The woman believed to be the inspiration for the character “Martha” on the megahit Netflix show Baby Reindeer has spoken out denying she stalked the series’ creator Richard Gadd.
A 58-year-old woman from Scotland, Harvey appeared on Piers Morgan’s YouTube talk show “Piers Morgan Uncensored” in a pre-recorded interview on Thursday to share her side of the story.
Baby Reindeer is a British dark comedy drama-thriller miniseries that follows the story of a struggling comedian who shows one act of kindness to a lonely woman, which sparks obsessive and stalking behaviour from her towards him.
Gadd, who wrote and stars in the show as the man Martha stalks, claims that the fictionalised series is based on true events that occurred in his own life.
The lonely woman “Martha” allegedly stalked Gadd for more than four years, sending him more than 41,000 emails, 744 tweets, 106 pages of letters and leaving him more than 350 hours of voicemails.
“I didn’t write him the emails,” Harvey told Morgan during the one-hour special. “I think he probably made them up himself, I’ve no idea.”
“I wouldn’t be suing if there were 41,000 emails out there,” she said.
“I knew that guy, but I didn’t contact him a lot,” she added, noting that they’d known each other for “two, three months maximum”.
Harvey admitted to knowing Gadd, having met him at the Hawley Arms pub in Camden and given him the nickname “baby reindeer” at one point (as the show portrays), but she said the claims she’d gone to jail “were completely false” and that she’d “never been to his house or attacked a girlfriend” (also events portrayed in the show).
“This is a fictional character, it’s hyperbole and exaggeration,” she said. “This is fake and it’s based off his imagination.”
Harvey also said she thought Gadd must have always been mentally unwell and “completely off his head”.
“My mind is made up – he is a liar.”
“Leave me alone please. Get a life. Get a proper job. I am horrified at what you’ve done,” Harvey said about Gadd.
Speaking to Morgan, Harvey says she first realised she was at the centre of Gadd’s story when she saw an advertisement for his Edinburgh Festival show (upon which Baby Reindeer is based).
After the show dropped on Netflix on April 11, it quickly became a global hit, with many wondering who “the real Martha” was.
Harvey said she decided to go public because “the internet sleuths tracked me down, hounded me, gave me death threats– so it wasn’t really a choice. I was forced into this situation.”
She hasn’t watched the show and said she thinks “it’s sick; it’s taken over enough of my life; I find it quite obscene; I find it horrifying, misogynistic; some of the death threats have been really terrible online– people phoning me up– it’s been absolutely horrendous.”
Harvey also said she is taking legal action against both Netflix and Gadd, and that the truth will come out during the legal process.
Gadd has not commented so far on Harvey’s allegations.