Baby Reindeer’s ‘Martha’ has said her real name is Fiona Harvey in a bombshell Piers Morgan interview about Richard Gadd’s Netflix stalking drama.
The interviewer is going head-to-head with the woman thought to be the stalker who appears in comedian Richard Gadd’s hit show.
The 58-year-old woman from Scotland is seeking to ‘set the record straight’ following the show’s phenomenal global success.
Ms Harvey is set to ‘repeatedly deny’ stalking Gadd and will call him ‘psychotic’ and a ‘liar’. She will also say she will be taking legal action.
However, she is also expected to admit she uses four phones as ‘I like keeping people on separate phones’.
Baby Reindeer’s ‘Martha’ has said her real name is Fiona Harvey in a bombshell Piers Morgan interview about Richard Gadd’s Netflix stalking drama
The 58-year-old alleged stalker is pictured on Morgan’s programme
The show has been a global success and follows ‘Martha’ (played by Jessica Gunning) as she stalks aspiring comedian Richard Gadd – who is called Donny Dunn in the show
Piers Morgan has dropped the first trailer ahead of his interview with the ‘real-life Martha’ from Baby Reindeer, which is set to air on Thursday evening at 8pm
Baby Reindeer, the extraordinary hit Netflix drama, has been viewed more than 60 million times in the past month
The chilling real-life drama was inspired by the ordeal suffered by Scottish creator and leading man Richard Gadd at the hands of ‘Martha’ (played by Jessica Gunning, right)
The clip of the interview sees Morgan grilling the alleged stalker on everything from her views on Richard Gadd to whether she has ever been to prison
Morgan has already faced a backlash from mental health campaigners and survivors of stalking over his ‘irresponsible’ decision to interview the woman.
MailOnline had until now chosen not to name and picture her. But following her appearance with Piers Morgan we have decided to publish her picture.
Today, the alleged stalker hit out at Morgan, saying she felt she had been ‘set up’ during her appearance on his show.
The Scottish woman broke her silence in her first ever TV interview with Piers tonight at 8pm.
She said she met Mr Gadd ‘two or three times’ and said she did call him a ‘baby reindeer’.
Before the tête-à-tête with the celebrity interviewer even aired, the woman has already gone on the offensive, saying she is ‘not happy’ and felt she was being ‘set up’ by the interviewer.
Describing the 30-minute grilling as a ‘sparring match’, the alleged female stalker has accused Morgan of trying to ‘trip her up’ with his questions.
‘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,’ she told the Daily Record.
‘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 per cent true.’
She added: ‘It seemed to me that I was set up. I feel a bit used.’
The Piers Morgan Uncensored special is airing on the broadcaster’s YouTube channel, which has 2.58million subscribers.
The woman will be looking to ‘set the record straight’ as she breaks her silence following Baby Reindeer’s global success, the preview said.
Before her big interview, she paid a visit to celebrity hairdresser John Hala – who has styled the barnets of A-listers Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sigourney Weaver, Elle MacPherson and Kate Moss – at his salon in London’s Canary Wharf.
Speaking to the Daily Record, she claimed she was paid £250 for the interview and had turned down requests from the likes of This Morning to talk about Baby Reindeer.
The chilling real-life drama was inspired by the ordeal suffered by Scottish creator and leading man Richard Gadd – who is called Donny Dunn in the show.
Working as a struggling stand-up comic, Dunn first meets his stalker after he offered ‘a crying stranger a cup of tea’ while he was working at a bar in London.
Baby Reindeer delves into Richard’s harrowing real-life stalking ordeal and brutal sexual abuse as he plays a fictionalised version of himself called Donny Dunn (pictured)
Things rapidly turn sinister, with the series claiming ‘Martha’ bombarded the 34-year-old from Fife with more than 41,000 emails.
She also sent him hundreds of tweets and and flooded his phone with hours of voicemails over an alleged four-year campaign of terror.
Posting ahead of the show, Morgan said: ‘The real-life Martha from Baby Reindeer breaks cover and gives me her first TV interview about the smash hit Netflix show.’
He added: ‘Is she a psycho stalker? Find out on Piers Morgan Uncensored.’
Baby Reindeer has proven a surprise smash for Netflix, having been viewed more than 60 million times in the first month.
Riding on the show’s phenomenal success, the cast were pictured attending a swanky screening in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning – who plays Martha – beamed as they posed arm in arm and joined Nava Mau and others for a Q and A on stage.
Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning attended a photo call for a screening in LA on Tuesday
The actress looked worlds away from her role as Martha and had a glamorous Hollywood makeover as they took to the stage
Over four and a half years, Gadd says he received 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, letters totalling 106 pages and 350 hours of voicemail messages from the older woman, whom he calls Martha in the show
However, the show’s runaway success has been far from a joy for the ‘real-life’ Martha, who claimed she had been left a ‘victim’ by its surprise popularity.
Speaking exclusively to Mail+ last month, the woman insisted she was not a stalker and said: ‘He’s using Baby Reindeer to stalk me now. I’m the victim. He’s written a bloody show about me.’
She accused Gadd of having ‘main character syndrome’ and claimed she had faced ‘bullying’ as a result of the show and was now considering legal action against him.
‘He always thinks he’s at the centre of things. I’m not writing shows about him or promoting them in the media, am I? If he wanted me to be properly anonymous, he could have done so. Gadd should leave me alone,’ she added.
Gadd claimed he went to great lengths to conceal the identity of the woman who stalked him in real life.
Despite the comic begging fans not to search for the real ‘Martha’, internet sleuths went on to claim she was the inspiration for the character.
In the series, after Gadd meets his stalker at the bar, things soon descend into chaos.
It sees him being regularly followed at home and work, and tracked on Facebook using three fake accounts.
Richard Gadd was a struggling stand-up comic working behind the bar at a pub in London
He told The Times: ‘At first everyone at the pub thought it was funny that I had an admirer. Then she started to invade my life, following me, turning up at my gigs, waiting outside my house, sending thousands of voicemails and emails.’
It developed to terrifying lengths as the crazed fan got closer to her obsession – including her turning up at his gigs, his workplace and bombarding him with messages.
The actor and comedian was subjected to a campaign of obsession by the woman, known as Martha, that manifested in 41,071 emails, 744 tweets, 106 pages of letters and a staggering 350 hours of voicemail.
He says it was ‘years’ before the police eventually took his complaints seriously – and six years before they finally intervened – something which prolonged the agony for everyone involved including his relatives.
The police told him at the time that unless his stalker became physically violent, there was little they could do to resolve the issue.
He has said he still finds it hard to trust people and has had ‘every therapy going’.
He added that the years of being stalked have left him with something ‘like PTSD’. For the Netflix role, he lost weight to match his 10-and-a-half stone ‘neurotic’ self at the height of his own stalking nightmare.
Gadd has revealed he first encountered ‘Martha’ when he was working in a pub and offered her a cup of tea because she was crying
Gadd says he’s currently single and ‘is more cautious’ of people because of the campaign of terror that Martha inflicted, saying: ‘It takes me a long time to trust them. Before, I entered situations with such abandonment and I got burnt.’
However, performing a version of what happened to him has enabled him to have ‘ownership’ of the trauma. Gadd earned a Fringe award for his show, also called Baby Reindeer, in 2019.
Speaking to the Telegraph in 2019 about the one-man show that he wrote after the ordeal, which is currently on at London’s Bush theatre, he said: ‘It was debilitating beyond belief.
‘I’d listen to her voicemails and just feel my eyes welling up. They were tears of frustration. Proper brain-heavy stress.’
MailOnline has approached Piers Morgan and Gadd for comment.