Piers Morgan interview with real Baby Reindeer Martha

[Luxell934]

I am strangely looking forward to hearing her side….shame it’s with Piers Morgan though 🙈

https://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/tv/baby-reindeer-real-martha-piers-morgan-fiona-harvey-richard-gadd-112360-20240508

Fascinating

Why is she being thrown to the lions when the rapist is sitting pretty and free to continue to abuse? When he's apparently well known?

Fair point

2 separate issues because there’s a worse crime doesn’t deflect from her actions and consequences
there’s no way he can out the rapist without going through the process of reporting to the police and everything that entails like court case and prosecution or he would be subject to liable as it would just be hearsay

a lot of victims don’t want to go through this process

She was Irish in the play, making her Scottish seems deliberate and foolhardy.

@CaraDeLaVagine

I actually think having her Scottish in baby reindeer is really important; it explains the initial basis upon which the relationship was established and how inappropriate behaviour from both occurred and was disregarded until it became more extreme.

When in any big city, and especially London, you tend to find that outsiders seek commonality and a connection with ‘home’. So if two Scots, Irish, Welsh, northerners, whatever, come into contact with one another there is an instant commonality, bond and perhaps greater trust, even more so than there would be if they were at home because they are looking for that connection (especially if they are vulnerable, as both Richard and Martha were).

Regards the behaviour, Scottish banter is key to how both of them were able to say hugely inappropriate things to each other, both privately and in front of others, and have it discounted as normal socialisation.

I realise in terms of duty of care there is an argument that nationality should have been changed to protect Martha’s true identity. However, equally without the commonality of them being Scottish it’s hard to fully understand the relationship. Equally, with regard to the typing style, and certain phrases said (curtains), without keeping these as they were it would have been difficult to see the story progression working and the character of Martha and how she was so dominant of and emotionally connected to Gadd.

So, in a nutshell, I think if you took many of the identifying factors out of it, baby reindeer wouldn’t have worked.

@LetsPlayShadowlands

She came forward and identified herself almost immediately, probably for attention, and her link to being Martha, or at least an inspiration for her, can also be seen via a few tweets with key phrases and previous accusations of stalking - it’s very clear.

Regards the rapist, details about him are vague due to it being a lesser part of the story and them wanting to keep the focus on the rape/assault rather than the character of him.

He obviously hasn’t stepped forward and newspapers are less likely to name and shame because accusing someone of being a rapist and of grooming a young man and plying him with drugs could cost a lot of money.

It’s easier to name Fiona because it’s already out there in the public domain that she has a history of stalking and inappropriate behaviour, so you couldn’t say it’s defamation of character.

She still instantly recognised herself even when the character was Irish.

So basically her position is that he's over reacting to her stalking. She's so comfortable in her indignation that we all deny RG a proportionate reaction to her behaviour.

I recognise this mindset. How dare you have a reaction that is proportionate to my behaviour. You owed it to me to under react to how I behaved, because I told you, it wasn't that bad.

The expectation that RG collude with her version (that it wasn't that bad) is still RIGID, 20 years on.

I wish somebody had advised her to say "I wasn't well back then. I'm ashamed of how I behaved and what i put Ruchard through. Im now trying to heal my own shame. I'm sorry Richard".

Wouldn't mean it didn't happen, but it'd deflate the media storm.

I am curious if Gadd actually did go and see him and get a job on ‘cottonmouth’ as a pay off. It would be pretty easy to go back through his employment history to see where he’s been involved and then to look at who the writers were for various series.

While it’s an uncomfortable watch to see him go back to his abuser in the end, it’s a powerful scene because it exemplifies his hunger for advancement in his career and how it led him to be in such a vulnerable situation. But more importantly, shows how victims of abuse (particularly those who are groomed) are tied to their abusers emotionally and under their control/still going through the abuse, even years after the event. You could see by his body language and expression, he was right back in it the minute he walked through the door of that flat, the trauma was right there.

When someone is abused they are always vulnerable to being abused again, and I think this is what happened with Martha, he was almost groomed by her and a lot of the patterns repeated.

All in all, while it’s an entertaining series, but it’s also very important because it shows reality rather than the black and white versions of crime you see usually see on tv.

Yes, I'm glad he included that. It was so uncomfortable, but so real. It's the balance of power. The people making the decisions about who to hire and who to pay well and who to shine a new light on; they are the ones with the power to exploit and they are the ones with the power to end a career. They reward silence. They punish speaking out.

Watching it, I felt disappointed, but actually it was so importantto leave that scene in.

