Piers Morgan’s highly-criticized but still widely viewed interview of Baby Reindeer’s real-life Martha ⏤ aka Fiona Harvey ⏤ is here. I would have liked to say that the hour-long conversation allowed me to see her side of the story, but Harvey makes it really, really impossible to be in her corner.
For a person claiming to be blessed with a photographic memory, she butchers the details of her story too many times for comfort, insisting that she’d met up with Gadd two or three times only to jump to “five to six” meetings total followed by interactions that lasted two to three months. Just as you start wondering how someone with a “photographic” memory only managed to get “alright grades” (but doesn’t remember what those grades were), she goes ahead and drops the real bomb…
Fiona Harvey had, and still has, six email addresses and four phones. Which isn’t weird at all.
When asked why she has so many email addresses, Harvey stated that it’s easier to be in contact with different people with different emails. Sound sketchy? Well, she’s well aware of how the numbers make her look, but having that many email addresses has allegedly made life smoother for her:
“Maybe that makes me a maniac, or a stalker or something, but it makes it nicer and easier.”
Did Morgan have any plan of letting Fiona prove her innocence on the show? Not really; his intention was to soak in the rising fame of the show and catch her red-handed in a lie. Her sentiments on his tactics are already known, as during a chat with Daily Record after filming the interview, she stressed that she felt “set up” and “used” by Morgan. The real question is: did the real-life Martha make it any easier to believe her “truth” and accept that Netflix is “as mad as Richard Gadd” ⏤ who, according to her, cooked up a lie based on an imagined story? NOPE.
She has called Gadd a “bully” in recent weeks and has alleged that in reality, he was the one who was obsessed with her and wanted to have sex with her. Gadd has revealed that “Martha” sent him 41,000 obsessive and deranged emails, but Harvey refutes the number and says it was 10 at best. Let’s look at the facts here. Gadd has said that he has all the emails as proof, and Harvey has six different email addresses, four phones, can’t remember how many encounters she had with him, and is evasive about whether she got B’s or C’s in school. She also claimed she disliked Gadd but still sent him emails and tweets ⏤ you know, to “banter” with him.
The full picture remains incomplete, but what’s on the canvas so far isn’t painting Harvey in the best light. Only time will tell if Harvey will get the justice she feels she deserves or it will be Gadd laughing all the way to the bank.
