SPILLS ALL
I AM Baby Reindeer’s Martha but I’m no stalker – here are only parts Netflix got right, Fiona Harvey tells Piers Morgan
Watch the interview in full in the video above
THE real-life alleged stalker in Baby Reindeer last night admitted having four mobile phones and six email addresses — but denied ever hounding the show’s creator.
Law graduate Fiona Harvey, 58 — said to have inspired the Netflix drama — accused Richard Gadd of being a “psychotic misogynist” whose hit series is “completely untrue”.
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She told of horrendous abuse she has suffered since “sleuths” tracked her down, including death threats.
And, in a no-holds-barred interview with Piers Morgan, Fiona vowed to sue Netflix and Gadd, 34, over the “defamatory” depiction of her as Martha.
The seven-parter, written by and starring Gadd, sees barman Donny Dunn stalked by a Scottish woman called Martha after he gives her a free cup of tea out of sympathy.
Donny, also a part-time comedian, is bombarded with thousands of poorly spelt emails by Martha who mercilessly heckles him doing stand-up and attacks his girlfriend.
Read More Fiona Harvey
It comes as...
- Fiona Harvey said she IS Baby Reindeer's Martha
- But Fiona WON'T be watching the Netflix hit
- Richard Gadd is the 'real psycho', Fiona claims
- Piers Morgan says Fiona 'lied to me quite a lot'
Martha — played by actress Jessica Gunning, 38 — is eventually jailed for stalking and harassment in the show, which starts each episode saying: “This is a true story.”
And Fiona last night laid in to it, sensationally accusing Gadd of being obsessed with her after they met in real life at the Hawley Arms pub in North London.
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In stark contrast to the events on Baby Reindeer, she tells Piers he tried to sleep with her but “I gave him the brush off big time, I don’t fancy little boys without jobs”.
The drama has become one of the most-watched Netflix shows of all time since it was released on April 11, with more than 22 million worldwide streams.
I WON’T watch Netflix’s Baby Reindeer because I think I’d be SICK - it’s horrifying, misogynistic & has taken over my life, Fiona Harvey tells Piers
Scot Fiona was quickly outed online as “Martha”, and last night she called the fallout “very defamatory, career-damaging”.
She told Piers on his Uncensored show on YouTube: “On the internet, sleuths tracked me down and hounded me and gave me death threats. I was forced into this situation.”
She described the abuse as “absolutely horrendous”, adding of Gadd: “I could not believe he’d done that. So long after the first meeting, we’re talking ten or 12 years ago. I think he’s got extreme psychiatric problems. It’s a work of fiction.”
She adds: “I’m not a stalker. This is just complete nonsense.”
Asked if she would take legal action, she replied: “Absolutely. Against both him and Netflix.”
She said: “There are two true facts in the show — his name is Richard Gadd and he works as a jobbing barman in the Hawley Arms. And we met two or three times.”
Asked by Piers if Gadd offered her a free cup of tea at the pub, Fiona said: “No, that’s not correct. He didn’t offer me a cup of tea. I was in for a meal.”
She claimed Gadd actually barged in on a chat she was having with someone else in the pub.
Fiona told Piers: “He interrupted a conversation. He said, ‘Oh you’re Scottish’ and basically commandeered the conversation. I was talking to somebody. It’s pretty rich. He seemed to be obsessed with me from that moment onwards.”
However Fiona confessed she did say Gadd looked like a “baby reindeer”, which Martha does, as he resembled a toy she had as a child.
She said: “I had a toy reindeer and he’d shaved his head, that bit is true, and there were reindeers in the shops because it was Christmas. It was a joke, so I’ve inadvertently penned the name of the show.”
She also claimed Gadd had actually tried to sleep with her — using lewd innuendo common in the Hawley Arms, which was a haunt of stars including singer Amy Winehouse.
Fiona told Piers: “He asked me to sleep with him. He said, ‘Would I like my curtains fixed’?
“I laughed and said, ‘That’s a euphemism, you want me to come home with you?’ I said, ‘I’ve got a boyfriend’. I gave him the brush off big time — I don’t fancy little boys without jobs. I think he’s making money out of untrue facts. He’s been the ultimate misogynist.”
The start of Baby Reindeer’s first episode shows Donny desperately walking into a police station and showing an incredulous officer streams of messages — often badly spelt — on his phone.
