This coming Tuesday, Baby Reindeer star Richard Gadd will walk the red carpet outside London’s Tate Modern alongside a glittering host of celebrities before being honoured as one of GQ Magazine’s Men of the Year.
Actors Jude Law and Nicole Kidman will be among the stars dishing out the awards and Gadd is glowingly described by the publication as one of the ‘most inventive and consequential’ figures in culture who is ‘breaking the rules and changing the game’.
It looks certain to be another ‘pinch me’ moment for Gadd, who was an obscure, impoverished stand-up comedian until the Netflix show he wrote and starred in catapulted him to near-instant international stardom in April.
The scale of his success is staggering.
Some 65million viewers worldwide have watched Baby Reindeer, the seven-part series which is a dramatised account of the abuse and stalking suffered by Gadd in real life. It is one of the biggest shows ever to air on the streaming platform.
In September he won three Emmys: writing, acting and outstanding limited series. He said on stage then: ‘You have made a little boy from a tiny Scottish town’s dreams come true.’
And he’s widely expected to succeed again at the Golden Globes in January, with the support of an expensive Netflix publicity campaign.
Last month Netflix also announced it has secured his services as a writer in a ‘first look’ exclusive contract to develop ideas and scripts and take them into production.
On Tuesday, Richard Gadd will be honoured as one of GQ Magazine’s Men of the Year
Fiona Harvey claims she has been defamed ‘at a magnitude and scale without precedent’ and her life has been ruined as a result
As Baby Reindeer’s many, many fans will be aware, in the series he is called Donny Dunn and his stalker is known as Martha Scott.
We now know, of course, that Martha is based on law graduate Fiona Harvey – and she is suing Netflix for $120million (nearly £1million) in damages over her depiction in the show.
She claims she has been defamed ‘at a magnitude and scale without precedent’ and her life has been ruined as a result.
In a recent interview with GQ, Gadd said he couldn’t talk about the legal action but that he felt ‘windswept’ by his experience of sudden fame.
‘I almost don’t know. I just feel knocked off my feet,’ he said.
He went on to complain that the publicity frenzy surrounding Baby Reindeer had been disturbing for him.
‘I couldn’t escape from it,’ he said. ‘Turn on the TV, there’d be something on the TV. Turn on the radio, they’d be talking about it. I’d go to Sainsbury’s – I’d be in the newspapers.’
He says that he even had to send his parents on an extended holiday so they could get away from journalists.
As you might expect, these complaints are considerably enraging for Fiona Harvey who says she is too traumatised to leave her flat in London as a result of being traduced, globally – and they are a red rag to her lawyers.
In the US it’s common procedure for a mediator to be appointed in disputes such as this, in the hope that the parties can come to an agreement before the time and expense of a court hearing.
In this case a mediator was appointed last month, leading many observers to wonder if the off-screen drama around Baby Reindeer was finally nearing an end.
However, the Mail can reveal that Harvey’s lawyers have declined to enter mediation with Netflix; instead they are confident they will go all the way to court and win big.
And they have plenty to say about former barman Gadd and what they feel is his pity party.
Richard Roth, the New York lawyer representing Harvey, says: ‘He’s complaining about the fame from winning the Emmys and being a famous producer? He’s complaining that he’s making money and he’s famous? What a poor guy. Give me a break! It’s like Beyonce complaining she’s famous.
‘Look at the difference with Fiona. She got death threats.’
Roth adds: ‘There’s one person who made money other than Netflix and that’s Richard Gadd. One entity. He’s accepting Emmy awards in front of hundreds of Hollywood people. He’s got a new lucrative deal and he’s a victim? I have to say that’s nonsense.
‘He brought this on himself. It was not something that was thrust upon him like what happened with Fiona.
‘Imagine while Richard Gadd is writing the play in 2017, isn’t this what he was always wishing for? Every producer – isn’t this their dream? Don’t they want to write a play to become famous? To me I’d call bull**** on that. Everyone who wrote a play who acted in a play that’s all they want.’
As for the forthcoming GQ award, it seems to set a seal on the outrage. Roth comments: ‘It’s nauseating. For him to be one of the Men of the Year, it’s grotesque. He is Man of the Year and she sits in her home worried to go outside. She’s been so victimised.’
