Piers Morgan has said he believes the ‘real Martha’ from Baby Reindeer lied to him “quite a lot” during her interview with him this week.
Fiona Harvey, who is allegedly the inspiration for the stalker character in the Netflix drama, appeared on Piers Morgan Uncensored on Thursday (May 9), her first television interview since confirming her identity earlier in the week.
Baby Reindeer is a semi-autobiographical series written by the comedian Richard Gadd that claims to tell the “true story” of a struggling stand-up (played by Gadd) who is maliciously stalked by an older woman named Martha.
In the interview, Harvey denied many aspects of the Netflix show’s narrative, saying that she did not stalk Gadd, attack his girlfriend, destroy the bar he worked in or contact his parents.
Harvey also told Morgan that she will “absolutely” be taking legal action against both Gadd and Netflix, saying that she is “exploring all the options out there”.
Now, writing in The Sun, Morgan has given his own reaction to the interview. “On balance, I’d say Fiona Harvey lied to me quite a lot in the interview and if her threatened legal action against Netflix and Gadd goes ahead, I suspect it will quickly emerge she did send all the emails, messages, and letters to him,” he said.
The interview, which has been watched 4.6 million times at time of writing, provoked a range of responses from viewers, with some being made to feel “uncomfortable”, and others describing it as “cruel”, “irresponsible” and “ghoulish”.
Morgan addressed the reaction in his article, writing: “But if Richard Gadd feels entitled to make millions airing his side of the story, and make very serious allegations about Fiona Harvey in the process, then she is surely entitled to respond and defend herself? As for who is exploiting whom, I’ll leave that to the court of public opinion to decide.”
Harvey herself has given her own reaction to the interview, telling the Daily Record: “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.”
Netflix or Gadd himself have yet to comment on claims the woman is the ‘real-life’ Martha. Netflix’s policy chief Benjamin King said that Netflix and the production company “took every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story”.
