Baby Reindeer's Richard Gadd responds to Fiona Harvey lawsuit

Richard Gadd, the man behind the hit Netflix series 'Baby Reindeer', has responded to the $170 million lawsuit filed by Fiona Harvey, who says she is the inspiration for stalker Martha Scott. Gadd has declared his support for the streaming service in new documents.

Gadd, the show's creator and star, filed a 21-page document to a court in California, in which he details the years of stalking, harassment, abuse and threats he says he suffered at the hands of Harvey between 2014 and 2017.

Harvey filed a whopping $170 million lawsuit against Netflix in June, accusing the streaming service of defamation, emotional distress, gross negligence and a violation of her privacy. 

In the court filing, Gadd says the show is a, “fictionalised retelling of my emotional journey through several extremely traumatic real experiences”.

“The series is a dramatic work,” he says. “It is not a documentary or an attempt at realism. 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.

“I did not write the series as a representation of actual facts about any real person, including Fiona Harvey. Martha Scott is not Fiona Harvey.”

Gadd said he met Harvey while working in a UK pub in 2014 and claims she went on to send him thousands of emails and hundreds of voicenotes. 

Harvey denies she assaulted or stalked Gadd. 

Harvey's lawsuit accused the streaming service of doing “literally nothing to confirm the ‘true story’ that Gadd told … it never investigated whether Harvey was convicted, a very serious misrepresentation of the facts. It did nothing to understand the relationship between Gadd and Harvey, if any. As a result of Defendants’ lies, malfeasance and utterly reckless misconduct, Harvey’s life had been ruined. Simply, Netflix and Gadd destroyed her reputation, her character and her life.”

Netflix says it intends "to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story.”