Piers Morgan says 'real-life' Martha was 'relatively normal' off-camera and slams Netflix

Piers Morgan has shared his thoughts on the 'real-life' Martha from Netflix's Baby Reindeer following their interview, revealing some behind-the-scenes secrets.

On Thursday, 9 May, Fiona Harvey claimed to be the real-life inspiration for the character Martha in the Netflix series sat down with Piers, 59, for an interview that was broadcast on the former Good Morning Britain presenter's YouTube channel Piers Morgan Uncensored.

Harvey insists she is the basis for the stalker character Martha in the show Baby Reindeer, reports the Mirror.

The series dramatises the experiences of Scots writer and comedian Richard Gadd, who was stalked by a woman named Martha in the show.

In Gadd's seven-part drama, Martha is portrayed as a terrifying stalker who ends up serving a nine-month prison sentence for harassing the comedian after meeting him in a Camden pub.

During an episode with Piers, the 58-year-old lashed out at the Netflix show for its alleged inaccuracies - which included her never being offered a free cup of tea by Gadd and not messaging him as often as her character does in the series. The Netflix drama is marketed as a 'true story'.

However, during her chat with Piers she refuted by saying: "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."

On Tuesday's airing of the Lorraine show, Piers discussed the aforementioned interview providing viewers with his real thoughts about the 'actual' Martha and other undisclosed details.

Quizzed on whether he conducted the interview purely to attract clicks and views on his YouTube outlet, with candid honesty Piers responded: "Oh, I have a YouTube channel called Piers Morgan Uncensored, and I want people to click on it, yeah! Shock horror! Like you do a show for ratings, that's the game we're in and I want people to watch the content we do. That's not why I did the interview."

The host revealed that he was initially hesitant to do the interview, not realising the massive success of Baby Reindeer on Netflix.

Piers admitted: "In fact, I didn't even realise anywhere near the scale of how big this show is, I honestly had to be persuaded by my team and thank God they persuaded me! This Baby Reindeer thing, globally, has been one of the biggest things I've ever been involved in."

Discussing his thoughts on the woman claiming to be the real-life Martha, who demanded £1 million for her story, Piers was clear: "No, she's not going to get £1 million! "

He continued: "We gave her the same amount, I want to say, 95% of our guests. We don't discuss that but we paid for her to have a nice haircut, a car, and everything else. I think we've performed our duty of care and we've stayed in touch with her since."

Despite the woman giving some controversial interviews, Piers noted that she seemed quite normal in the studio: "She's given some lively, provocative interviews but when she came to the studio she was actually relatively normal, I didn't get any sign of somebody who I thought was mentally unwell."

Yet, despite praising his team's efforts, Piers did not hold back criticism towards Gadd and Netflix.

Lorraine, the host, chimed in on the matter, saying: "It's really interesting because what Richard has said is he didn't want their identities revealed that isn't what the show is about but inevitably, of course, because it's huge.."

Piers Morgan didn't hold back his opinion, stating: "I've got to say, I think that's pretty disingenuous because they literally use parts of messages which Internet sleuths just tapped into her Twitter account and up came the same phraseology. So I think they failed in a duty of care, there's no question about that, Netflix in particular."

Wrapping up the interview, Piers expressed his intention to invite Gadd onto his show for balance, saying: "I've emailed him to get him on as I want him on to be fair to Richard", and he added: "I hear from everyone who knows him he's a really good guy. He seemed it on your interview and I want to be fair to him too."

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