My entire adult life, I’ve lived by one guiding principle: Remember the human. If someone kicks me when I’m down or spits in my face, I look past the pain they’ve caused me and remember that they are just like me, a beautiful, vulnerable mess, formed from nothing more than flesh and bone. They have dreams and ambitions. They need comfort and love, and like all human beings, they have the ability to experience unimaginable pain and heartache.
There have been times in my life when I have been forced to suffer, and there was no easy way out, just the constant pressure of my circumstances. I can’t imagine placing anyone in that position, regardless of what they’ve done.
But not everyone feels that way. Most people prefer an eye for an eye when we should be turning the other cheek. That’s why ‘Baby Reindeer’ was such an inspiration.
Richard Gadd’s character Donny Dunn was a victim of harassment who sympathized with his stalker, Martha Scott. In the series, she sent him hundreds of emails a day. She assaulted his girlfriend, crashed his comedy shows, and even had him evicted from his home. But he still treated her with dignity. He took her out to coffee. He joked with her. When she posted outside his house at night, he took pity on her and walked her back to her flat. He even cried for her at her trial. All of this, Gadd claimed, was inspired by real-life events.
Meet Fiona Harvey
When ‘Baby Reindeer’ premiered on Netflix, Gadd made it clear that he wanted to protect the identity of the individuals depicted in the series. That meant everyone involved, including Martha Scott, his trans girlfriend, and most of all, the real-life counterpart to Darrien O’Connor, who drugged and assaulted Donny Dunn.
Of course, no one respected his wishes. Media outlets, fans, and bloggers were all in a frenzy, competing to see who could solve the riddle first.
They initially landed on Sean Foley, a British director who bore a striking physical resemblance to O’Connor. Accusations were thrown out. Foley was harassed, labeled, and interrogated. In the eyes of the public, he was guilty before he could plead his case. Had the allegations stuck it would have destroyed his life. So Gadd responded by addressing the matter directly on his Instagram.
Gadd knew that his complaints would continue to fall on deaf ears. The blood was already in the water, and people were desperate for answers. It wasn’t long before reports came out that the real-life Martha had been found.
Netizens dug up an old tweet written by a woman named Fiona Harvey, asking Gadd to “hang her curtains”–a crass sexual euphemism taken directly from the series. It was written in 2014, long before the ‘Baby Reindeer’ series had been conceived of, and the woman who wrote it shared many notable traits with Martha Scott.
Shortly after the tweet was discovered, Fiona Harvey came forward, ready to tell her side of the story in an interview with Piers Morgan.
What We Don’t Know About Fiona
The term “fake news” has a bad reputation for a very good reason. But there is a touch of pragmatism behind it. The media is not reliable. They exaggerate. They lie, and they’re very good at using the truth to paint a misleading picture.
The public has always been blind to their deception. They just want a juicy piece of gossip to bite down on, and quite often, they’ll believe whatever they’re told.
They also have a nasty habit of jumping to conclusions. Any hint of suspicion is a clear sign of guilt. All wrongdoing is cause for punishment. The court of public opinion is a vicious thing.
Lives are destroyed by this instinct. Death threats are sent out. People are forced out of their homes and jobs. More than a few victims of public humiliation have found themselves out on the streets, holding up signs and begging for change. It’s extremely difficult to move on once you’ve been labeled, and those labels are often applied arbitrarily, even when there’s no evidence to point to.
Let’s get one thing straight: We are going to step lightly when it comes to Fiona, because regardless of what she has done, she deserves a reasonable expectation of safety, and she has voiced concerns about threats. There have been reports of her held up in her home, surrounded by a media circus. She told Piers Morgan she was too afraid to leave. Nobody should be in that position.
This will be a difficult stance for many. The public has already been exposed to a compelling, emotional narrative, depicting her as a stalker and an assailant. They have made their minds up.
But much of what we know about her comes from fiction and rumors. Very little of it can be verified, even the most basic details about what happened with Richard Gadd. For all we know, he could be grossly exaggerating the entire scenario, and she is adamant that the worst scenes in the series–the assault in the canal and the violence at his place of work–were completely fabricated. We have no reason to believe that she is lying.
What We Do Know About Fiona
Gadd told the press that his characters had been warped to the point that even their real-life counterparts wouldn’t be able to recognize themselves. Either he was lying or he didn’t try too hard, because nearly everything about Martha matches what we know about Fiona.
Like Martha, Fiona is a Scottish Lawyer who graduated from the University of Aberdeen. She now lives in London in a council flat. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the system in the UK, council housing is obtained through government assistance. It’s typically built by local authorities and offered at a reduced rate.
During Fiona’s interview with Piers Morgan, she confirmed that she met Richard Gadd at a pub in Camden called The Hawley Arms, a common hangout spot for celebrities like Amy Winehouse. He did offer her a drink, but she paid for it herself. Fiona also added that she doesn’t drink alcohol, a detail that was emphasized in the series.
She downplayed her interaction with Gadd, saying that they were never in a relationship. They never slept together, and they weren’t particularly close. They did, however, trade a bit of Scottish banter in the form of emails and tweets.
