Back in the day, when he was a broke and struggling comedian, Richard Gadd could never have imagined that the television series he was writing in his tiny apartment would become a worldwide hit.
This week, the creator, director and star of the Netflix series Baby Reindeer said he was “crying with joy” at the news that the controversial show, which has been viewed more than 85 million times and purports to be a “true story,” had received not one, but 11 Emmy nominations — three of them for him alone.
“You have made the dreams of a boy from a small Scottish town come true,” the 35-year-old actor gushed in a statement, thanking members of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in the United States.
“I hope this serves as a reminder to those who are going through a difficult time right now to keep going. There is light in the darkest rooms. Fight hard and you will find it,” she added.
Of course, there’s no mention of the bitter, escalating fallout from the seven-part series about the dark, twisted relationship between a struggling, broke comedian (modeled and played by Gadd) and his older female stalker, a character named Martha, played by actress Jessica Gunning on the show.
Fiona, 58, the woman identified as the real-life Martha, appeared on Piers Morgan’s YouTube show Uncensored in May following the release of Baby Reindeer in April.
Fiona Harvey’s attorney, Richard Roth, said this week that the Emmy nominations were just the latest “slap in the face” for Harvey.
Nor is there any mention of the fact that the woman identified as the real-life Martha, 58-year-old Aberdeen law graduate Fiona Harvey, has criticised Gadd’s programme as “the biggest lie in the history of television”.
Last month, it launched a $170m (£132m) lawsuit against Netflix in California, which looks set to escalate in time with the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles in September.
In an exclusive interview with the Mail this week, her lawyer Richard Roth, of The Roth Law Firm in New York, told me that the Emmy nominations were just the latest “slap in the face” for Harvey who, he said, had “suffered a life-changing tragedy” as a result of the “brutal lies” told about her in Baby Reindeer.
“There were those who suggested that the series should not have been nominated for an Emmy because of this ongoing issue,” he said. “Netflix’s claim that Baby Reindeer is a true story is patently false.”
He said Harvey, who lives alone in a high-rise block of flats in London, has been left “vulnerable” by the controversy.
“She’s scared,” Roth said. “She’s scared to go out in case people yell at her on the street. She’s gotten death threats online, people yelling at her that she’s a stalker. It’s pretty unbearable for her to be put in the spotlight. What’s happened to her is just wrong.”
Harvey’s lawyer isn’t alone in his thinking. Last month, a prominent Hollywood journalist called on the 25,000-member Emmy Academy to snub Gadd and Baby Reindeer because “it’s a lie” and “not worthy of awards.”
Matthew Belloni, a former editor at The Hollywood Reporter and founding partner of the Hollywood-based media company Puck, noted that Netflix had stated at the beginning of the Baby Reindeer series: “This is a true story.”
“It’s only at the end that it’s acknowledged that scenes and characters have been changed. And it worked. Everyone saw it, the huge audience generated a lot of buzz, which in turn generated attention at the awards, all thanks in part to what we now know is a lie.”
Fiona is portrayed as ‘Martha’ in the Netflix show and is played by actress Jessica Gunning.
Richard Gadd said he was “crying with joy” at the news from the US that Baby Reindeer had received not just one, but 11 Emmy nominations – three of them for him alone.
When Baby Reindeer first launched on Netflix in the UK in April, Gadd claimed she had disguised her on-screen identity as “Martha”.
Perhaps inevitably, this sparked a frantic search for the real-life Martha. Since Gadd had used some of Harvey’s authentic tweets on the show, it didn’t take long for internet sleuths to work out who she was.
Both Martha and Harvey are Scottish, both studied law at university, both are around 20 years older than Gadd and both bear a striking physical resemblance to each other. Like her slightly fictional alter ego, Harvey met Gadd in the north London pub where he worked behind the bar almost a decade ago.
But although Martha is portrayed as a twice-convicted and prison-sentenced stalker, Harvey insists she has no prior stalking convictions.
Roth questions Netflix’s decision to claim Baby Reindeer was real without first checking the facts.
