Netflix admitted that “real-life Martha” Fiona Harvey was never convicted of stalking, despite claiming the contrary in front of Parliament in May.
Unsurprisingly, the $170 million Baby Reindeer defamation suit is getting messier and more upsetting by the day. Last month, a woman named Fiona Harvey sued Netflix for propagating what she called “the biggest lie in television history,” after the streamer sold their incredibly popular series about an alleged stalker that tormented comedian Richard Gadd with the line, “This is a true story.” While Harvey was never explicitly named in the series, fans began speculating on the true identity of the stalker character, “Martha”—who in the show assaults Gadd and sends him thousands of sexually explicit emails—almost immediately. (This all happened despite Gadd issuing a statement telling internet detectives to back off soon after the show’s release.)
When the suit went public, Netflix issued a statement saying, “We intend to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story.” Earlier this week, the streamer moved to strike the suit from the court, citing California’s anti-SLAPP statutes that address the line between fact and fiction. “Harvey’s defamation claim fails because she does not allege a provably false statement of fact was made about her,” a memorandum to the network’s movement stated, via Deadline. “None of the alleged statements can form a legal basis for defamation. In fact, Harvey is incapable of showing reputational harm.”
A new revelation might change that, however. Appearing before British Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee in May, Netflix’s senior UK director of public policy, Benjamin King, reportedly claimed (via Deadline) that Baby Reindeer was “an extraordinary true story of the horrific abuse” suffered by Gadd “at the hands of a convicted stalker.” When faced with skepticism from a member of the committee because “journalists have thus far been unable to find a record of the conviction to which you referred,” however, King sent a letter denying the claim in response. “I wanted to clarify our understanding that the person on whom the show is based—who we have at no point sought to identify—was subject to a court order rather than a conviction,” the letter, which was dated May 23, 2024, but was just made available today, reads. The paragraph continues: “The writer of Baby Reindeer endured serious harassment over many months (as it now seems has been the case for many others), which had a significant impact on his wellbeing.”
In a 21-page document filed earlier this week in support of Netflix’s motion to strike, Gadd provided one of his first statements expounding on the philosophy behind his series, as well as his own experience with Harvey’s alleged harassment. “[The show] is not a documentary or an attempt at realism,” he wrote, via The New York Times. “While the Series is based on my life and real-life events and is, at its core, emotionally true, it is not a beat-by-beat recounting of the events and emotions I experienced as they transpired. It is fictionalized, and is not intended to portray actual facts.”
In the documents, Gadd never claims that Harvey was arrested or that she sexually assaulted him in the exact way the character does on the show, but he did allegedly go to the police and details in his statement how “exhausting and extremely upsetting [it was] to deal with her constant personal interactions in the Hawley Arms, her following me around London including near where I lived and her relentless and deeply unpleasant communications.” The comedian alleges that Harvey did send him “thousands of emails, hundreds of voicemails, and a number of handwritten letters” containing “derogatory content, hateful speech, and threats” that were often “sexually explicit, violent.” “The cumulative effect of all of Harvey’s actions was enormous,” he writes.
“Overall, it was an incredibly stressful and worrying time, with a sustained period of relentless behavior taking place over several years,” he continues, detailing one “particularly intense period of time when Harvey often attempted to touch me in inappropriate (and sometimes sexual) ways.”
“[The show] is a fictionalized retelling of my emotional journey through several extremely traumatic real experiences,” Gadd continues. “I did not write the series as a representation of actual facts about any real person, including Fiona Harvey… Harvey is never mentioned in the series.” If asked, he would be willing to testify as a witness in the trial.
