“This is a true story” – Five little words could cost Netflix a whopping $170 million. This is how Baby Reindeer opens, and with the show’s drama continuing way beyond the final episode, it’s this phrase that the real-life Martha is staking her legal case on.
Writer and star Richard Gadd claimed to have been careful to obfuscate the real people Baby Reindeer is inspired by, but it took online sleuths about ten seconds to find Fiona Harvey, the woman Martha is obviously based on. The show uses some of her messages to Gadd verbatim, and a simple search on X turned up Harvey’s old profile.
Now the story has taken another twist, as it’s being reported that it was Netflix, not Gadd, who demanded “This is a true story” be the first thing viewers see. The story comes from the U.K. paper The Sunday Times (via Deadline), who report that the streaming giant mandated the change “despite some misgivings from Gadd”.
Harvey’s New York attorney has seized on this to argue this proves they have a case. Speaking to Piers Morgan Uncensored, he said:
“This is far worse than negligence, this is intentional misconduct if they were told, ‘Don’t make it a true story.’ And they said it was true. They are going to have to show that they have the facts to support their claim.”
This isn’t necessarily a smoking gun that’ll win the case for Harvey, but it does show the bar Harvey’s lawyers are asking Netflix to clear. If they can successfully argue that a regular viewer would understand “This is a true story” at the start of a drama to mean that everything within it happened as depicted, they have a case.
However, the fact that Gadd did alter Martha’s story to distinguish her from Harvey means they can push back. Harvey is arguing that it’s defamatory to show Martha being sentenced to prison, which she says she never has been. But it’s precisely that distinction that will allow Netflix’s lawyers to argue that the character is merely inspired by her rather than simply portraying her under a different name.
Also, Baby Reindeer is far from the first drama to bend the truth about it being real or not. The Coen Brothers’ classic 1996 movie Fargo begins by saying:
“This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”
This is complete bunkum as Fargo is a completely fictional story, so you could argue that viewers should know not to take messages like this at face value.
In addition, the core of Harvey’s case (as explained to Piers Morgan) is that she isn’t a crazy stalker and didn’t inundate him with messages. If this is true Gadd should be able to prove it fairly easily, and given that the stage version of Baby Reindeer used actual voicemails Harvey sent, we know he’s got the receipts.
All the said, we suspect Harvey’s lawyers would rather this doesn’t actually end up in court, as we doubt they want to put their client in a witness box under oath. They’ll be praying Netflix settles out of court for an undisclosed sum, so it only remains to be seen if they’ll buckle and make Baby Reindeer‘s Martha a very rich woman.