I read the name of the real "Darrien" earlier. So FH may be left alone for a while soon.

There clearly is not one jot of insight into her own behaviour. I do feel for people like this as ultimately what they want are relationships and connections but they have a completely dysfunctional way of understanding how to go about it. That doesn’t make it any easier for the people they target however.

How do you know it's the real "Darrien"?

Clearly a deeply odd character but what strikes me as horribly exploitative is the title of the Netflix show. When it's revealed why she calls him 'Baby Reindeer' is rooted in childhood neediness and desperate seeking of comfort and love it seems very sad. Just to have these very intimate personal details used as entertainment seems very wrong. The woman has behaved appallingly over decades and caused great damage to people but should it be entertainment in 'dark comedy'? Where is the media shitstorm to uncover the abusive, drugging, raping grooming yet very powerful media MALE....

I agree with all of that robinni
I was looking at it purely from the position of them claiming how far they'd gone to disguise her and that claim being demonstrably false.

GQ
A caption reads ‘This is a true story’. Were there parts of this you had to adapt?
This is a medium where structure is so important, you need to change things to protect people.

Your stalker might watch Baby Reindeer. What do you think she’ll make of it?
I honestly couldn’t speak as to whether she would watch it. Her reactions to things varied so much that I almost couldn't predict how she’d react to anything. She was quite an idiosyncratic person. We’ve gone to such great lengths to disguise her to the point that I don’t think she would recognise herself. What’s been borrowed is an emotional truth, not a fact-by-fact profile of someone.

Guardian
Names and identifying details have been changed – Gadd plays the lead, but his character is called Donny – while chronology and some events have been “tweaked slightly to create dramatic climaxes”, he says. “It’s very emotionally true, obviously: I was severely stalked and severely abused. But we wanted it to exist in the sphere of art, as well as protect the people it’s based on.”

You are right robinni that she recognised herself from the play at the Fringe anyway despite him changing the nationality.
She says she recognised herself in the play because of the headline being used -not sure whether she saw placards/posters/promos for publicity etc.
In the Netflix show, Gadd reads an article:

Serial Stalker Torments Barrister's Deaf Child
(a three-year old hearing-impaired daughter)

In real life, the headline was
Stalker Targets MP's Son
(the four-year old disabled son of a lawyer and an MP)
In both fiction/real life social workers were maliciously contacted.

It doesn't really matter whether she recognised herself though (she was bound to given the title and playwright, whose career she purportedly claimed to encourage at one point).

What matters is whether she was recognisable by the general public.
Martha in the show and Fiona in real life

• Scottish with a law degree
• Dark-haired plus-size women
• Living in Camden

You then add the phrases ad verbatim, the headline above where only slight tweaks made and other details (in the show, Martha claimed to know politicians, in real life claimed to be a Special Advisor to Donald Dewar, she was one of his constituents. In the show, iirc was struck off from a lawyer's. In real life was sacked from a trainee post and allegedly then started stalking the lawyer).

Finally, you say it's a "true story" but add in details like the canal, the physical assault of Terri, the physical assault in the bar and the jail sentence...at that point, I still don't understand why the usual caveats didn't apply "based on" or "inspired by."

I don't think Fiona has the £ to take on Netflix.
Her emphatic denial of the volume of communications was viewed sceptically by Piers, which is why he repeatedly gave her chance to take that back, as it would be so easily provable.
Baby Reindeer 'stalker' Fiona Harvey made three claims to me that rang alarm bells - despite saying the show is all lies | The Sun

For those who won't click to that tabloid on principle:

‘On balance, I’d say Fiona Harvey lied to me quite a lot in the interview and if her threatened legal action against Netflix and Gadd goes ahead, I suspect it will quickly emerge she did send all the emails, messages, and letters to him.
‘But that doesn’t mean she can’t be a victim here too.’

I wondered if any lawyers would take a case against Netflix on pro bono for Fiona Harvey?

I think people would be sensible to not get involved with her, even as her lawyer. She might become obsessed. I wouldn't want anything to do with her.

I understand that Richard Gadd has said his stalker sent more than 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters.

Re Tweets, an advanced search on the two accounts on X/Twitter (that appear to be genuine) for Fiona Harvey only bring up 18 tweets ( 'at'FionaHarvey2014 and 'at' FionaHa09210946). And all of those are on the first listed. Also interestingly Richard Gadd says he first met his stalker in 2015 when she came into the pub and he gave her a cup of tea. But there are Tweets in 2014 (earliest is May) that suggest some communication between them prior to this, including the hang the curtains one (Sept. 2014).