Fiona Harvey, who inspired the character Martha in the show, is shown Baby Reindeer on Netflix for the first time
Richard Roth, the New York lawyer representing Harvey, says: ‘He’s complaining about the fame from winning the Emmys and being a famous producer?…what a poor guy’
In legal papers, Harvey has said: ‘I am afraid to go outside out of fear of being attacked. Some weeks I do not leave my apartment. I am suffering from, among other things, constant panic attacks, chest pains, anxiety, nightmares, depression, nervousness, stomach pains, loss of appetite, fear and insomnia.’
At the heart of the dispute over Baby Reindeer is an on-screen announcement at the start that describes it as a ‘true story’ – rather than ‘based on’ a true story or the like.
Harvey – whose identity was quickly uncovered by viewers of the show who combed Gadd’s social media accounts – says that the dramatised version didn’t do enough to disguise her identity and also differed in a number of crucial and damaging ways from the truth.
For example, the Netflix show ends with Martha, a convicted stalker following a previous campaign against a lawyer, pleading guilty to stalking Donny and receiving a sentence of four and a half years in prison.
Harvey has never been convicted of any crime, let alone gone to prison for it. Her clear DBS check is included in a recent evidence bundle.
Additionally, her lawyers argue that in the stage play upon which the series was based, also called Baby Reindeer, which was performed at the Edinburgh fringe, Martha is not arrested or convicted of a crime, nor does she go to prison.
Instead, in the play Donny is told to ‘apologise’ to Martha and stop ‘bothering’ the police. It ends with him obtaining a restraining order against her.
Her team say that comparisons between the play and TV series prove that Netflix knew all along that Harvey had never been convicted of stalking once, nevermind twice.
For his part, Gadd says in legal papers that Harvey was issued with a First Instance Harassment Warning letter in 2016.
After months of further abuse, including Harvey allegedly telling Gadd, ‘If I want you dead, you are f****** dead’, Gadd says that she was issued with another First Instance Harassment Warning letter in 2017. He includes his correspondence with police as proof.
Netflix has argued the show should be viewed as ‘substantially true’ because Harvey did arguably similar things in real life, but that argument failed in court.
In a ruling in September, District judge Gary Klaus concluded that the show was not a ‘true story’ and that Netflix ‘made no effort to investigate’ the accuracy of the facts presented in the show, nor did they take measures to hide Harvey’s identity.
The judge said that her ‘purported actions (in stalking Gadd) are reprehensible’ but that the version presented in Baby Reindeer was worse.
His ruling said: ‘There is a major difference between stalking and being convicted of stalking in a court of law.’
Richard Gadd won Emmys for writing, acting and outstanding limited series. He is pictured next to co-star Jessica Gunning, who plays Martha
Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning star in Netflix’s Baby Reindeer
He also said there were major differences between inappropriate touching (what’s alleged to have happened in real life) and sexual assault (the TV version), as well as between shoving (real life) and gouging another’s eyes (the TV version).
‘While the plaintiff’s purported actions are reprehensible, defendants’ statements are of a worse degree and could produce a different effect in the mind of a viewer,’ he wrote.
Netflix also argued that most viewers would understand the claims made in the show to be ‘not factual; because it was shot in the style of a drama’.
However, the judge disagreed, writing: ‘While the statements were made in a series that largely has the trappings of a black comedy-drama, the very first episode states unequivocally that “this is a true story”, thereby inviting the audience to accept the statements as fact.’
Netflix also said the similarities between the real and fictionalised people were so broad that average viewers would not have been able to identify Ms Harvey as Martha. The judge again disagreed saying that Ms Harvey and Martha shared ‘specific similarities’ that few others could claim to share.
Netflix is appealing that ruling. Both sides were due to come to mediation over the appeal this week. However Roth explains: ‘We were released from mediation because this case is not ready to be mediated. We are very confident in our position and we’re not going to settle it.
‘The person from the mediation office wanted to know if we were willing to settle and we said “no.”‘
He went on: ‘Mediation is dead but if Jesus came up from the dead you never know. I never say never – but right now there’s very little chance it’s going to settle. Courts, especially in the US, are always pushing to have you settle. I can’t say that the case will never settle but it’s looking unlikely.’
Instead, it seems that Netflix will be running a Golden Globe campaign under the shadow of this legal action. A spokesman for the streamer declined to comment. All Netflix has ever said outside of legal documents is that they will support Gadd’s right to tell his true story of being stalked.
Roth comments: ‘Netflix is playing a very, very risky game by continuing. This isn’t just being looked at by reporters, it’s being looked at by the industry, entertainment people, lawyers, people who are producers are looking at this, TV executives….
‘It’s not smart to keep it going.’
