Reindeer ‘stalker’s’ extraordinary outburst
Internet sleuths outed Fiona Harvey as the Baby Reindeer ‘stalker’ - a disturbing tale that took Netflix by storm. But the story got a lot weirder after Piers Morgan put her to air uncensored.
The woman who allegedly inspired the hit Netflix stalker series Baby Reindeer has appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored to “set the record straight” after being unmasked by fans.
Fiona Harvey, 58, from Scotland, emphatically denied that she stalked the show’s star and creator Richard Gadd, whom she called “psychotic” and a “liar.”
Baby Reindeer arrived on Netflix on April 11 without much advance fanfare, but it quickly became one of the most talked-about TV shows of 2024. It has been streamed more than 56 million times since its release.
The seven-episode miniseries, based on the Scottish comedian Richard Gadd’s award-winning 2019 one-man stage show, introduces the audience to Martha (Jessica Gunning), an emotionally fragile middle-aged woman who appreciates the kindness shown to her by Donny (Gadd), a jobbing stand-up comedian who offers her a free cup of tea in the pub where he works.
Martha becomes obsessed, persistently turns up at the pub where Donny works, and bombards him with 41,000 emails and 350 voicemails before assaulting his girlfriend and threatening his family.
Early in the first episode of “Baby Reindeer,” a message comes onscreen that says, “This is a true story” — a hook that activated internet sleuths who were quick to speculate over the characters’ real-life counterparts, triggering a police investigation when Richard Gadd’s friend Sean Foley, a British writer and director, was wrongly implicated as the inspiration for the creator’s abuser
Gadd, 44, has asked fans not to guess the identities of the people the characters are based on, as it’s “not the point of our show.”
Harvey, who was quickly identified by viewers as Martha, told Piers Morgan Uncensored in a bombshell hourlong interview that the drama was “very defamatory and very career damaging.”
“I was forced into this situation,” Harvey told Morgan of her decision to appear on his show. “The internet sleuths tracked me down and hounded me and gave me death threats. So it wasn’t really a choice.” She said that her experience in the weeks after the show aired was “absolutely horrendous.”
While she claims not to have seen the show, she said that “it’s taken over my life.”
“I find it quite obscene. I find it horrifyingly misogynistic,” she said of Baby Reindeer. “I wouldn’t give credence to something like that. It’s not really my kind of drama.”
Harvey has pledged to sue Netflix and the “psychotic” creator Gadd, whom she accused of “making money out of untrue facts.”
She denies ever being sent to prison, as depicted in the Netflix drama, and claims she has never been convicted of a crime. “It is completely untrue and very career damaging. I want to rebut that. I’m not a stalker. It’s just complete nonsense.”
In the show, Martha stalks comedian Donny, who later discovers that she has been to prison for similar offences. “This is all made up and hyperbole,” Harvey said. “There are no restraining orders, injunctions or interdicts anywhere. There’s just no way. I’ve not had the police at my door about any of these things.
The law graduate, who claimed to be in a five-year relationship with a lawyer, called the show “a load of rubbish.”
“I don’t have any money but I’m a perfectly capable lawyer so I will represent myself.”
Harvey said that, unlike what’s depicted in Baby Reindeer, the real Gadd did not offer her a cup of tea during their first encounter in the pub. “Nobody gets anything free from the Hawley Arms,” she said, adding that Gadd “commandeered” the conversation she was having with another person at the bar: “He seemed to be obsessed with me from that moment onwards.”
Harvey says she has not received an apology from Netflix or Gadd. “For someone who says he feels sorry for me, I’ve had no apology,” Harvey said. “My character seems to have smashed up a bar, sexually assaulted him in a canal, been to prison. There are a number of other allegations, and … that’s not true.”
She also denied sending Gadd 41,000 emails, hundreds of voice messages and 106 letters. Morgan pushed her on the number she had sent to which she replied “A handful, 10? Not 41,000,” she said. “How long would that take someone to type up?”
She also claimed to have never sent Gadd any voicemails. “Unless he was taping me in the Hawley Arms. I didn’t phone him,” she said. When Morgan asked, “Are you challenging him to reveal his evidence?” “No, I would challenge him to leave me alone,” Harvey replied.
Harvey appeared to contradict herself when Morgan pinioned her over certain points, first saying she only sent a handful of emails, then acquiescing: “Even if the email thing was true, the rest is not.” At the start of the interview Harvey claimed to only have met Gadd “two or three times” — a number that grew to “five, six times” by the interview’s end.
She also claimed to have a photographic memory but couldn’t remember what grades she got for her law degree.
The uproar around Baby Reindeer and the real-life counterparts of the Netflix show made its way to the UK parliament this week. Netflix policy chief Benjamin King told British lawmakers that the show took “every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story, “while “striking a balance with the veracity and authenticity of Richard’s story.”
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