There is a lot the real-life Martha aka Fiona Harvey said during the Piers Morgan interview, everything from shocking revelations to hard to overlook inconsistencies in her version of what really happened. But, amid the entire mess — at the end of which Harvey felt “used” by Morgan — she did confirm that many things depicted in Baby Reindeer did truly happen.
Nah, she didn’t confirm that series depiction of Martha’s obsession with Richard Gadd. In fact, according to Harvey, it was the actor-comedian who was fixated on her and even asked her to have sex with him — revelations that came after she claimed that Gadd is gay. But do you know what was Fiona’s ultimate reason for turning down Gadd’s alleged advance? In her words “I don’t fancy little boys, without jobs.”
Right. So let’s focus on points where she does back up Baby Reindeer’s plot:
All the “hang my curtains” talk
Harvey confirmed that the chatter about all the curtains and their needed hanging — i.e., the not-so-subtle to-and-fro of sexual innuendos — between Gadd and her did take place. Even though she stressed about disliking him and found that he was “full of himself,” she admits extending this banter to “jokey, bantery emails” and her tweets to him.
Yep, Fiona Harvey did meet Richard Gadd in a pub where he worked
But the number of times she met him there kept fluctuating — at first, it was 2-3 times which then switched to 5-6 meetings that then became interactions spread across two to three months. Harvey also denies getting free drinks from him and claims that Gadd interrupted a conversation she was once having with someone else at the pub.
The name “Baby Reindeer” is real, not made up
Between her many eye-rolls at the mention of how Gadd has depicted “Martha” in the Netflix series, Harvey confirmed that she did indeed have a toy reindeer and agreed that she “inadvertently named” the hit series as the title came from her toy.
Fiona Harvey agrees sending Gadd emails, tweets, and a letter
While she strongly disagreed with ever sending Gadd 41,000 emails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, 106 pages of letters, and strange gifts, she admitted that she did email and tweet him — 10 emails, 18 tweets, and one letter. But the authenticity of her assertion took many hits, particularly when she tried to brush off a rather eyebrow-raising fact about how she likes to keep in contact with her different friends.
Donny’s research of Martha’s past in Baby Reindeer matches Fiona’s history
Apart from denying that she ever did any jail time, as depicted in the show, Harvey also refuted getting a restraining order in the past for stalking or having the police at her door. She openly talked about working at solicitor Laura Wray’s husband, the late Glasgow MP Jimmy Wray’s law firm, and refuted her allegations — that she harassed Laura for five years with everything from death threats to filing a false report of child abuse against her family. Similar details about Martha’s past were unearthed by Donny in the series, but Harvey has called both accounts — Wray’s and Gadd’s — false and claimed targeted her Harvey was “going for parliamentary selection.”
But the real kicker is that Harvey revealed during the hour-long interview that her maiden name was Muir-Harvey — which matches the name appearing in the 25-year-old news report of the harassment Laura Wray and her family suffered at the hands of their stalker, the scorned Fiona Muir. The disclosure of her old surname corroborates the older reports.
“Since she was dismissed, she has contacted Mrs Wray’s office with a series of threatening phone calls and even turned up at her house on one occasion.”
Afraid of what Fiona might do, Wray went on to file “an official complaint to the police” and “issued her staff with panic alarms.” But as we mentioned above, Harvey adamantly stands by her claim — that she never committed a criminal offense and the police never graced her doorsteps to accuse her of stalking.
Fiona Harvey attended Richard Gadd’s comedy show
However, she stated that she only marked her attendance at one show and didn’t show up at others. She also denied heckling Gadd during it or making any attempt to interrupt it.
From the get-go, Harvey doubled down on her argument that Gadd made up the show, which is nothing but a “hyperbole.” For something that is allegedly a result of an overactive imagination, Harvey sure as hell confirmed a lot of it. But even with that many holes in her account of what really happened, she plans on suing Netflix and Gadd. Oh, but though she asserts she is a very good lawyer and has been dating a guy who is also a lawyer, she will be getting someone else to point the legal swords at the streamer and the creator of its latest goldmine, Baby Reindeer.
