The real-life Martha who was depicted in hit Netflix show Baby Reindeer has claimed she is considering legal action after she was portrayed as a scary stalker.
Fiona Harvey, a Scottish lawyer, recently spoke to the Daily Record who previously decided not to name or picture her, has said that she now wants the public to hear her side of the story as she says she has faced backlash since her identity was revealed in the streaming giant's show.
Baby Reindeer was partly filmed in the capital with comedian Richard Gadd depicting his time performing during the Fringe.
Speaking to the Record, Harvey said: “You have my authority to name me.
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“I give you my permission to name me because people have to know what is going on.”
In the hit series, the character based on Harvey, 58, is a stalker who was jailed for four-and-a-half years before she met Fifer comedian Richard Gadd.
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The streaming channel’s most watched show also finds Martha imprisoned for nine months as a result of the ordeal experienced by Donny, a fictionalised version of Gadd.
Speaking exclusively to the Record, Harvey said: “I’ve not been to prison. I don’t know where the four -and-a-half years and nine months comes in.
“None of this happened. It’s a load of rubbish.”
Baby Reindeer reveals how Gadd’s alleged stalker became obsessed with him. English actress Jessica Gunning, 38, plays a Scottish woman in her 40s called Martha Scott who lives in Camden.
Harvey says she is now mulling over legal action against both the comedian and Netflix.
She said: “Gadd needs to prove I went to jail which just didn’t happen. I’ve never been sent to jail. That is blatantly obvious.
“Police at your door would be the first thing, then you’d be charged, then you would have a trial. Then you’d be fined or something or go to prison.
“This is all made up and hyperbole. There are no restraining orders, injunctions or interdicts anywhere. There’s just no way. I’ve not had the police at my door about any of these things.
“It’s a load of rubbish. I don’t have any money but I’m a perfectly capable lawyer so I will represent myself.”
Baby Reindeer is produced by Clerkenwell Films, which is owned by BBC Studios. It has become a global phenomenon. Horror writer Stephen King is a fan, describing Martha as “equal” to Annie Wilkes from his 1987 bestseller Misery.
In the show Gadd, 34, plays a fictionalised version of himself called Donny Dunn. During the course of his disturbing three-year ordeal, Martha sends him more than 40,000 emails, 350 hours of voicemail, 744 tweets, 46
Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters. Netflix has confirmed that the emails Donny receives in the show are the “real emails” he received from his stalker – all ending with “sent from my iPhone”, despite Martha not owning one.
Rory Lynch, a lawyer specialising in defamation and privacy at Gateley Legal, believes Harvey may have grounds to sue for defamation because people found out her identity using a method known as “jigsaw identification”.
Internet sleuths took to social media and found clues that revealed her identity including references to a Baby Reindeer bar scene in which Martha asks for help getting her curtains hung only to face a barrage of innuendo.
The sleuths identified a social media post sent on September 23, 2014, in which Harvey tweeted, “@MrRichardGadd my curtains need hung badly.”
Harvey, who has a law degree from Aberdeen University, would have to prove the allegations made in the show are both untrue and caused her serious harm.
Lynch said: “The only thing I can presume is that when Clerkenwell, films, the BBC and Netflix looked at it with their legal team they thought that they could rely on the fact that it is a drama. It’s not supposed to be a factual documentary.
“So although Netflix said it’s a true story, essentially it’s a dramatisation of a true story.
“But I do think that Richard Gadd could have been a bit more careful in changing a lot of the scenes to be more fictitious, but also covering up the identity of the people it was based on.”
Early in the series, Donny discovers that Martha has been sent to prison after she accused a former employer and the employer’s husband of abusing their deaf child.
Over two decades ago, Scots lawyer Laura Wray took legal action over allegations of a similar nature Harvey made against Laura and her husband, the late Labour MP Jimmy Wray.
Laura says Harvey falsely accused her and her husband of assaulting their three-year-old son who was born with a rare chromosomal disorder.
Laura said: “We took an interim interdict. I don’t think she responded and I don’t think there was a full hearing after because it did the trick in stopping her coming near me.
“It was a long time ago and I haven’t heard from her since.
“I’ve watched the Netflix show now and it’s quite uncanny, put it that way.”
Harvey says she is living in fear as a result of the show.
She said: “Gadd and Netflix have portrayed this as a true story and now some little man in North Carolina giving me death threats believes it’s a true story.
“But I think you’d need to be really stupid to believe it is true.”
Last week, The Record ran two world exclusive interviews with Harvey.
We decided not to name her as a duty of care. However, other newspapers subsequently named her without her permission.
She has widely acknowledged that she is the real-life Martha portrayed on the Netflix show, including multiple posts on her own Facebook profile.
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Harvey said: “Any semblance of a normal life I had is gone.
“It’s open season on me and this is my chance to speak out.
“Would it have been better if I spoke to nobody? No, I don’t think so. That is why I have also rebutted the Laura Wray allegations on Facebook and will be doing a major TV appearance soon so everyone may as well know who I am and at least they’ll hear the truth.
“I think we can easily prove I’m not a career criminal by saying I’ve not been to prison.
“I have no criminal convictions of any description.”
Harvey was not paid by the Daily Record.
