Richard Gadd issues response to lawsuit filed by self-proclaimed Baby Reindeer inspiration

Baby Reindeer creator and actor Richard Gadd has reacted to the $170m (€156.9m) lawsuit filed against Netflix by Fiona Harvey, who claims to be the inspiration behind the “true story”.

Gadd has described the stalking he claims to have experienced between 2014-2017 as “exhausting and extremely upsetting”, in a 21-page document filed to a California court, which also denied that the character of Martha Scott was inspired by Harvey.

“The Series is a dramatic work,” he 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.

“Although these stage productions were emotionally true and based on real events in my life, they dramatised people, places, things, and events to tell a story. I did not write the Series as a representation of actual facts about any real person, including Fiona Harvey … Martha Scott is not Fiona Harvey.”

Gadd said he met Harvey while he was working at London pub in 2014, stating that while he initially saw her as "harmless", she often attempted touch him "in inappropriate (and sometimes sexual) ways”. The harassment allegedly went on for two years, during which he says he was the recipient of "thousands of emails, hundreds of voicemails, and a number of handwritten letters”, which were often “sexually explicit, violent” with “derogatory content, hateful speech, and threats”.

While she’s never actually named in the show, Harvey publicly announced herself as the inspiration behind the Scott character on Piers Morgan Uncensored in May, where she countered Gadd's claims, saying instead that there "may have been a couple of emails."

The lawsuit accuses Netflix of doing “literally nothing to confirm the ‘true story’ that Gadd told … it never investigated whether Harvey was convicted, a very serious misrepresentation of the facts. It did nothing to understand the relationship between Gadd and Harvey, if any … As a result of Defendants’ lies, malfeasance and utterly reckless misconduct, Harvey’s life had been ruined. Simply, Netflix and Gadd destroyed her reputation, her character and her life.”