Baby Reindeer: truth versus TV

There has been no show more talked-about this year than Baby Reindeer, and one of the many aspects of Richard Gadd’s largely autobiographical series is how much is factual and how much has been fictionalised. It has its origins in two acclaimed shows that Gadd performed at the Edinburgh festival, 2016’s Monkey See, Monkey Do, in which he detailed the sexual abuse that he had suffered at the hands of an older, unnamed man in the entertainment industry, and 2019’s Baby Reindeer, in which he discussed his stalking ordeal courtesy of an older woman who he named Martha.

In Gadd’s telling, she became obsessed by him and sent him 41,000 emails over three years, and as the situation worsened, he was met with indifference, even suspicion, by the police.

It is a horrific situation to be in, and the fame and (presumably) fortune that the enormous success that the Netflix series has brought him has also come with its downsides, not least the revelation that the real Martha is a woman called Fiona Harvey, who appeared on Piers Morgan’s Piers Uncensored last night for a 50-minute interview with the intention of “setting the record straight”. Gadd himself asked that internet sleuths did not attempt to delve into the real-life identities of Martha and “Darrien O’Connor”, the pseudonym for his abuser, but Harvey’s emergence into the spotlight – in the most spectacularly public fashion imaginable – has meant that all bets are now well and truly off.

Before the interview, Harvey described Morgan as a “bully” and a “twerp” who was more comfortable talking to the likes of Andrew Tate than to her. He, meanwhile, called her “intelligent, quick-thinking and combative”, although he also admitted that “there were moments in the interview where my suspicious alarm bells rang loud.”

Yet her appearance was also a valuable one in terms of helping to separate fact from fiction and dramatic licence from journalistic truth – although it should be noted that Harvey herself can hardly be taken to be an accurate recounter of what happened.

But what’s made up and what’s true? We attempt to delve into the real story behind Baby Reindeer, with the proviso that only a few people will know the whole truth behind what happened, and so this can only be the most likely version of events.

Did Martha go to prison?

No

In Baby Reindeer, in one of the most bizarrely affecting scenes, Martha is sentenced to nine months in prison for stalking Gadd’s character Donny and his family. The skill of the filmmakers is to make her seem pathetic, and therefore sympathetic, stripping away all of the bombast and threats and turning her into a flawed, fallible human being. However, this is entirely fictionalised; Harvey was never even arrested, let alone imprisoned.

As she said to Morgan, “It’s completely untrue. Very, very defamatory to me, very career-damaging. And I wanted to rebut that completely on this show. I’m not a stalker. I’ve not been to jail. I’ve not got injunctions. And this is just complete nonsense.”

She went on: “I’ve heard about the court scene, about the jail sentences and all this sort of stuff... I haven’t watched any of it. I think I’d be sick [if I watched it]. It’s taken over enough of my life. I find it quite obscene.” For good measure, she called the whole thing “very, very defamatory” and said that she was thinking about suing Netflix and Gadd.

Did ‘Donny’ offer ‘Martha’ a cup of tea?

Yes

The on-screen relationship, such as it is, between the two begins when Donny offers Martha a cup of tea for free at the pub in which he works. Harvey has denied the specific beverage, while admitting that she was in need of a drink. As she told Morgan, “He didn’t offer me a cup of tea... I was in for a meal with, a drink of lemonade, and I was very, very hungry. I’m diabetic, so, very hungry. So that’s true.” In any case, she dismissed any idea that she was ever close to Gadd. “He [worked] as a jobbing barman on benefits, in the Hawley Arms. And we met, two or three times.”

Subsequently, under further questioning, she revised this upwards to “five to six times.” She also suggested that it was he, not her, who initiated conversation, saying “Oh, you’re Scottish”, and that he “commandeered” the conversation. She even went on to put the blame at his door, on the grounds that “You know, I was talking to somebody. It’s pretty rich. So he seemed to be obsessed with me from that moment onwards.”

Did Martha obsessively email Donny?

No (in her version)

In the show, it’s suggested that Martha emailed Donny 41,000 times, left him 350 hours of voice messages – which, as it’s said in the series, he listened to so intensively that it became the constant soundtrack to his everyday activities – and contacted him via every form of social media imaginable.

According to Harvey, this is purely dramatic licence. As she put it, “That’s simply not true. If somebody was sending somebody 41,000 emails or something, they’d be doing how many a day? Lots.” She admitted to Morgan that “there may have been a couple of emails exchanging, but that was just it… jokey banter emails” and that there were “less than ten” sent in total.

She admitted that she sent him a letter, and that she messaged him “around 18” times on Twitter, but denied ever contacting him on Facebook or texting him. When asked why Gadd had put this in the series, she said “I’ve no idea.” She went on to suggest that “I’ve not phoned the guy. I don’t have his number” and that “the only explanation for having a voicemail from me would be taping me in the Hawley Arms”. That Gadd was able to use extensive voicemails from “Martha” during his Edinburgh show might suggest that this explanation, at least, was untrue. Morgan described her “emphatic blanket denials” as “provably false”.

