How much was Fiona Harvey paid for the ‘Baby Reindeer’ interview with Piers Morgan?

Baby Reindeer is well and truly taking over the world for all the right and wrong reasons. Today, we’re going to be talking about some of the wrong ones.

After some of the show’s more dubiously-adjusted viewers made it their life mission to figure out the real identity of Baby Reindeer‘s Martha, the saga very quickly got out of hand by several orders of magnitude when Fiona Harvey, the Scottish lawyer who outed herself as the real-life inspiration for the character, wound up at the desk of Piers Morgan. That desk was subsequently revealed as just one uncomfortable stop on Harvey’s crusade against Team Reindeer, as she apparently plans on suing Netflix for defamation.

It’s a pretty distasteful situation all around; while Gadd didn’t outright name Harvey as Martha’s inspiration (in fact, he pleaded with viewers to stop their detective work), more steps could have been taken to cover up the proverbial trail (Martha didn’t have to be Scottish, for one). Moreover, regardless of how culpable either Gadd or Harvey is about fabricating what really happened (the fact that Baby Reindeer is a piece of autofiction — and an intelligent and empathetic one at that — at least gets Gadd off the hook in that specific way), platforming someone like Harvey — who’s in an incredibly vulnerable position at the moment — is a drastically irresponsible move on Morgan’s part, to say nothing of the shaky-at-best faith with which either party approached said interview.

So, what was even in it for Harvey, anyway?

How much was Fiona Harvey paid to appear on Piers Morgan Uncensored?

Per Dexerto, Harvey claims she was paid £250 to appear as the subject of Morgan’s interview; an experience she would later reveal she was none too pleased about given what she believed was the host’s confrontational tendencies. Considering how rough of a watch the interview was, one can indeed only imagine how unpleasant it must have been in the hot seat, as it were.

In any case, at this rate, Baby Reindeer may just go from being Gadd’s most remarkable professional and artistic achievement to the show that haunts him and his reputation for the rest of his days. Indeed, between recent revelations from one Reece Lyons about Gadd’s alleged lack of professional conduct and now the threat of Harvey’s lawsuit looming over his head (even if it ultimately ends up fizzling out), Baby Reindeer has evolved into a far more intense rigmarole than anyone could have imagined, and Gadd may have to prepare for the possibility of Baby Reindeer being remembered primarily for something other than being a great show.

Baby Reindeer is available to stream on Netflix.