Baby Reindeer’s real-life Martha was not convicted of stalking Richard Gadd according to Netflix

In a major admission from Netflix, the international streaming giant said that Baby Reindeer's real life Martha was not convicted of stalking.

Netflix has acknowledged that Martha — who was identified as Scottish lawyer Fiona Harvey soon after Baby Reindeer premiered — had only been subject to a court order over her interactions with Richard Gadd, creator of the Emmy-nominated series billed as a “true story.”

The admission is a huge announcement in the $170 million lawsuit, where Fiona Harvey is suing the multinational broadcaster  for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, gross negligence and violations of her right of publicity.

The news was revealed in a letter sent from Netflix to a British Parliament Culture, Media and Sport Committee after a lawmaker questioned evidence Netflix supplied MPs during a hearing earlier this year.

Appearing before the committee in May, Benjamin King, Netflix UK's senior director of public policy, said Baby Reindeer was a “true story of the horrific abuse” which Gadd has suffered “at the hands of a convicted stalker.”

John Nicolson, who was a member of the committee until it was disbanded for the UK election, later wrote to Netflix demanding evidence to support King’s claim, on the grounds that “journalists have thus far been unable to find a record of the conviction to which you referred.”

A Netflix spokesperson said: “The letter was sent to the DCMS Select Committee on 23 May, well before any legal case was filed, and has been publicly available since. It does not impact our legal position.”

Harvey's lawsuit was filed in June of this year.

Harvey, who is never named in the series, has publicly identified herself as the inspiration behind Martha Scott, who stalks Gadd’s character in the show. Harvey has denied being a stalker, or that she sent Gadd 41,000 emails, hundreds of voice messages and 106 letters, claiming she only sent him a few emails, one letter by post and about 18 messages on X.

In his court filing, Gadd outlined how Baby Reindeer is a “fictionalised retelling of my emotional journey through several extremely traumatic real experiences”.

“The Series is a dramatic work,” Gadd wrote. “It is not a documentary or an attempt at realism. While the Series is based on my life and real-life events and is, at its core, emotionally true, it is not a beat-by-beat recounting of the events and emotions I experienced as they transpired. It is fictionalised, and is not intended to portray actual facts.”