Did Donny ever visit Martha at home?

No

In some of the drama’s most affecting and bizarre scenes, Donny is shown stalking Martha in her squalid and ramshackle flat, indicating the growing obsession that he has with her. However, according to Harvey, all of these moments are nothing more than Gadd’s fecund imagination. “[This is] false… I didn’t see him at my house. I think it would be impossible to look through a window… that categorically didn’t happen.” It might have gone further, too. In one of the show’s most outrageous moments – thankfully revealed to be nothing more than a fantasy – Donny even has sex with Martha at her home; this was not raised during the interview.

Did Martha have multiple email addresses?

Yes

Many of us might have separate emails for work and personal correspondence; some might even have a third in which they channel unwanted spam and junk email. Very few of us, however, have six emails. Harvey, however, admitted this was true, saying, “I had six at one point… I like to keep people on different phones and different emails.” She refused to accept that this was particularly unusual, saying “it’s just easier… you have some for your utilities, some for close friends, whatever.”

Her email correspondence was conducted from multiple different phones, too, and she admitted that “I like keeping people on separate phones as well… maybe that makes me a maniac or a stalker or something. But if you’ve got somebody on about your electricity bill or somebody on about some work or something, it’s nice to keep it separate.” She went on to clarify that “they were really elderly [phones]”, as if this made the accusation less likely.

Were Martha and Donny friends, or more?

No

One of the reasons why the central dynamic between the characters in Baby Reindeer is both sad and bewildering is that a friendship, of a kind, springs up between them in the first instance; not only does Donny give Martha the most fateful cup of tea in televisual history, but they chat and appear to have a warm, if initially casual, relationship. Yet according to Harvey, all of this is nothing more than Gadd’s invention. She told Morgan, when he asked her whether the writer was ever her friend, “no, no. Staff asked me that as well. I don’t think so.” She admitted that the pair of them shared “Scottish banter” together, but was insistent that it never went any further.

As for any romantic interest, she was openly incredulous, saying, “No, I gave him the brush off. He asked me to sleep with him with a big green spot on his face one day. I said ‘no, I’m sorry, I’m not interested.” However, the grim euphemism for Donny “fixing Martha’s curtains” has, according to Harvey, some roots in fact. “He said ‘would I like my curtains fixed’? And I laughed… I gave him the brush off big time.” Contemptuously, she dismissed the most currently talked about actor-writer in the world by saying “I don’t fancy little boys without proper jobs” and telling him to “get a job” and leave her alone.

Did Martha ever attend one of Donny’s gigs?

Yes

Several of the show’s most chilling moments come when Donny is attempting to perform his inimitable brand of anti-comedy, only for Martha to appear and upstage him, either by laughing hysterically or simply by shouting abuse at him. Harvey has admitted that “I think I went to one”, which she immediately qualified by saying “it was a long, long time [ago]”, although when Morgan pressed her as to whether she heckled or offered her own particular brand of audience participation, she denied doing so, saying, “I don’t generally go to comedy shows.”

Did Martha attack Donny’s girlfriend?

No (according to her)

In one of the show’s most disturbing moments, Martha is driven to such extremes of jealousy and anger by the sight of Donny’s transsexual girlfriend Teri that she grabs her in the pub and physically assaults her, trying to tear her hair out and mocking her for her apparently masculine qualities. However, Harvey is contemptuous about such a depiction of her, and commented, “I have never gone to his residence, assaulted a girlfriend or done anything similar.”

She also suggested that Gadd – who has been open about his bisexuality during interviews – is “I believe that he is, let’s say, gay.” Harvey also suggested that she had a lawyer boyfriend who she had been with for the past five years, who found the damning judgements on his paramour’s name and reputation “horrendous”.

Is the story behind the title true?

Yes

In the show, Martha christens Donny with the creepy nickname “baby reindeer”. At the end, it is revealed that she named him after a childhood toy that she was inordinately fond of, and that was her constant companion during her deeply unhappy children. Harvey revealed to Morgan that this was based in fact, saying “that’s true… I have inadvertently given him the name of the show”. She suggested, though, that rather than the name having its basis in childhood trauma, it was a reflection both of Gadd resembling one of the titular animals with a shaved head, and also the fact that, as it was Christmas when they met, the soft toys were to be found in all the shops.

Who is Darrien O’Connor?

Unknown

This was, for obvious reasons, not raised in the Morgan interview, but the true identity of Gadd’s abuser remains a closely guarded secret, despite Richard Osman’s recent comment that everyone in the entertainment industry knows who it is.

Various unfortunate people have been put in the frame, but unless Gadd comes forward to say who it is – which seems highly unlikely – or the abuser chooses to appear on Morgan’s show, or similar, to offer their side of the story, this aspect of Gadd’s eventful and traumatic past will remain a mystery.

Baby Reindeer is on Netflix now