Comedian Janey Godley has shared her shocking discovery that she has also been hounded by the ‘real Martha’ portrayed in Netflix series Baby Reindeer, Fiona Harvey.
Richard Gadd’s seven-part drama, which is based on a true story, follows his character Donny meeting a woman named Martha (played by Jessica Gunning), who subsequently develops an obsession with him and begins stalking him.
The harrowing show turns incredibly dark as her obsession grows more and more sinister, waiting outside his house, sending him thousands of emails, and even harassing his parents and turning violent towards his girlfriend.
While Gadd urged viewers not to try and uncover Martha’s real identity, the internet sleuths quickly found her, and Harvey later identified herself in an interview with Piers Morgan.
In it, she described the show as ‘a work of fiction, a work of hyperbole’, and said: ‘I wanted to rebut that completely on this show – I am not a stalker, I have not been to jail, I’ve not got injunctions – it is complete nonsense.’
She added that she will be talking legal action and repeatedly denied stalking Gadd in real life, saying of the thousands of emails: ‘None of that is true. I don’t think I sent him anything. There may have been a couple of emails.’
She did admit to having tweeted Gadd around 18 times, and it seems he wasn’t the only one on the receiving end, as now, Scottish actress and stand-up comedian Janey has revealed she has discovered Harvey’s messages to her on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The 63-year-old shared a clip on the platform, saying someone had sent it to her, in which an account that appeared to be Harvey’s had been replying to several of her posts and tagging her.
Several of the comments were about the Labour Party, while one from Harvey’s account read: ‘@JaneyGodley please dm me. It’s pretty urgent.’
Another of the posts said: ‘@JaneyGodley I’m sorry I missed your show at the festival. I got an ear infection and couldn’t make it up.’
The posts on X seem to be from 2016, while Harvey’s account doesn’t appear to have been used since 2018.
During the Uncensored interview, Harvey said she had six email addresses and multiple phones, and denied several parts of the Netflix series, including sexually assaulting Gadd, assaulting his girlfriend or launching at him across a bar – something Martha did in the show.
She later spoke out and said she felt ‘used’ by Morgan, telling the Daily Record: ‘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.’
‘It seemed to me that I was set up. I feel a bit used,’ Harvey added.
Meanwhile Morgan reportedly described the interaction as a ‘sparring match’ between the pair, for which his interviewee claims she was only paid £250, and he claimed she ‘lied quite a lot’.
‘But that doesn’t mean she can’t be a victim here too,’ he added, after receiving immense backlash from viewers who said conducting the interview was ‘unethical’ and ‘irresponsible’.
Previously speaking about the process of turning his ordeal into a TV show, Gadd told Metro.co.uk he wanted Baby Reindeer ‘to be three-dimensional’.
‘I wanted it to be nuanced. I just remember my idea of stalking in life was so different to what actually happened,’ he said.
‘My idea of what a stalker was, was that they are fundamentally, sort of, psychopathic characters. But it just wasn’t that case. I saw someone very vulnerable, really.’
He added there was no ‘moral point for people to take away’ but there was ‘a subtle reference to the fact that this is a vulnerable person who needs help’.
In Parliament, Netflix insisted they took ‘every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story.’
Policy chief Benjamin King said that Netflix and Clerkenwell Films ‘didn’t want to anonymise that or make it generic to the point where it was no longer his story because that would undermine the intent behind the show.’
He added: ‘Ultimately, it’s obviously very difficult to control what viewers do, particularly in a world where everything is amplified by social media.
‘I personally wouldn’t be comfortable with a world in which we decided it was better that Richard was silenced and not allowed to tell the story.’
Baby Reindeer is available to stream on Netflix and Piers Morgan Uncensored airs on YouTube weekdays at 8pm.
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