‘She’s not in a good way’: Friends of the real-life Baby Reindeer stalker tell BETH HALE of the tragic events since Netflix propelled ‘Martha’ into the spotlight – and her £128m legal battle

With a look of disbelief, comedian Richard Gadd stood before an applauding audience as he proudly held up three Emmy Awards.

The triumphant hat trick was of course for writing, producing and starring in the Netflix mega-hit Baby Reindeer.

This “true story,” as announced in the opening credits, chronicles the dark experience of a struggling comedian (modeled after and played by Gadd) who is stalked by an older woman, a character referred to in the series as Martha.

The actress who plays Martha, Jessica Gunning, also took the stage at the Peacock Theatre in LA last Sunday and also won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Short Series.

It was the jubilant culmination of a stunning run of successes for the series that launched in April.

The seven-part show has amassed some 88 million views worldwide, making it one of the streamer’s most successful hits. And “struggling comedian” is no longer a term that applies to Gadd, whose company profits quadrupled in 2023 to a healthy £836,000 and who, we learned this week, has signed a new multi-year deal with Netflix for future projects.

As Gadd, 35, said onstage this week, “This is the stuff that makes dreams come true.”

There is no mention of the ongoing behind-the-scenes drama, which has become, if not a nightmare, then at the very least a serious headache for both Netflix and the Scottish writer.

At the heart of this story is Fiona Harvey, the 58-year-old law student from Aberdeen who some say is the real-life inspiration for Martha.

In June, Ms Harvey launched a relentless legal attack on Netflix, seeking a staggering $170 million (£128 million), claiming she had been defamed “on an unprecedented scale and scope”. She is also suing for, among other things, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and gross negligence.

As Netflix fights to have the case dismissed before it goes to trial in May next year, Ms. Harvey’s account of her current life, according to recently filed court documents, is certainly dire.

“I’m afraid to go outside for fear of being attacked. Some weeks I don’t leave my apartment,” she says. “I suffer from constant panic attacks, chest pain, anxiety, nightmares, depression, nervousness, stomach pain, loss of appetite, fear, and insomnia, among other things.”

Her attorney, Richard Roth, summed up the situation this way: “The unequal treatment and world they live in is blatant and obvious. Richard Gadd is now a multiple Emmy Award-winning star solely as a result of Netflix’s fictional ‘true story,’ while she continues to suffer.”

Her character was so thinly disguised that, the Mail can reveal, even Mrs Harvey’s hairdresser identified her after watching the first episode. In an affidavit filed as part of her claim, Jon Hala, who runs his own salon in Canary Wharf, recounts watching Baby Reindeer with his wife and realising the woman on screen was his client.

That conclusion was obvious for several reasons, he explained. Fiona, like Martha in the series, is a strong and feisty Scottish woman who used to live in Camden.

Mr. Hala said, “Martha looks like her. Martha sounds like her. Martha dresses like her. Martha is a lawyer, like Fiona Harvey. Martha is very smart and sometimes extremely funny and endearing, like Fiona Harvey. Martha is, like Fiona Harvey, a very stressful person who has emotional problems…”

When contacted by the Mail this week, the stylist, who has been cutting and colouring hair for seven years, said: ‘The last time I saw her was probably eight weeks ago. She’s not in a good way because of what’s going on. The problem is she can hardly get out of the house.

‘When she was here last time it was definitely a trauma [she was suffering]. It’s a very busy salon and we have a VIP area and we put her there, away from everyone. We do it for her peace of mind. She speaks well, she’s very gentle and she’s kind.’

His job, he says, is to make his client ‘come out of there feeling like she’s worth a million dollars’. ‘She drinks millions of cups of tea and we don’t talk about legal stuff,’ he adds. ‘She wouldn’t tell anyone what’s going on money-wise or what’s going on with Netflix. She’s paying about £350 all in.’

A fragment of (expensive) normality in a life that has clearly been thrown into disarray.

Where the line between drama and reality lies in this saga is, as viewers know all too well, a subject of heated debate.

Gadd maintained that while the chronology and some events were “adjusted a little bit to create dramatic climaxes,” the drama “remained very true emotionally, obviously: I was severely stalked and severely abused [the show also featured Donny’s abuse at the hands of an established comedy writer]. But we wanted it to exist in the art realm, and for it to protect the people it’s based on.’

Inevitably, there was a frenzy to establish who the real Martha was, and it wasn’t long before internet sleuths discovered who she was. However, there were a number of key points where truth and fiction diverged. While the fictional Martha is a twice-convicted stalker who is sent to prison at the end of the series, Ms. Harvey insists she has no stalking convictions, let alone served any time.

While promoting the Baby Reindeer stage show in 2019, Gadd said that over four and a half years, the real “Martha” sent him 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemail messages, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters.

Ms Harvey denied this in May, when speaking to Piers Morgan on his YouTube show Uncensored. Gadd’s own statement, filed in California court and seen by the Mail, said: ‘While the series is based on my life and real-life events… it is not a beat-by-beat account of the events and emotions I experienced at the time they occurred. It is fictional and is not intended to represent actual facts.’

However, the statement also includes a long list of “real experiences” with Ms Harvey, with whom he struck up a conversation in 2014, when he offered her a cup of tea in the pub where he worked because he saw she “looked stressed”.

Evidence in the form of transcripts, emails and the like have been submitted to the court as exhibits, making for uncomfortable, sometimes shocking reading.

Gadd stated that she “frequently made personal attacks and threatened me in her emails.”

Gadd describes how his anxiety increased to the point that he changed his daily routine to avoid her.

This newspaper’s own investigation has not uncovered any evidence of a conviction for stalking. However, Ms Harvey is said to have received a first instance warning for harassment from the Met Police in relation to Gadd.

Lawyer and former Scottish MP Laura Wray also said she applied for a restraining order against Ms Harvey in 2002 after she was “harassed”.

Behind the scenes after the Emmys, Gadd, who has spoken openly about his own struggles with mental health, was reluctant to report on events outside the view of the cameras.

“It’s easier to focus on the negatives these days,” he said curtly. “You have to look at what Baby Reindeer has done worldwide… It has touched so many people’s lives.”

Painful words for Fiona Harvey.

One wonders whether Richard Gadd’s future Netflix projects will tie so closely to his own personal experiences.