Fiona Harvey, a 58-year-old Scottish lawyer, reportedly the inspiration behind the hit Netflix series “Baby Reindeer”, will give her first interview this Thursday (9). The series, starring comedian Richard Gadd, depicts a fictionalized version of himself being pursued by a lonely, mentally ill woman named Martha, who he meets while working in a pub.
Harvey, who has been labeled the ‘real Martha’, has faced death threats from ‘Baby Reindeer’ viewers and will now seek to “set the record straight after being outed by fans” on ‘Piers Morgan Uncensored’.
This decision comes after Richard Gadd’s plea to fans to stop trying to discover the real identities of the people behind the show. Although based on true events, Gadd has changed names and specific details from the story to protect the privacy of those involved.
“Please don’t speculate about who any of the real-life people could be,” Gadd pleaded with fans on Instagram. “That’s not the goal of our series,” he added.
Jessica Gunning, who played Martha on “Baby Reindeer,” echoed this concern in an interview with Glamor, stating, “I think it’s a shame, because it shows that they didn’t watch the show properly. Netflix and Richard [Gadd] They went to great lengths to try to ensure that identities were kept private for a reason.”
Woman who supposedly inspired Baby Rena
Reproduction | Social media
Discover the history
In his early 20s, Scottish comedian Richard Gadd was juggling the work of an aspiring actor with working in a bar. One day, a woman confided in him that she didn’t have money to drink. Gadd, in a brief act of kindness, offered a cup of tea on the house. Big mistake. During the following four years, he was stalked and harassed by the so-called “admirer” – a true story that he turned into a stand-up and, later, adapted for streaming in a miniseries format. Baby Rena, written and starring the comedian himself, is new to Netflix and is among the most watched productions on the platform.
During the period he was persecuted, Gadd received 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters, as well as gifts such as sleeping pills, a hat, underwear samba-canção and a reindeer toy (the name of the series, in fact, comes from the nickname that the stalker gave the comedian).
“At first, everyone in the bar thought it was funny that I had an admirer. Then she started invading my life, following me around showing up at my shows, waiting outside my house,” Gadd recently told British newspaper The Times. In 2019, the year he debuted his stand-up, the Scotsman told The Guardian that, in retrospect, he realizes he did wrong things that made the situation worse.
The play won awards in the United Kingdom. In his script, Gadd sought to avoid clichés, revealing the moral confusion involved in the relationship between the two real-life characters. He didn’t want the plot to be Manichaean. “It would be unfair to say she was a horrible person and I was a victim. That didn’t seem true,” he said in 2019. Emotionally disturbed, the protagonist takes a while to understand the gravity of the situation, initially flattered by the woman’s interest (today, she is legally prevented from contacting him).
With seven episodes, the Netflix miniseries follows the same approach. Gadd plays Donny Dunn, while Englishwoman Jessica Gunning plays Martha (not her real name), the stalker, a vulnerable woman who develops an unhealthy obsession with the boy.
