Piers Morgan interviews Baby Reindeer’s real-life ‘Martha’: adds fuel to a very strange fire

Netflix’s Baby Reindeer is a shocking and gripping drama with a twist around every corner. Piers Morgan’s much-hyped interview with the Scottish lawyer who has identified herself as the woman behind Martha, the stalker in Richard Gadd’s series, was none of those things.

Going out on Morgan’s YouTube channel, the 60-minute conversation was less a sparring match between Morgan and Fiona Harvey than a dreary question-and-answer session. The host lacked his usually pugilistic chutzpah and had the washed out pallor of someone who’d been up all night bingeing Netflix.

Still, he was keen to get to the bottom of the Baby Reindeer mystery. Its writer and star, Gadd, has said the stalking incidents depicted in the show were inspired by true events. So was Fiona guilty of the compulsive behaviour engaged in by her onscreen lookalike Martha (played by actress Jessica Gunning)?

She shook her head firmly. Harvey, 58, described Baby Reindeer as “taking over her life” and made it clear that she did not hold Gadd in high regard.

Morgan drilled into the details, and this was where the conversation became strictly for Baby Reindeer obsessives. Like Martha, Harvey was a lawyer from Scotland who had encountered Gadd in a pub in Camden in London. And yes, she had come up with the nickname “Baby Reindeer”, as claimed by the series.

But she was emphatically not a stalker, she said. Did she send Gadd 41,000 emails – as alleged in one episode and, since, by Netflix?  “Absolutely not. I don’t think I’ve sent him anything,” she said.  “A couple of emails, jokey banter emails.”

The host insisted that he wasn’t trying to trip Harvey up. He said that the ease with which she had been tracked down by viewers who cross-referenced public tweets she had sent to Gadd with the timeline in which the story takes place showed that Netflix had failed in its duty of care toward her. As an experienced journalist, he would have worked out her identity within 10 minutes.

Morgan’s YouTube set was a weird mix of US-style cable news bombast – all those glittering backgrounds, that big desk – and breakfast-TV production values. To the right of Morgan’s large head, viewers could write messages: they helpfully added comments such as “OMG!” and “hurry up”.

But Morgan didn’t hurry up. Instead, he politely but firmly grilled Harvey about her legal education in Scotland and the precise number of email accounts she operated – it used to be between “four and six” and no, she didn’t think that unusual .

Gadd has taken to social media to ask people to stop trying to work out the identity of the individual who inspired Baby Reindeer.  Harvey had already denied that she had committed any of the acts we see perpetuated on screen. “This is all made up and hyperbole,” she said in an interview with Daily Record. “There are no restraining orders, injunctions or interdicts anywhere. There’s just no way. I’ve not had the police at my door about any of these things.”

There was a cheesy moment at the end when he asked her to look into the camera and speak to the audience directly. However, she had already made her feelings known when Morgan asked her if she was challenging Gadd to share evidence about stalking. She had a straightforward answer: “I’m challenging him to leave me alone.”