Fiona Harvey, the woman claiming to be the real-life stalker who inspired Netflix‘s Baby Reindeer, sat for her first on-camera interview since the limited series became a cultural phenomenon, joining Piers Morgan for an hourlong interview posted to his YouTube channel on Thursday.
Harvey claims she had no choice in coming forward —“I was forced into this situation” — after “internet sleuths” tracked her down and lodged death threats. She had recently sat down with The Daily Mail (allegedly later stalking that reporter) and been accused in another story of stalking a Glasgow couple (and threatening them with death). But the conversation on Piers Morgan Uncensored has brought the Baby Reindeer brouhaha to another level.
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The limited series, created by and starring Richard Gadd,casts Gadd as Donny Dunn, a struggling comedian who encounters a lonely woman at the bar where he works. The chance encounter, during which he offers her a free cup of tea, spirals over several months as Martha is revealed to be a dangerous, serial stalker. Over multiple years, she sent him more than 41,000 emails, 744 tweets, 100 pages of letters and 350 hours of voicemails. Gadd first translated the traumatic experience into an award-winning stage show of the same name and has spoken at length about the situation.
Baby Reindeer, which begins with a tagline that it is a “true story,” has inspired countless headlines since it debuted on April 11. It shot to No. 1 on the streamer’s TV rankings where it stayed for three straight weeks. Amid its rise in popularity, the fever over the real identities behind the characters burned so hot that Gadd urged viewers to stop the speculation as “that’s not the point of our show.” Fans and online sleuths persisted, leading up to Morgan’s interview and related headlines.
Netflix has not commented about Harvey’s interview, and Gadd has repeatedly maintained that he has no comment on the identity of his stalker, only that he has empathy for her as someone seemingly in a lot of pain and failed by the system. “I remember when I was getting stalked, it was relentless and felt like it was everywhere, and I felt like my life wasn’t really functioning. I still had these unbelievable pangs of feeling sorry for her,” he said during a panel for TV Academy members this week in Los Angeles. “I never saw someone who was a villain. I saw someone who was lost by the system, really. I saw someone who needed help and wasn’t getting it.”
Below is a roundup of five of Harvey’s wildest claims from Piers Morgan Uncensored.
She Hasn’t Seen ‘Baby Reindeer’: “It’s Not Really My Kind of Drama”
“I haven’t watched any of it,” she told Morgan, who asked whether she was curious at all. “No, I think I’d be sick. It’s taken over enough of my life. I find it quite obscene. I find it horrifying, misogynistic. Some of the death threats have been really terrible online. People phoning me up. You know, it’s been absolutely horrendous. I wouldn’t give credence to something like that, and it’s not really my kind of drama.”
“I Don’t Fancy Little Boys Without Jobs”
Morgan asked Harvey point blank if she was in love with Gadd, to which she replied,“Piers, is that a serious question?” She went on to claim that Gadd asked to sleep with her, using a turn of phrase that gets plenty of play in the limited series. “He said, ‘Would I like my curtains fixed?’ I laughed, and he said, ‘That’s a euphemism. You want me to come home with you?'” Harvey claims she turned him down because she had a boyfriend back then. “I gave him the brush off big time, I think, you know, subtly so. But the bottom line is [that], no, I don’t fancy little boys without jobs. That sounds awful. That sounds really, really callous. But, you know.” Regarding that boyfriend, Harvey claims she was in a five-year relationship with a lawyer. “I don’t want to drag him in. He thinks this is horrendous. All of my lawyer friends do. All of my professional friends do. Other people do. People are being really sympathetic.”
Claims to Have Sent “Less Than 10” Emails to Gadd
Morgan asked Harvey about the jaw-dropping number of emails, voice messages, tweets, letters and Facebook messages she allegedly sent Gadd’s way. But, again, she said, “That’s simply not true,” adding that, “I don’t think I sent him anything.” Moments later, she clarified her words by saying there were a couple of emails exchanged but nothing close to 41,000 that has been widely reported. “There may have been a couple of emails exchanging, but that was it. Just jokey banter emails,” she said. “Less than 10.”
She Claims to Have Never Contacted Gadd by Phone
Despite longstanding reports that Gadd received 350 hours of voicemails from his stalker, Harvey said she had no way of reaching him. “I’ve not phoned the guy. I don’t have his number.” Morgan then pressed her on the subject of the voicemails, and she went so far as to accuse Gadd of recording their conversations in the London bar. “He could have beentaping me in the Hawley Arms though. I’ve not contacted him.”
Maintained Six Email Accounts, Four Different Phones
Morgan seemed surprised by the tools Harvey used to communicate with the outside world. She admitted to using six email accounts and managing four cell phones. “I like to keep people on different phones and different emails,” she explained. “It’s just easier. It’s easier. So you have some for your utilities, some for close friends, whatever.” Regarding her cell phones, Harvey continued by saying she has used four but two are broken at the moment. “They were very, very old. One was brand new and broke, and it’s still to be returned to the shop. I like keeping people on separate phones as well. Maybe that makes me a maniac or a stalker or something, but if you’ve got somebody on about your electricity bill or somebody on about some work or something, it’s nice to keep it separate. I didn’t do that in Scotland —didn’t have to.”
