“A true story” will be presented to you, Netflix promises in the second minute of the new hit series Baby Reindeer – now the most watched on the streaming service worldwide for three weeks. The series tells the story of a struggling comedian who is stalked for months by ‘Martha’, a pub regular. The story would be based on the own experiences of protagonist and writer Richard Gadd.
But according to the ‘real’ Martha, that is not true. Those 41,000 emails were more like ten, plus eighteen tweets and a letter in the post. And those months of daily visits? Fiona Harvey, 58, says she has encountered her ‘obsession’ at most “five or six” times. And the content of the contact was more joking than intimidating, she said in an hour-long TV interview with Piers Morgan on Thursday. After many death threats, she was forced to come public.
Gadd had indeed taken measures to conceal the true identity of ‘Martha’. He had changed the character so much that the woman wouldn’t even be able to recognize herself, he said in previous interviews. He had been telling the story in the theater for years, for the first time at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019, but after the series appeared, people unexpectedly turned out to be interested in Martha’s identity. In April he asked fans on Instagram to stop the search, but the internet turned out to be indomitable. People compared Facebook posts from the series with real ones and ended up with Harvey.
Gadd himself suffered seriously from his stalker. “At first everyone in the pub thought it was funny that I had an admirer,” he said last month. The Times. “Then she started invading my life, following me, showing up at my gigs, waiting outside my house and sending thousands of voicemails and emails.” He talks about more than 40,000 emails, 700 emails and 350 hours of voicemail messages. He is said to have suffered from PTSD complaints. Since Harvey’s appearance at Piers Morgan, Gadd has yet to comment publicly.
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