As a medium, autofiction has long been a source of controversy, but autobiographical works of fiction rarely come with as many built-in problems as Netflix hits. Baby reindeer. The show, a seven-episode limited series by British comedian Richard Gadd, chronicles Gadd’s history of allegedly being stalked by an older woman for years, as well as his experience of being sexually assaulted by a male counselor.
Now, that’s a thing $170 million dollar lawsuit Against Netflix.
The show was a breakout word-of-mouth phenomenon, attracting more than 13 million viewers in its first week of release and More than 22 million In his second. There are audiences and critics appreciated The series is known for its wild twists and humorous yet vulnerable glimpses into a tough story. Yet the real draw for many viewers seems to be less about Gad’s experience and more about the mystery provided by the highly transparent portrayal of other characters – especially Gad’s stalker. Gad and his fellow cast members quickly tried to temper the public backlash, which has now escalated to doxing and harassment of private citizens believed to be the real culprits behind the show’s events. The hunt ended with the revelation of a woman named Fiona Harvey, who appeared on the YouTube show Piers Morgan is uncensored In May, Stalker claimed to be the real-life version of the character “Martha”. Harvey filed a lawsuit against the streamer in June for defamation, negligence and breach of privacy. The horrific real-life side effect of the series seems like an epic case of the audience missing the point (don’t stop people!) and an entirely predictable outcome based on Gad’s treatment of the story.
Should he have known better, or should we?
Baby Reindeer combines two narratives of extreme stalking and sexual abuse
Baby reindeer Gad combines two different autobiographical plays, one Acclaimed comedian, actor and playwright, written and premiered to rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Both shows depict deeply disturbing events in Gad’s life through deliberate overexposure. First, of 2016 Monkey See what a monkey isHannah was similar to Gatsby Nanette In this it subverts the audience’s expectations of comedy and instead treats them to a harrowing confessional. Finally revealing the details of a long-hidden sexual assault, Gadd traces her subsequent trauma through a visceral sensory overload through a staged psychological breakdown.
The second one is from 2019 Baby reindeer, forming the backbone of the Netflix show. In the show, Gad plays a version of himself named Donnie. The fictional Donnie has a chance encounter with middle-aged “Martha”, a patron at the same bar where Gad once worked. That brief conversation led to an intense four-year chase in which Gad claims he sent her exactly 41,071 emails, 106 pages of letters, 744 tweets and 350 hours of voicemail. Over the course of the show, Gad digs into his past and learns that he’s not his first victim – he has a documented criminal record for knocking down at least two previous families.
The Netflix adaptations of the two stories talk a lot about criminal justice, mental health and gender. Gad struggles to get the police to take Martha’s stalking seriously, even as she struggles with her own past history of trauma and abuse at the hands of her art mentor. GAD’s social awkwardness and PTSD emerge alongside a lack of systematic support for male victims of sexual assault.
These are all complex themes. But the main appeal, at least to the most active audience, seems to be its real-life mystery: Who are the real people based on Gad’s story?
Gad’s sources about her alleged sexual assault were somewhat skewed, but caused trouble for a prominent British theater director who was injured. communication After fans started harassing him, the police confirmed that he was the sex predator featured on the show. Gadd has since been working overtime to clear the man’s name, insisting he is not a criminal. “Please don’t guess who the real-life person might be,” he said post In an Instagram story. “That’s not the point of the show.”
Things are perhaps more complicated with the woman Martha is based on. inside An interview with GQ, released shortly after the show’s April 11 release, Gad claimed that he made his stalker an unrecognizable character. “We’ve gone to such great lengths to disguise him that I don’t think he’ll recognize himself,” he said.
It seemed reasonable to assume that Gad knew what he was talking about. After all, in Baby reindeer, she portrays her stalker as a classic sexist and anti-fat stereotype: the lonely, socially awkward middle-aged woman who is overweight, who turns her unhappiness into an obsession. The first thing he says to us about her before we even meet her is “I felt sorry for her.” It’s a We’ve seen the trope Countless times before distress per Matilda; For Gad’s stalker to fit into this so easily, you’d think his fictional portrayal of him is less driven by reality and more by cheap Hollywood distortion.
Yet Gad seems to have left so many clearly identifying details in the series about the woman Martha — particularly based on her previous criminal history — that the audience turned web sleuth was able to easily identify her, the reporters were able to track her down. And his interviews, multiple British and US tabloids docs him, and He is now suing Netflix.
