The Baby Reindeer fallout: What will happen next in 2024's biggest TV controversy? (2024)

Last Thursday, 58-year-old Scottish woman Fiona Harvey sat down with Piers Morgan to be interviewed for his online chat show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, about the Netflix TV series Baby Reindeer.

During the YouTube interview – in which she was ridiculed in the thousands of comments in a live-stream comment section – she described being drawn into the series against her wishes: "It's taken over enough of my life. I find it quite obscene. I find it horrifying, misogynistic. Some of the death threats have been really terrible online. People phoning me up. It's been absolutely horrendous."

Last week, Fiona Harvey appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored following claims that she inspired the character of Martha (Credit: Piers Morgan Uncensored)

Fiona Harvey is the woman that internet sleuths have claimed is the real-life Martha Scott in Baby Reindeer – a character based on a woman who the writer and star of the critically acclaimed series, Richard Gadd, has said took over his real life in the 2010s with a campaign of stalking. Over the period of three years, the stalker allegedly sent Gadd more than 41,000 emails, and 350 hours of voicemails to his mobile phone, as well as turning up at his workplace, attending his comedy gigs and harassing his parents.

The series is taken from events in Gadd's own life, with Gadd playing Donny Dunn, a fictionalised version of himself, and has been a massive yet surprising global hit for Netflix. Recent viewing figures from the streamer claims it's had 60 million views, globally in one month, and Gadd himself has said that he hadn't expected it to reach such a large audience, given it is adapted from a small, one-man theatre show he performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2019. Speaking with the Daily Record last week, he said: "I always believed in the show and I really loved it and I thought it would sit as a little cult, artistic gem on the Netflix platform maybe. But then overnight it was crazy. It felt like I woke up one day and everyone was watching it."

However the result of millions of people watching the show – many, presumably, with mobile phones in hand, as is the way people watch TV these days – was that viewers started to get inquisitive about the real-life story. Who was the stalker? And what about the TV executive who is depicted sexually assaulting Gadd's Donny? Where were they now and did they ever face justice? With a small amount of internet research, viewers began to link some of the phrases and lines used by Martha to Harvey, who had allegedly tweeted the same things to Gadd in a similar timeline (such as "My curtains need hung badly"). The armchair detectives, usually more involved in true-life documentaries or podcasts, had sprung into action.

Despite Gadd claiming: "We've gone to such great lengths to disguise her [the stalker] to the point that I don't think she would recognise herself", Harvey's name was all over the internet. Harvey, like Martha, is an older, Scottish woman who looks similar to Gunning's character; was a lawyer, and has also been previously accused of harassing another couple, late member of parliament Jimmy Wray and his solicitor wife Laura. As Harvey confirmed on Morgan's show, she also frequented the bar where Gadd had worked, The Hawley Arms, and visited him at one of his comedy shows.

Despite pleas from Gadd on Instagram ("Please don't speculate on who the real-life people could be. That's not the point of our show"), Harvey was "outed", and, after waiving her anonymity, went on to do interviews with the Daily Record, the Daily Mail, before appearing on Piers Morgan's online chat show – generating much public outcry about ethics, and whether a vulnerable person was being exploited.

Over the course of the almost hour-long chat, watched by more than half a million people at one point, she admitted sending "around 18" tweets to Gadd, and to joining in "banter" with him at the Hawley Arms, but denied being a stalker, or sending the thousands of emails to him. Despite contradicting herself several times, because of the death threats and abuse she says she's faced since being identified, Harvey said in the interview she now plans to sue Netflix and Gadd.

Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd has refused to be drawn into speculation about the real-life figures his story is based upon (Credit: Netflix)

As Morgan pointed out in the highly uncomfortable interview, both Gadd and Netflix have claimed that every effort had been made to make sure the stalker's identity wouldn't be revealed. Indeed, earlier last week, in a UK parliament hearing about privacy and the ethics of storytelling with the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Netflix policy chief Benjamin King said that Netflix and Clerkenwell Films – who produced the series – took "every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story". However, others strongly disagree – Morgan suggested during his interview with Harvey that "the Netflix and Richard Gadd duty of care has been a spectacular failure".

Was there a duty of care failure?

Jake Kanter, international investigations editor at Deadline, tells the BBC, that if Harveyis indeed the basis for Martha, "one of the most shocking things [to come] from the Piers Morgan interview was that she was not told about this series; that she was given no notice that it was coming. Even though she's not named or directly identified, my instinct is that a responsible broadcaster or streamer and production company would have done their due diligence and let individuals know that they would be featured in the story and reassured them that they were taking steps to protect their identities. If they had done that, we would be in a slightly different situation. She could have raised concerns and they may have been able to address it as part of the production and scripting process".