Fiona scoffed at suggestions that he received 41,000 emails, 350 hours of voicemails, 744 tweets, 48 Facebook messages and 106 letters.
She said: “That’s simply not true. If somebody was sending somebody 41,000 emails, they’d be doing how many a day? Lots.”
Piers asked her: “What did you send?” Fiona replied: “I think there may have been a couple of emails, but that was it. Just jokey banter emails.”
Fiona — who said she would take a lie detector test — denied sending any texts and Facebook messages.
She admitted contacting Gadd on Twitter but added: “It wasn’t numerous. It’s about 18 tweets.”
Pressed again by Piers on emails, Fiona insisted she sent a “handful”, “less than ten”.
What Fiona claims is true in Baby Reindeer saga
Fiona Harvey - who claims to be the inspiration for the Baby Reindeer character Martha - says there is only one thing true in the Netflix show.
The seven-part series, which premiered last month, was written by comedian Richard Gadd and purports to be based on his own personal experiences of being stalked and sexually assaulted.
Gadd, 34, plays a fictionalised version of himself - Donnie Dunn - but Harvey, who was 'outed' by internet sleuths within hours of the show being uploaded, is adamant the story is "completely untrue".
The 58-year-old law graduate said: "It's a work of hyperbole, as I've always said. And there are two true facts in that. His name is Richard Gadd, and he works as a jobbing barman on benefits, in the Hawley Arms. And we met, two or three times…”
On whether she said he looked like a ‘baby reindeer’ toy she had as a child, she added: “I had a toy reindeer and he’d shaved his head, that bit is true, and there were reindeer in the shops because it was Christmas time or something. It was a joke.
"So I have inadvertently penned the name of the show.”
Fiona — who has been accused of stalking and sending death threats to Laura Wray, the widow of a Labour MP — also admitted writing Gadd a letter.
Asked how he could have voicemails from her, she said: “The only explanation would be (from) taping me in the Hawley Arms. That’s the only place we ever met.”
She admitted keeping four phones and six email addresses at one point.
But asked who sent Gadd the mountains of correspondence, Fiona said: “I have no idea. I think he’s probably made it up himself.”
Piers also questioned if Fiona had ever heckled Gadd at a comedy show or attacked a girlfriend of his in a jealous rage — as shown on TV.
But she said: “I think I went to one (show). I don’t generally go to comedy shows. I don’t think he had a girlfriend. I think he’s, say, homosexual. No, I have never been to his house or attacked any girlfriend or anything like that.”
Fiona also denied sitting at a bus stop for hours on end in a bid to follow Gadd, as Martha did.
She added: “I don’t know where he lived. This is a fictional character. It’s based on his imagination.”
Piers repeatedly asked if the nine-month jail sentence in the drama reflects reality.
But she said: “That’s completely untrue. Very defamatory to me, very career-damaging. I wanted to rebut that completely on this show.
“I’ve not been to jail, I’ve got no injunctions.”
In interviews, Gadd has talked about feeling sorry for his tormentor, adding: “I never saw someone who was a villain.”
But Fiona said she does not believe him — and had not been contacted by Gadd or Netflix.
She told Piers: “For someone who says he feels sorry for me, I’ve had no apology. And I have this Martha character who seems to have smashed up a bar, sexually assaulted him in a canal, been to prison.
"That’s not true. He should look a bit closer to home, to himself as someone who needs help.”
She did say that the actress playing Martha did not resemble her. Fiona told Piers: “I don’t think the actress sounds like me. People compare me to Lorraine Kelly.
“We all happen to have dark hair and we’re Scottish. The actress is from Glasgow, I think, I’m from the central belt of Scotland.”
She said she is currently in a five-year relationship with a lawyer who thinks the fallout from Baby Reindeer is “horrendous”.
But she insisted she did not want to “drag him into it”.
Netflix has insisted it was careful to hide Martha’s identity.
Policy chief Benjamin King told MPs that Netflix and Clerkenwell Films — which made the show — took “every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story”.
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He added: “Ultimately, it’s obviously very difficult to control what viewers do, particularly in a world where everything is amplified by social media. I personally wouldn’t be comfortable with a world in which we decided it was better that Richard was silenced and not allowed to tell the story.”
- FOR the full interview, go to the Piers Morgan Uncensored channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/PiersMorganUncensored
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