Although creator Richard Gadd, production company Clerkenwell Films, and streaming service Netflix maintained they’d gone out of their way to preserve the anonymity of the people who inspired the characters of Baby Reindeer, Fiona Harvey has claimed to be the inspiration for the programme and is plotting legal action.
There was an air of inevitability surrounding the alleged identities being uncovered in the wake of the semi-autobiographical miniseries becoming one of the biggest and most talked-about TV shows in the planet, leading to Gadd urging viewers not to throw accusations around after conducting their own research.
However, Harvey – who allegedly served as the basis of the Martha character – has felt compelled to speak out and tell her side of the story after being targeted online and in-person. Not only that, but she’s threatened to take both Gadd and Netflix for the way she was portrayed, regardless of Baby Reindeer‘s dramatised and semi-fictionalised nature.
“I will be taking legal action against Richard Gadd and Netflix. We have instructed lawyers in part, but we want to explore all of the options out there. There are a number of people to sue,” she said on Piers Morgan Uncensored, before outlining why she was taking that route. “I wouldn’t be suing if I thought there were 41,000 emails out there.”
Harvey maintains that she only sent “a handful” of emails to Gadd, as well as several tweets and a solitary written litter, in addition to claiming Gadd may have been secretly recording her when quizzed on the voicemails left on his phone.
“It is completely untrue and very career damaging,” she continued. “I want to rebut that. I’m not a stalker. It’s just complete nonsense.” Harvey explained that while certain elements of Baby Reindeer are rooted in the truth, Gadd has reportedly embellished them to a significant extent for his own personal gain.
“He is lying, and they are lying,” she said of Gadd and Netflix. “They have billed it as a true story, so has he, and it’s not. It’s blatantly not.” She also instructed the writer and actor to “leave me alone, please” after being left “horrified” by the damage he’d caused her on a personal and professional level.
Harvey would also state that she’d never been charged, never been jailed, never contacted Gadd’s parents, and never heckled him during his stand-up performances, and while she conceded that Baby Reindeer isn’t entirely fabricated, she’s willing to take things to the courtroom in order to be exonerated.