The importance of duty of care and due diligence when it comes to featuring members of the public on TV has become an increasingly discussed issueover the past few years. This has been in reference to, among other things, reality TV, with a particular discussion igniting in the UK over ITV series Love Island, which introduced new duty of care procedures in 2023; and true-crime drama retellings such as 2020 Netflix hit Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which came under fire for being made without the consent of any of the victim's families.

"Due diligence is a phrase you hear regularly," adds Kanter, "and it really means being prepared for the worst possible outcome and they [Netflix] have not been prepared for this. What they have failed to do is look around the corner with this show. They probably did not expect it to be as big of a hit as it has become, butthey should have been prepared for it to become as big of a hit as it did. It's also taken the shine off what, creatively, is an astonishing and incredibly memorable piece of work."

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Alongside Harvey being targeted by viewers, the director Sean Foley was then falsely accused of being the real-life inspiration for the character Darrien, a comedy writer who repeatedly sexually assaults Richard Gadd's protagonist. Foley has categorically denied this, and posted on X: "Police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory abusive and threatening posts against me." Gadd posted on Instagram “People I love, have worked with, and admire (including Sean Foley) are unfairly getting caught up in speculation.”

Although Harvey hasn't specified what she would like to sue Netflix or Gadd for, it seems likely that she would sue for libel, based on her claims about the show's false depiction of her including, among other things, the scene in which the character Martha is seen confessing in court to being a stalker and being sent to prison for nine months. Harvey says she has never been convicted of an offence.

The question is: does she have a strong legal case? Media law expert Daniel Taylor of Taylor Hampton solicitors tells the BBC: "It is for the claimant [Fiona Harvey] to prove that she was the subject of the libel. If she is able to do that, then Netflix's due diligence has failed. The test the court lays down as to whether she has been identified as the subject of the series is an objective test of whether the hypothetical viewer would understand the series to refer to her. At trial, evidence that the individual in question was identifiable can be adduced at court.

In the show, Martha (played by Jessica Gunning) is a Scottish woman who was a lawyer – character details that mirror Harvey (Credit: Netflix)

"If Fiona Harvey is identifiable as the individual being portrayed, then Netflix will be responsible for how she is portrayed regardless of whether what is being alleged about her is true or false," he adds. "And, provided the portrayal of Fiona Harvey is false and defamatory and there is no defence of truth available to Netflix or any other defence they can rely on, she can sue for defamation."The BBC has contacted both Netflix and Clerkenwell Films for comment, but they have not responded.

Issues of regulation

One issue that this whole affair has shone a light on is the issue of regulation, and what standards TV shows are held to on different platforms. Baby Reindeer is a British-produced show and if it was on a British broadcasting network, it would have to abide by the Broadcasting Code of conduct and ethics, which is overseen by the communication regulator, Ofcom. As Netflix is based in the Netherlands, instead it is under the jurisdiction of the Dutch Commissariaat voor de Media. In an interview with The Times, Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies suggested that the BBC would have been "much stricter" in disguising the real-life identities of the characters: "Compliance and editorial policy drives us mad here but I sleep at night."

However, the regulations for streaming platforms could tighten up soon, since a new media bill is current passing through the UK parliament that would see Netflix et al be subject to the same scrutiny from Ofcom as other UK broadcasters, from 2026. Under this new bill, reports Deadline, streamers could soon be "fined up to £250,000 ($308,000) or restricted in the UK entirely if they break rules around harmful material that have applied to the public broadcasters for decades".

What further complicates this particular case is the definitive caption "this is a true story" which flashes up on screen at the start of the first episode of Baby Reindeer. Industry practice around true-life stories adapted into drama is often to claim "the following is based on true events" or "inspired by true events". Netflix recently played around with this standard again with 2022's Inventing Anna, a dramatisation of the story of "fake heiress" Anna Sorokin, by including a knowing caveat: "this whole story is completely true… except for all the parts that are totally made up."

With Baby Reindeer, however, the streamer states it is a "true story" on screen, even though Gadd himself has explained that he had used some artistic licence in parts and that the truth had been "tweaked slightly to create dramatic climaxes". Harvey, while saying that Martha is her, and that she was identified as the character, alleges she never stalked Gadd, attacked his girlfriend or did any of the offences that Martha does throughout the series. She also posted on social media claiming again that she was never prosecuted or convicted: "It was 12 years ago and no-one's found any convictions".

