The woman dubbed the ‘real Martha’ from Netflix’s Baby Reindeer has given her first talk show appearance, which is due to be released tomorrow.
When the series released, viewers almost immediately set about trying to deduce who some of the people in the series were inspired by.
In particular Netflix viewers tried to track down the real Martha and Darrien, though folks on the internet playing sleuth can be quite a dangerous thing.
Social media wrongly accused one man of being Darrien to the point that the police had to get involved, leading Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd to make a statement urging people not to speculate on who some people from the show might be in real life.
Legal experts warned of the ‘significant legal and ethical implications’ of Baby Reindeer viewers trying to track down actual people in the belief that they’re the person from the show.
However, the woman being dubbed the ‘real Martha’ is going to have an interview released tomorrow (9 May) after she spoke to Piers Morgan.
The social media account for Piers Morgan Uncensored tweeted ‘Thursday. 8pm’ accompanied by a brief clip which said: “The ‘real Martha’ from Baby Reindeer tomorrow on Piers Morgan Uncensored. sent from my ihpone.”
Jessica Gunning played Martha in Baby Reindeer (Netflix/Ed Miller)
Responding to a follower on the social media site, Morgan said he ‘taped it yesterday’ and described the interview as ‘compelling’.
He later tweeted out a picture of himself and a woman named Fiona Harvey, saying she wanted to ‘set the record straight’ and ‘have her say’.
The Daily Record reports that Harvey described the interview as a ‘sparring match’ and was ‘not happy’ with some of Piers Morgan’s questions.
Fiona Harvey was grilled by Piers Morgan (X/@piersmorgan)
They report that in the interview she will be asked about allegations that she became obsessed with Richard Gadd and inspired the character of Martha in Baby Reindeer.
Harvey told the Record that Morgan refused to accept her denying that she stalked Gadd, saying: “There was a heavy emphasis from Piers Morgan on Gadd and the emails I am supposed to have sent.
“I have my own thoughts on it that I’d like to keep to myself but I wouldn’t say I was happy. It was very rapid to try to trip me up. He did it fast paced to catch me off guard.
Richard Gadd claims Baby Reindeer is a true story (Netflix)
“Piers kept saying to me ‘are you sure you haven’t sent this guy 41,000 emails and phone calls?’. A lot of the interview, for a good 10 minutes, he kept coming back to this.
“I said, ‘Look, Even if I had sent some emails, it doesn’t mean I’m guilty of the rest of the stuff. As I said, in order to bill something as a true story, it’s got to be pretty much 100% true.
“It seemed to me that I was set up. I feel a bit used.”
Baby Reindeer fact vs fiction
While Richard Gadd claims Baby Reindeer is based on a true story, many viewers have been left questioning which parts were fabricated for the Netflix show.
We’ve separated the facts from the fiction.
How Donny and Martha met
In Baby Reindeer, Gadd’s character Donny offers Martha a free drink after feeling sorry for her when she said she couldn’t afford one.
Gadd claims this is true and his seemingly harmless act of kindness quickly snowballed into a shocking turn of events.
The amount of emails
Gadd says his stalker sent him 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemail, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of letters over four-and-a-half years.
In real life, she also reportedly sent him a variety of strange gifts, including a reindeer toy, sleeping pills, a woolly hat and boxers.
Baby Reindeer depicts Richard Gadd’s stalking horror and is said to be based on real events (Netflix)
Sent from my iPhone
Netflix said that every email Donny receives in the show is real, all of which end with ‘sent from my iPhone‘ – despite the fact she didn’t have an iPhone and wasn’t emailing from one.
When the police intervened
In the series, Donny wasn’t taken seriously when he initially reported Martha to the police.
According to Gadd, it was six years before they finally intervened.
Which details were fiction?
Gadd has spoken about how some details of the show have been changed to protect identities of those involved.
He explained that ‘Martha’ had been disguised to such an extent that he doesn’t think she’d ‘recognise herself’.
It’s also unclear whether the real-life Martha went to prison. Fiona Harvey says she’s never been to jail.
In Baby Reindeer, Martha was sentenced to nine months in prison and given a five-year restraining order.Though Gadd told The Times the stalking issue has been ‘resolved’, adding that he ‘mixed feelings about it’ because he ‘didn’t want to throw someone who was that level of mentally unwell in prison’.