Baby Reindeer: Amid Real-Life Stalker’s Complaints, Netflix Exec Says ‘Every Reasonable Precaution’ Was Taken to Protect Identities
New off-screen Baby Reindeer drama is poised to get as dicey as what made it into the Netflix hit.
Baby Reindeer concerns the real-life stalking of Richard Gadd, a Scottish writer and actor who also stars in the show as Donny. Jessica Gunning plays Martha, the stalker.
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In the series, the characters’ names are pseudonyms. But since Baby Reindeer‘s quiet April 11 debut, viewers have taken to social media to figure out who the characters real-life counterparts are.
Fiona Harvey, a lawyer from Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, recently stepped forth to assert that she is the inspiration for the Martha character, and she is none too pleased with what she alleges are dramatic liberties with her portrayal — to a degree that she aims to “set the record straight” in a Thursday-night interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored, which appears to be a YouTube show.
“The real-life Martha from Baby Reindeer breaks cover and gives me her first TV interview about the smash hit Netflix show,” Morgan trumpeted on X. “Fiona Harvey wants to have her say & ‘set the record straight.’ Is she a psycho stalker?”
Harvey is also said to be mulling a lawsuit against Netflix.
Update: Netflix had not commented on the matter until Wednesday afternoon in the UK, when Benjamin King, the streamer’s Senior Director of Public Policy for UK and Ireland, said before Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee (at the 17:31 mark), “We did take every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story… whilst also striking a balance with veracity and authenticity of Richard’s story, because we didn’t want to anonymize that and make it generic to the point where it n longer was his story.”
Piers Morgan’s announcement of Harvey’s interview came on the heels of Gadd, Gunning and others associated with the series appearing at a Netflix-hosted FYC event on Tuesday night. (Watch a clip via sister site THR.com below.)
Richard Gadd, creator and star of ‘Baby Reindeer,’ talks about having empathy for his real-life stalker at a Netflix-hosted FYC screening pic.twitter.com/qiKXUhDV7m
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) May 8, 2024
There, Gadd said, “I struggle with what is sort of a toxic empathy problem, where I feel a lot for people” including his stalker.
“I remember when I was going through it in real life… when I was getting stalked it and it was relentless… and I felt like my life wasn’t functioning… I still had these unbelievable pangs of feeling sorry for her,” he said.
“Even when it was at its worst and she got my phone number” — and the situation threatened to “move from harassment to an actually dangerous situation” — “at the end of the day she’s somebody who’s just in a lot of pain,” Gadd added. “And I thought that was a lot more important to get across than ‘woe is me, someone is stalking me.'”
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