Her communications with Gadd have become central to the public discourse. In a Netflix promo for the series, he claims she sent him 41,071 emails, 350 hours of voicemail, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, and 106 pages of letters. Fiona has hotly contested this, and she’s challenged Netflix to provide proof as part of a $170M lawsuit to clear her name.
More Allegations and Rumors
Several individuals have also come forward claiming that Fiona stalked them. That includes politician George Galloway, Laura Wray and her husband, Labour Party MP Jimmy Wray, as well as Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer.
All of them claimed to have been bombarded by communications, which matches Gadd’s portrayal. The details are murky, and we don’t know exactly what happened. But it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow considering how many people have spoken out against her. Some people are asking if there’s anyone Fiona hasn’t stalked.
It’s very possible that they are telling the truth. We can’t discount that. But there are others who are telling a different story altogether, including a barmaid who worked at The Hawley Arms. She spoke under the condition of anonymity to the Daily Mail, saying that she didn’t feel comfortable with Gadd’s portrayal of Fiona.
“Something doesn’t sit right with me about him portraying himself as being the innocent party and being stalked. It just doesn’t fit in with my perception of working there,” she said. She didn’t feel comfortable working at the bar either. Like Gadd, she considered it misogynistic, built around a culture of drug use and promiscuity.
She believed that Gadd was targeting Fiona because she was vulnerable and lonely. “She was looking for a bit of companionship because there were people to talk to and I think he played in on that as a joke and now he’s made loads of money out of it and she’s still being the target of ridicule.”
Her criticism is remarkably similar to the way Martha and Donny’s interactions played out in the series. Donny was deeply ashamed of his newly developed attraction to men, and he desperately wanted to fit in with his so-called “hetero-normative” coworkers. So he egged Martha on, flirted with her, and even propositioned her. But he always made it clear that he wasn’t trying to be cruel. He was just trying to be one of the guys. That’s not all that different from the barmaid’s account. Perhaps the answer here is a matter of perspective. They’re both recounting the same events, but they each have a different take on them.
There is one thing that stands out in the Daily Mail interview, calling everything into question. In the series, Martha came to the pub every single day. She’d sit down at the bar, get her free drink, and spend as much time as she could striking up a conversation with Donny. It was central to the plot. But the barmaid said that didn’t happen at all. She said Fiona came to the pub three days out of the week, never when it was busy, and she always picked a table on the other side of the room. It doesn’t make sense for her to do that if she was in fact stalking him.
Fiona’s Social Media
Fiona’s use of social media has been under constant scrutiny ever since it was discovered that she was Gadd’s inspiration for the series. At first, fans were focused on her Twitter. She posted dozens of times per day for years at a time. You could scroll for several minutes, and you still wouldn’t get past 24 hours’ worth of activity.
Most of her rants were centered around politics. She is extremely politically active. She leans right, and she’s got quite a bit to say. There was a bit of racism and Islamophobia mixed in. She also spoke about Gadd and various public figures, including people that have since accused her of stalking.
Fans quickly moved on to her Facebook where she offered up a perpetual stream of posts, many of which mirrored her behavior on Twitter. Unfortunately, she made everything private shortly after the Piers Morgan interview. Influencers have posted screenshots and videos, but they can’t be verified at this time.
My Take
The barmaid at The Hawley Arms believed that Fiona was unwell. After having seen Fiona’s Twitter, the statements from her accusers, and her unverified Facebook posts, I am inclined to agree. I am not qualified to diagnose her, but she does seem to have a mental illness.
That doesn’t mean that I believe Gadd. Instead, I’ve taken what many people would believe to be an uncomfortable, even unlikely position. I don’t know. I can’t sift through fact and fiction, and I have to be objective. There simply isn’t enough evidence to call her a stalker.
That may not sit right with others. Remember, all suspicion is seen as a sign of guilt, and this is not something people take lightly. ‘Baby Reindeer’ is centered around trauma–one of the most emotionally charged subjects in existence. It’s only natural for Fiona to become a target of frustration and bitterness. But I won’t buy into that. I am determined to remember the human.
I believe that Gadd is taking the same standpoint. Not only has he spoken out about his refusal to incarcerate Fiona, he also took great care to help viewers understand why he identified with her. Don’t forget the final scene of the series where Donny Dunn walks into a bar and listens to one of Martha’s voice messages. He starts crying while she talks about her baby reindeer, a stuffed animal she had when she was young. Whenever she needed comfort, she’d squeeze it, and it would help her cope with the sound of fighting outside her room. That brought tears to the eyes of thousands, if not millions of people.
What most people don’t realize is that Fiona also had a baby reindeer. She said so in the interview with Piers Morgan, and like everyone else she needs comfort and love. She deserves to be safe, and she has the capacity to experience unimaginable suffering. That’s why I will never advocate for her to be punished. Instead, I’d like to start a conversation about compassionate care, treatment, and how we can bring peace and happiness into the lives of those who would traditionally face incarceration.
