A woman who claims to be the inspiration behind the stalker character in “Baby Reindeer” filed a defamation lawsuit Thursday against Netflix, according to multiple reports.
Fiona Harvey is seeking at least $170 million in damages. Harvey has said that Martha Scott, the stalker character in the show, was inaccurately based on her and that she had been “forced” to come forward due to online harassment by viewers of the show.
“Like ‘Martha,’ Harvey is a Scottish lawyer, living in London, twenty years older than Gadd, was accused of stalking a lawyer in a newspaper article, and who bears an uncanny resemblance to ‘Martha,’” the lawsuit says, according to NBC News. “Further, ‘Martha’s’ accent, manner of speaking and cadence, is indistinguishable [from] Harvey’s.”
The miniseries, released on Netflix in April, portrays a London comedian and bartender named Donny Dunn who grapples with sexual trauma and stalking across seven episodes. Scottish writer and actor Richard Gadd created the show and stars in it as Donny, a fictional version of himself. The show’s convicted stalker character, Martha, is played by Jessica Gunning.
The title card in “Baby Reindeer” calls the miniseries a “true story,” but the end credits add that certain aspects of the show “have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes.”
According to Harvey’s lawsuit, “Harvey’s life had been ruined,” NBC News reported. “Simply, Netflix and Gadd destroyed her reputation, her character and her life.”
“The Complaint is self-explanatory. Netflix destroyed a woman, claiming, among many allegations, that she was a convicted woman,” Richard Roth, Harvey’s attorney, said in an email, according to NBC News. “It never contacted her. It never checked the facts. It never made any effort to understand the truth of its ‘true story!’”
In a statement, Netflix said it will “defend this matter vigorously” and will “stand by Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story.”
In an April interview with GQ, Gadd called his real-life Martha an “idiosyncratic person.”
“We’ve gone to such great lengths to disguise her to the point that I don’t think she would recognise herself. What’s been borrowed is an emotional truth, not a fact-by-fact profile of someone,” he said.