Media coverage of the frenzy included a fair degree of shock and skepticism. Even the Daily Mail, never a staunch champion of ethics, to identify Several of the show’s details are all taken verbatim from Stalker’s actual history, and questions “how a skilled storyteller could not have foreseen the Netflix effect that exacerbated the fallout from blurred truth and fiction.”
Although the Daily Mail initially refused to out the woman, it did publish A long interview Along with one of her previous victims, Laura Way, a woman who claimed that Martha’s real-life counterpart had harassed her for over five years, culminating in death threats and a false report to investigate her family for child abuse. Way’s story was very similar to Gad’s initial impression of his stalker – they each felt sorry for him and were involved with him because they pitied him.
Even Wray, when discussing how powerful he finds validity Baby reindeer offered the victim as himself, was also surprised that the resemblance between Martha and her real-life counterpart was so “uncanny”.
“It must have occurred to him that people were bound to speculate about who Martha was – and whether she had done it with someone else,” he said.
Despite all this overlap — and despite the show’s opening, where the words “This is a true story” is typed on a black screen — not all of it was true, according to the lawsuit: “The lies the defendants told about Harvey included more than 50 million people worldwide that Harvey is a twice-convicted stalker who was sentenced to five years in prison and sexually assaulted Harvey Gadd,” the lawsuit reads. “The defendants told these lies and never stopped, because it was a better story than the truth, and better stories made money.”
“Martha” may be the same victim as Gad
Baby reindeer Argument that both Gadd And “Martha” victim. “I can’t stress enough how much of a victim she is in all of this,” Gad told the Independent In 2019, a profile is linked to key stage production Baby reindeer. Gadd emphasized that he was mentally ill and that mental health support was a major theme of the play.
It’s perhaps worth asking, then, why he chose to further victimize her through an image of him—in an internationally distributed Netflix series, no less—that was apparently so close to real life that it made him recognizable not only for himself but also for her. . Recognize him as other stalking victims. After all, while Gad could be forgiven for sticking close to his real life in the drama, he had nearly five years to fudge the details and make it less likely that people would discover who he was.
His failure to do so could be seen as a form of targeted retaliation. There is a real and palpable cruelty in the power of resemblance between the pair; Allegedly based on the female Martha protested That she is not as attractive as her double (played by Jessica Gunning) and that between the two of them she is the real victim. In fact, it feels more than a little gimmicky that Gad becomes mutually obsessed with her to the point of writing a hit play about her and then parlaying that success into greater heights of fame.
On May 9, a woman named Fiona Harvey appeared on Piers Morgan’s YouTube show, Piers Morgan is uncensored, claims to be the basis of the Martha character. Harvey claims he has been targeted by web sleuths online and sent death threats. He denied stalking; He denied sending thousands of emails, hundreds of voice mails or dozens of letters; and denied sexually abusing her, going to jail or falling in love with her. He was previously attached to a The stabbing incident with solicitor Laura Way, but she denied that she had ever been served Interim ban (effectively a temporary restraining order) in that event. Harvey admitted he knew Gad when he was a bartender in London, was friendly with him, tweeted him and, like the character, had a child’s reindeer toy. In a not particularly illuminating hour-long interview, Morgan repeatedly asked Harvey about the supposed emails and arrests, but offered no counter-evidence to his claims. Harvey claimed that the reason Gadd could have made up the story was because “stocking is prevalent.” At points of broadcast, more than half a million people were watching live. He promised to sue Netflix and now he has fulfilled that promise.
To be fair, Gad is by no means the first creator to tackle the slippery ethics surrounding true crime. Subjects from Amanda Knox to Willy Fualau and the families of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims have spoken out about the ways in which fictional versions of their reality relive them. It could also be that Gad simply underestimated the power of the internet, the power of fandom and the allure of a real-life puzzle. Many modern fans see media, even autobiographical media, as interactive texts, games they play, full of mysteries they have to solve — even if the “mysteries” involve real life. for something Baby reindeer Fans, sleuthing was of the traditional variety; Fans have analyzed the contents of fictional Martha’s emails and Easter eggs have been found Mentioning the TV show missing.
Whether or not Gad anticipated the show’s runaway success, it seems clear that he could at least have anticipated that if he His stalker couldn’t resist Googling, nor could anyone else.
Update, June 7, 11:02 am: This story originally appeared on May 3 and has been updated multiple times to include Fiona Harvey’s lawsuit against Netflix.
