Fiona Harvey, the alleged stalker who inspired the character of Martha in the controversial TV series Baby Reindeer, sued Netflix accusing it of invasion of privacy, defamation and negligence. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in a California court. Harvey is asking for more than 170 million dollars (almost 160 million euros) in damages: she claims that the Netflix series spread “cruel lies” about her to the more than 50 million viewers who saw it and that it depicted her like a criminal convicted of stalking, when she never was.
Baby Reindeer is a series written and starring the Scottish comedian Richard Gadd and tells his true story with some narrative artifice, and how between 2015 and 2018 he was persecuted by a stalker.
In the series his character is called Donny while his stalker, played by Jessica Gunning, is Martha. After the release of the series, in April, thousands of people had dedicated themselves with a certain morbidity to discovering the true identity of the person who had persecuted Gadd, despite him having asked the public to avoid doing so. A few weeks later Harvey said she was the stalker in a controversial interview with the British presenter Piers Morgan, in which she denounced the threats received from hundreds of social network users, and described Baby Reindeer as an attempt by Gadd to publicly humiliate her.
According to the lawsuit documents, Harvey denied sexually assaulting Gadd, as seen in the series, and accused Netflix of using plot devices like this because “it was a better story than the truth, and the best stories make money.” ». She also denied having persecuted Gadd with tens of thousands of emails (an aspect that is underlined a lot in the series) and accused Netflix of having done “absolutely nothing” to verify that the story told by the comedian was actually true.
According to her lawyer, there is “no doubt” that Harvey’s identity was exploited for the character in the series, but there is “irrefutable evidence” that shows that she was never convicted of stalking.
The documents presented in court do not mention Gadd, whose series is presented as “a true story”, although in the credits it is specified that “some characters, names, events, places and dialogues have been fictionalized for the purpose of emphasis” . A Netflix spokesperson said the company “will vigorously defend and support Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story.” Talking with BBC NewsHarvey instead said she was confident she would win the case.
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