It was her chance to set the record straight on Baby Reindeer and there’s been a lot of speculation about whether Fiona Harvey was lying during her interview with Piers Morgan. Harvey is allegedly the “real Martha” from the Netflix series that tells the story of a comedian and his stalker.
Actor, writer, and comedian Richard Gadd conceptualized Baby Reindeer after a woman sent him 41,071 emails, 350 hours’ worth of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, 106 pages of letters, and a variety of weird gifts, including a reindeer toy (hence the show’s name), sleeping pills, a woolly hat and boxer shorts over four years. It began as a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe and got picked up by Netflix, featuring Gadd as a fictionalized version of himself named Donny Dunn. The show explores his traumas and how the situation affected his career and personal life.
Related: Baby Reindeer Real People: What We Know About The Actual Martha, Darrien & Teri
“Stalking on television tends to be very sexed-up. It has a mystique,” Gadd told Netflix’s Tudum. It’s somebody in a dark alleyway. It’s somebody who’s really sexy, who’s very normal, but then they go strange bit by bit,” Gadd explains. “But stalking is a mental illness. I really wanted to show the layers of stalking with a human quality I hadn’t seen on television before. It’s a stalker story turned on its head. It takes a trope and turns it on its head.”
While Gadd maintained “We’ve gone to such great lengths to disguise” who the real Martha is, internet sleuths found her within the day and she claims she was forced to come forward after receiving death threats. After appearing on Piers Morgan where she told her side of the story—that she didn’t send him 41,000 emails and has no criminal record—there was a lot of speculation as to whether Fiona Harvey was lying. A psychiatrist has weighed in.
Was Fiona Harvey lying?
Was Fiona Harvey lying? Fans are convinced she was, but experts have other opinions. During her interview with Piers Morgan, the host asked how many emails she actually sent Gadd. “There may have been a couple of emails exchanged, but that was it. Just jokey banter emails,” she said. “Less than 10.”
In Baby Reindeer, Gadd also claimed he’d received more than 350 voicemails. “I’ve not phoned the guy. I don’t have his number,” she refuted. However, she does “like to keep people on different phones and different emails,” she explained. “It’s just easier. It’s easier. So you have some for your utilities, some for close friends, whatever.”
In a piece written for the Daily Mail, a psychiatrist for the National Health Service Dr. Max Pemberton, observed that, while ethically prevented from making any sort of diagnosis without speaking with her himself, he noted that “I have frequently worked with patients with the type of ‘delusional disorder’ that Martha (the character which is seemingly based on Harvey) suffers,” he wrote.
“I would never describe a patient with delusional disorder as a ‘liar’, though. To them, what they are saying is the absolute truth. ‘Delusional disorder’ is a mental illness which causes the sufferer to believe what they are claiming, even if it has no basis whatsoever in fact.”
He continued to explain what sort of impact the frenzy of Baby Reindeer might have on her psyche. “What really worries me about the Baby Reindeer format is the impact all the attention will have on Fiona Harvey herself,” he said. “She is, ultimately, I believe a vulnerable woman who may well have a mental illness and who is being paraded in front of the world like the star of a touring show.”
In Baby Reindeer, Martha is shown to be arrested, pleading guilty, and spending nine months in prison. Donny (the fictionalized Gadd) is granted a five-year restraining order and he allegedly never sees her again.
Harvey insists she doesn’t have a criminal record. Speaking with controversial TV host Piers Morgan, she refuted much of what was depicted in Baby Reindeer. “They have billed it as a true story, and so has he, and it’s not,” she said. “He is lying and they are lying.” When it came to her being arrested, charged, or convicted of any crime, she said, “That is completely untrue, very, very defamatory to me, very career damaging.”
