The emails sent by the “real life Martha” from Netflix hit show Baby Reindeer to creator Richard Gadd have been revealed in court documents in the US.
Fiona Harvey, who said she believed she was the basis for the character in the series sent “thousands” of messages to Gadd according to papers filed to a court in California on Monday.
Gadd, in support of defendants Netflix in Harvey’s £132m lawsuit against the streaming giant, said he was “scared of Harvey and what she might be capable of”.
He claimed her messages “often included sexually explicit, violent, and derogatory content, hateful speech, and threats”.
Harvey denied stalking Gadd and sending him 41,000 emails, hundreds of voice messages and 106 letters.
Gadd described Baby Reindeer as “a dramatic work” and added “it is not a documentary or an attempt at realism.”
He continued: “While the series is based on my life and real-life events and is, at its core, emotionally true, it is not a beat-by-beat recounting of the events and emotions I experienced as they transpired.
“It is fictionalised, and is not intended to portray actual facts.”
He added: “It is an expression of my views on stalking, harassment and sexual abuse told through the lens of my own experiences, emotions and self-reflections.
“I did not write the series as a representation of actual facts about any real person, including Fiona Harvey.
“Harvey is never mentioned in the series.”
Emails detailed in the documents allegedly contained “hateful speech and derogatory racist and homophobic language” made by Harvey.
Gadd said “Harvey frequently made personal attacks and threatened me in her emails.”
In the court papers, Gadd recounted allegedly meeting Harvey in 2014 in a London pub called the Hawley Arms and said their “common Scottish heritage” began a conversation.
He said: “In 2014, I met Harvey at the pub where I worked at the time, the Hawley Arms. I noticed that Harvey looked distressed and offered her a cup of tea on the house. On noticing each other’s accents, we engaged in what I took at that time to be a friendly conversation, and discussed our common Scottish heritage.
Netflix“Following that first meeting, Harvey subsequently stalked and harassed me throughout 2014–2017. She frequently appeared at the pub. It quickly became clear that she had memorised my shift pattern by hanging around the pub constantly.
“She would then arrive just before my shift started on most days I was working and sit at the end of the bar. She would also call the pub constantly on days when I was not working to check if I was in.”
Baby Reindeer received 11 nominations at the Emmy awards and is one of Netflix’s most-watched shows of all time.
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