Lawyer Fiona Harvey, on whom Martha Scott’s character from My Stuffed Reindeer is inspired, threatens to sue Netflix for Richard Gadd’s creation. He said that she had been inspired by her own experiences to write the story, which was based on real events, and Harvey, who has been identified by fans, considers them to be falsehoods.
According to Harvey, My Stuffed Reindeer is “obscene,” “defamatory,” “hyperbolic,” and “a work of fiction,” and for this reason, he is meeting with legal representatives to take Netflix to court. He even denies the information published in the media that he harassed Gadd for more than four years with 106 pages of letters, 744 tweets, 46 messages on Facebook, 350 hours of voice messages and 41,071 emails, in addition to following the victim. He also did not go to prison as indicated in the series: “He lies.”
The statements took place on British presenter Piers Morgan’s show where he denied, for example, that he had sexually assaulted Gadd on the channel, that he never physically assaulted any of the series creator’s girlfriends and that, in fact, he has only seen Gadd. comedian, screenwriter, producer and actor “five or six times” in his life, apart from having sent him “joke emails.”
Now Harvey supposedly wants to be left alone. Although Gadd asked viewers not to try to discover the real identity of the characters who inspired both Martha Scott, the stalker played by Jessica Gunning in the series, and Darrien O’Conor, her attacker played by Tom Goodman -Hill, the public has not obeyed your request.
There has been speculation in the forums about the real name of the fictional characters and, consequently, Harvey would be receiving “death threats” and calls from strangers. “I find it obscene. I find it horrible, misogynistic,” he confessed. But, as we say, this is his version of events in a story that, to begin with, never made his name public.
Of course, there are screenwriters such as Russell T. Davies, known for his work on Doctor Who, It’s a sin or Years and years, who have criticized that the BBC, for example, had never allowed My stuffed reindeer to be broadcast as it was. reached the public. In his opinion, the identities of the real people should have been hidden better. “Editorial policies drive us crazy but they allow me to sleep at night,” he told The Times.
Benjamin King, director of Netflix in the United Kingdom, argued that “every reasonable precaution had been taken in disguising the real identities of the people involved in the story.” In his opinion, questionable actions come from the behavior of the audience. “I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable in a world where we had decided that it was better that Richard was silenced and couldn’t tell his story,” he said.
And, for now, the mammoth word-of-mouth success of My Stuffed Reindeer has consequences in real life. Producer Sean Foley, who had worked with Gadd and bears a reasonable resemblance to actor Tom Goodman-Hill who plays Gadd’s sexual attacker, began receiving threats and harassment when he was identified by fans as the actual attacker. “The police have been informed and are investigating all defamatory, abusive and threatening publications against me,” he indicated from his social networks.
As Gadd explained when asking that the search for her real attackers stop, Foley had not been her rapist. This is the same version defended by Richard Osman, host of the podcast The rest is entertainment, who revealed that “people in the industry know who that person is,” in reference to the real aggressor, and it is not Foley.
Fiona Harvey’s statements and the possible lawsuit against Netflix, however, could force Gadd to address what he has only skimmed so far: which elements of My Stuffed Reindeer are real, which are fiction, and which are a transformation into true essence of the traumatic events he went through.