“Why didn’t they contact her to verify the facts or give her a chance to comment?” he asks. “There are so many things that are false in the story. To literally ignore her and not notice that she was never convicted, not even once, is either stupid or very blatant and very intentional.
‘Netflix has made a lot of money off of this. They could have checked it, but it’s like they went for money instead of honesty. They should have known there was a risk.’
“I personally see it from a human point of view. She is very vulnerable. She has her own problems. Putting her in the spotlight is really a mistake.”
Harvey is suing Netflix for, among other things, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and gross negligence.
According to her 34-page legal complaint: “Harvey is physically weak. She has suffered and continues to suffer from anxiety, nightmares, panic attacks, embarrassment, depression, nervousness, stomach aches, loss of appetite and fear, extreme stress and illness, all caused directly by the lies told about her in Baby Reindeer.”
The filing in California District Court goes straight for the jugular, stating: ‘This is a lie told by Netflix and the show’s creator, Richard Gadd, out of greed and a thirst for fame; a lie designed to attract more viewers, get more attention, make more money, and brutally destroy the life of… Fiona Harvey, an innocent woman defamed by Netflix and Richard Gadd on an unprecedented scale and magnitude.’
Amid the ongoing legal dispute surrounding Baby Reindeer, which takes its incongruous title from the nickname Gadd alleges Harvey gave it because it reminded him of one of his stuffed animals, fans will no doubt want to know the truth about what happened.
Over a four-and-a-half-year period, Gadd said he received 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, letters totaling 106 pages and left 350 hours of voicemails from the older woman.
Fiona is suing Netflix for, among other things, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and gross negligence.
Unsurprisingly, given the latest twist in this disturbing saga, speculation is quickly mounting that a Baby Reindeer 2 may be on the horizon.
Speaking to Piers Morgan on his YouTube show Uncensored in May, Harvey denied this, saying she sent fewer than ten emails, just 18 tweets and just one letter.
“I think he probably made them up himself,” he said.
This newspaper’s own investigations over the past three months have failed to find any evidence of a harassment conviction to support Netflix’s claims, although Harvey did receive a “First Instance Harassment Warning” from the Metropolitan Police in relation to Gadd.
In 2002, when she was living in Scotland, she was also the subject of an “injunction” (a restraining order) that the former Scottish MP’s wife and lawyer, Laura Wray, tried to obtain against her. Wray also gave an interview to Piers last month, in which she claimed Harvey was a “dangerous stalker”, something Harvey denies.
In May, as the controversy over the show gathered steam – and attracted millions more viewers – Netflix executive Benjamin King gave evidence to the government’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, saying the show was “obviously a true story of the horrific abuse that writer and star Richard Gadd suffered at the hands of a convicted stalker”.
His comments prompted then SNP MP John Nicolson, who sat on the committee, to subsequently write to Netflix asking them to substantiate his claim.
On her personal website, Gadd invites fans to “watch the making of the Baby Reindeer documentary.” The 12-minute video, posted on YouTube, takes viewers behind the scenes and shows Gadd giving her take on the phenomenon.
“It’s a true story based on my twenties, when I went through a lot of pretty crazy things,” he says at the beginning of the video.
Later, he says: “It is the result of real facts. It is the result of a real fact of life.”
He also admitted that when he and Harvey met at the Hawley Arms in north London, he was attracted to her at a time when he was feeling like a failure.
“Having someone at the end of the bar who was just pure adoration was what I needed, but it was stupid of me and I was using someone. I guess I was punished for that in a pretty extreme way.”
He said that the person was “not feeling well” and “needed help.” The mystery, then, is that he did not make more of an effort to conceal his identity.
And ironically, by writing about Harvey, who like him is from a “small Scottish town,” Gadd has forever intertwined his life with hers.
The awards will be held at the Peacock Theatre in downtown Los Angeles on September 19 and will be streamed live.
By then, a judge may have decided whether to accept Harvey’s request for a jury trial.
A Netflix spokesperson said last month: “We intend to vigorously defend the matter and support Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story.”
What will happen in court over the next few months seems to be as exciting as the series itself.
Unsurprisingly, given the latest twist in this disturbing saga, speculation is quickly mounting that a Baby Reindeer 2 may be on the horizon.
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