Wearing an expression of disbelief, comedian Richard Gadd stood before the audience proudly holding three Emmy awards aloft.
The winning hat-trick, of course, is to write, produce and star in Netflix’s Baby Reindeer.
This ‘true story’, as teased in the opening credits, chronicles the dark experiences of a struggling comedian (modeled and played by Gadd), who is stolen by an older woman, a character named in the show as Martha.
The actress who plays Martha, Jessica Gunning, also took to the stage at LA’s Peacock Theater last Sunday, picking up an Emmy for best supporting actress in a limited series.
It’s a jubilant culmination of what has been a surprising success for the series that opened in April.
The seven-part show has garnered around 88 million views worldwide, making it one of the streamer’s most successful. And ‘struggling comedian’ is no longer a term that applies to Gadd, whose company’s profits quadrupled by 2023 to a healthy £836,000 and who has, we learned this week, struck a new multi-year deal with Netflix for future projects.
As Gadd, 35, said on stage this week: ‘This is the stuff of dreams’.
Baby Reindeer stars Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning with gongs at last week’s Emmy awards
The seven-part show has garnered around 88 million views worldwide, making it one of Netflix’s biggest hits.
No mention of the off-stage drama that has become, if not a nightmare, then at least a major headache for Netflix and its Scottish writers.
At the center is Fiona Harvey, the 58-year-old Aberdeen law graduate who is Martha’s ‘real-life’ inspiration.
In June, Ms Harvey launched a no-holds-barred legal attack on Netflix, demanding $170 million (£128 million), claiming she had been defamed ‘on an unprecedented scale and scale’. He was also charged for, among other things, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and gross negligence.
While Netflix is fighting to have the case thrown out before it goes to trial in May next year, according to newly filed court papers, Ms Harvey’s own account of her current life is certainly miserable.
‘I was afraid to go out for fear of being attacked. Some weeks I didn’t leave the apartment,” he said. ‘I suffered from, among other things, constant panic attacks, chest pain, anxiety, nightmares, depression, nervousness, stomach aches, loss of appetite, fear and insomnia.’
His lawyer, Richard Roth, summed up the situation as follows: ‘The treatment and the different world in which he lives is clear and visible. Richard Gadd is now a multiple Emmy award-winning star, only as a result of Netflix’s fictitious ‘true story’, while he continues to suffer.’
So thinly disguised there is a character that, Mail can reveal, even Ms. Harvey’s hairdresser recognized her after watching the first episode. In a statement, lodged as part of his statement, Jon Hala, who runs his own salon in Canary Wharf, gave an account of watching Baby Reindeer with his wife and realizing the woman on the screen was a client.
The conclusion is clear for many reasons, he said. Fiona, like Martha in the series, is a strong and spicy Scottish woman who used to live in Camden.
Mr Hala said: ‘Martha looks like him. Martha sounded like her. Martha is as rich as he is. Martha is a lawyer, as is Fiona Harvey. Martha is bright, and sometimes very funny and entertaining, like Fiona Harvey. Martha, like Fiona Harvey, is a highly stressed individual with emotional problems…’
In June, the ‘real life’ inspiration for Martha, Fiona Harvey, launched an unbanned legal attack on the streaming platform, claiming she had been defamed ‘on an unprecedented scale and scale’
When contacted by the Mail this week, the stylist, who has been cutting and cutting her hair for seven years, said: ‘I last saw her about eight weeks ago. He is not well because of what happened. The problem is, they have a hard time getting out the door.
‘When he was last here, it must have been traumatic (he suffered). It’s a very busy salon and we have a VIP room area and we put her there, away from everybody. We do it for her peace of mind. He speaks well, he is very gentle and he is kind.’
His work, he says, makes his clients ‘walk out feeling like a million dollars’. ‘They drink millions of cups of tea and we don’t talk about legalities,’ he added. “He won’t tell anyone about the money or anything that happened with Netflix. He paid around £350 in total.’
Fragments of normality (precious) in life that had clearly been thrown away.
Where the border between drama and reality lies in this saga is, as observers will know, the subject of fierce debate.
Gadd maintains that the chronology and some of the events have been ‘slightly tweaked to create dramatic climaxes’, the drama remains, ‘very emotional really, obviously: I was really stalked and really abused (the show also shows Donny’s abuse in the hands of a well-established comedy writer). But we want to be in the field of art, as well as protect the people it’s based on.’
Of course, a real-world frenzy to figure out who Martha really was was underway and it didn’t take internet sleuths long to figure out who she was. But in some important details, truth and fiction differ. When the fictional Martha is a stalker twice-convicted, who was sent to prison at the end of the series, Ms. Harvey emphasized that she had no conviction for stalking, still serving less time.
While promoting the Baby Reindeer stage show in 2019, Gadd said that in four and a half years, the real ‘Martha’ sent 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voice mail, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages and 106 pages of mail.
Ms Harvey, speaking to Piers Morgan on the YouTube show Uncensored, in May, denied this. Gadd’s own statement submitted to the court in California, which was seen by the Mail, stated: ‘While the series is based on my life and real events … experienced as they happened. This is fiction and is not intended to reflect actual reality.’
But the statement went on to list a long list of ‘actual experiences’ with Ms Harvey, who he had a chat with back in 2014, offering her a cup of tea in the pub where he worked because he saw her. ‘look hard’.
Evidence in the form of transcripts, emails and more has been submitted to the court as exhibits. They make it uncomfortable, sometimes surprising the reader.
Gadd’s statement said he ‘frequently made personal attacks and threatened me in emails’.
Gadd described his growing fear to the point where he changed his daily routine to avoid them.
The newspaper’s inquiry itself has failed to turn up any evidence of a stalking conviction but Ms Harvey, however, said she had received a First Instance Harassment Warning, from the Met Police in relation to Gadd.
Lawyer and wife of former Scottish MP Laura Wray has also given an account of seeking a ‘ban’ – a restraining order – against Ms Harvey, back in 2002, after she was ‘harassed’.
Backstage after the Emmys, Gadd, who has been open about his own battle with mental health issues, was reluctant to be pictured at the event away from the cameras.
‘It’s easier in this day and age to focus on the negative,’ he said tersely. ‘What you should see is what Baby Reindeer has done all over the world… It’s touched so many lives.’
Painful words for Fiona Harvey.
One wonders whether Richard Gadd’s future Netflix projects will draw heavily from his personal experiences.