There must be other accounts if he says he got 744 Tweets, or that figure is wrong.

The advanced search facility can be found here:
https://twitter.com/search-advanced?lang=en-GB

Her current Facebook accounts (the genuine ones) show that she fires off messages as she thinks about things - a sort of stream of consciousness. I wonder how long the e-mails and voice mails were. I suspect she may have done the same thing there - firing things off quickly. If she was just using a phone to write things, as it appears she was (sent from my i phone), then it is not that practical to write long things either, so the medium would encourage a lot of shorter messages. The sent from the i phone part, when there are claims she did not have an i phone, may possibly have been to say -as some have said- that the message was sent from a mobile.

I thought only one account was real - the one with 7 followers.
All the rest want clout or are weirdos (weirder than Fiona to do that).
The volume of communications. Therein lies the rub.
I've read the play. All the emails in it purportedly coming from her.
Then voicemails received after she allegedly found out his number.
He spent six months listening to them all. Hours of it.
Although iirc he erased some of the communications (not great if you need evidence of harassment).
If all of that is fiction, she's been maligned.
If all of that is fact, she's a verifiable stalker.
If she only got an interim interdict from Laura as the latter messed up the paperwork/process and she "only" got a First Warning Verbal Harassment Order from Gadd - but was involved herself in trying to serve her own papers against the first and getting the latter a caution himself (not sure if this was the case or fictional) it becomes even more confusing.

Evidence is either there in full or it's not and I have no idea why Netflix (or even Francesca Moody, who produced the play) hasn't published a statement that they have viewed materials from Gadd in pre-production.

@Wingding

I don’t think the timeline in BR and reality match up exactly.

And there may be other Twitter accounts we don’t know of… besides the possibility of DMs.

Regardless of what her communication style is. You don’t send people 80 emails a day or even 1 if they have specifically said they don’t want contact with you and you’ve had police warnings/history of stalking.

Whatever the facts about her stalking Richard Gadd, I assume doesn't negate the issue of insufficient care being taken by Netflix/Gadd to protect her against being identified (by herself/others). I think Netflix is negligent. And likely Gadd is naive to have thought people would be most interested in engaging with the issues raised, and not be interested in the who actual stalker was.

Well I don't obviously, but my point was, the spotlight might swivel

Same here , who would they sue ! Netflix or RG ?

I think Netflix is ultimately responsible.

Richard Osman says that everyone knows who the real life Darrien is , if everyone knows, who are these people covering for him?

One thing that's interesting here on MN is that people are both complaining that:

1. It said it's a true story but some of the stuff was made up
2. He didn't try and disguise her enough by following too closely what happened.

He should have put "based on a true story" really, but tbh if I'd watched it and seen it I wouldn't have assumed the stalker was based on one person - I'd have assumed they'd taken stories from different people and put them together. Things like Jack Higgin's "The Eagle has landed" has a bit to say it's based on a true story at the beginning. Looking on the internet, it seems to be generally considered to be entirely made up, but the foreword is there to give it more importance. I'd have assumed this was similar.

I think sometimes mixing real life and fiction is hard. It's a bit like plagiarism. I remember my dd aged about 8 writing something for school about rabbits. Actually she didn't write it. She copied a bit from I think it was wiki and then went through the online thesaurus and changed lots of the words. She was convinced it was all her own work and no one could tell. I suspect he did similar. Took specific incidents and fiddled aspects so they were different but close enough to still have the same reactions. Actually I'm reminded now of during lockdown ds was set to write an essay about an airport closing down "it can't be due to Covid 2019". He decided his airport was closing due to Budweiser 2020. He thought he was very funny.
Both of those examples thought that they'd changed the writing enough that it was fine. Both of them I can tell you were blatant!

He'll have been in a situation where he doesn't want to play down what she did - other than not making a good story, it would also lessen her impact. But on the times he's gone further, he's been criticised for making her out to be worse than she is.

I suspect that he thought he had disguised her enough because he was too close to the material to be able to make that decision. Knowing people like her, he probably also thought she was deluded enough not to recognise herself, but maybe he thought if she did then she'd keep quiet. Maybe he even hoped it would make her realise what she'd done and go for help. He hadn't factored in that she would like the attention nor how the internet sleuths set to to find out. You could say both of those were predictable, but I'm not sure they were totally. Not everything takes off in that way.
But as it did, I suspect if he'd written it, but not acted, and changed many more details she still would have been outed because his name was associated with it, plus I think she'd have come forward anyway.