But, according to Taylor, even if Netflix/Clerkenwell Films did run a disclaimer that the series wasn't only based on true events, there still would have been an issue with Harvey being so easily identifiable because it would not be clear to the audience what may be true and false. "A disclaimer would not necessarily have covered them," he says. Indeed in Inventing Anna's case, despite its on-screen admission that some parts of the story were made up, former Vanity Fair photojournalist Rachel DeLoache Williams, who was featured as a character in the series using her real name, has sued Netflix as she believed she was painted in a negative, "greedy, snobbish… and manipulative" way. As reported in Vulture, her lawyer, Alexander Rufus-Isaacs said: "The devastating damage to her reputation could have been avoided if only Netflix had used a fictitious name and different details." The case is still active, and in March 2024, Netflix lost the bid to dismiss the lawsuit.

Another Netflix show, Inventing Anna, is facing legal action for its depiction of Rachel DeLoache Williams (played by actress Katie Lowes, left) (Credit: Netflix)

Netflix policy chief Benjamin King stood by their compliance process in last week's parliamentary hearing, saying: "We didn't want to anonymise [the whole thing] or make it generic to the point where it was no longer [Richard Gadd's] story because that would undermine the intent behind the show… I personally wouldn't be comfortable with a world in which we decided it was better that Richard was silenced and not allowed to tell the story." His statement missed the nuance of the situation, believes Kanter. "King presented a misleading binary choice that Netflix had; they said it was either 'we create this series in a really authentic way', or 'we censor Richard Gadd's story'. I think there's a path in the middle of those two things, and I don't think it was particularly helpful for him to cast it in such a stark way because they could have remained true to his story while changing details."

Of course, that Gadd's story was his own to tell, in his own way, shouldn't be diminished, nor should the space for any creative to make art, based on their own lives. But, some would say, he should have had more guidance about how to do that. Certainly, it suggests the broader way in which the TV industry deals with the sensitive stories of real-life people needs to be addressed, to prevent more harm from occurring to them.

Gadd has always said that he doesn't see his stalker as a "bunny boiler", but instead is more compassionate. Speaking with The Independent in 2019, he said: "Stalking and harassment is a form of mental illness. It would have been wrong to paint her as a monster, because she's unwell, and the system's failed her". But in the course of telling his life story for TV, has the system also failed him, unwittingly exposing himself to further trauma? "Richard is clearly vulnerable as well," says Kanter."And I absolutely believe he has been failed too. This is his work of art, but ultimately, a cynic could argue that he's been exploited as well."

And, following the Piers Morgan interview, the fallout continues to develop: over the weekend, Laura Wray, who alleges that Fiona Harvey also stalked her and her late husband for five years, and that she obtained an interim injunction against her in 2002, told the Daily Mirror that she had been triggered by seeing Harvey on the chat show. "My partner and I are concerned about what she might do next. Is she going to come after me?" she said. "You don't know where it will end." She also believes she was indirectly featured in Baby Reindeer via the appearance of a fictional newspaper headline 'Sick stalker targets barrister's deaf child'. With reference to Laura Wray, Harvey alleged in Morgan's interview that there was no interim injunction against her "as the paperwork was messed up" and denied stalking her.

The whole Baby Reindeer situation will no doubt have repercussions for Netflix and the entire TV industry when it comes to how it deals with real-life productions. On the podcast The Rest Is Entertainment, hosts Richard Osman and Marina Hyde discussed the missteps of the series, with Osman saying: "I think that if you were making a show now for any of the streamers or for anybody that is about a real person, then this week your compliance probably just got tightened by 8,000 percent. I think this will be the patient zero of Netflix compliance."

"I think Richard Osman's spot on," says Kanter. "I think everything Netflix have got in development they will be looking at very carefully now. That said, I think Netflix should come out and talk about this in more detail and how they're going to change processes, I think they have a responsibility to do that and if they haven't been in contact with Fiona they should be, and they should be trying to get into a situation where all parties are given reassurance and support that they need to move forward."

As for Gadd's position on the controversy, in his most recent interview, he told The Hollywood Reporter: "I can't confirm or deny anything relating to the real life people who the characters are based on in the show… If I wanted the real life people to be found, I would've made it a documentary." He added: "I don't think I'll ever comment on it ever again."

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