LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MAY 07: Richard Gadd attends the photocall for Netflix’s “Baby Reindeer” … [+]
Richard Gadd is on Piers Morgan’s interview wish list following the TV host’s blockbuster talk with the real “Martha” from Baby Reindeer earlier this month.
Fiona Harvey stepped out of the giant shadows created by the Netflix
Netflix
Harvey, of course, claims to be the woman Gadd dubbed “Martha Scott” in Baby Reindeer. “Martha” allegedly stalked Gadd over four years while he was a struggling standup comedian who was making ends meet as a bartender—one of pair of personal traumas he suffers in the Netflix telling of Baby Reindeer.
Gadd portrays himself but is renamed Donny Dunn in Baby Reindeer, while Jessica Gunning plays Martha. Gadd has said in interviews that Baby Reindeer has been fictionalized for the Netflix version of the tale but “emotionally, it’s all 100% true.”
After the opening scene in Episode 1 of Baby Reindeer, the line “This is a true story” is typed on the screen. Baby Reindeer is based on Gadd’s 2019 UK one-man autobiographical stage show of the same name.
The idea of interviewing Gadd following the Harvey interview came up on Piers Morgan Uncensored’s Morgan’s Mailbag segment on Friday, when a viewer emailed the host and said, “Get Richard Gadd on your show now, it’s only fair.”
“I completely agree,” Morgan said in response to the viewer’s email. “I’ve personally emailed Richard Gadd although, of course, I expect his inbox might be a little full—and I don’t mean that glibly, I mean, it really might be. So, I hope he reads it and he does come on the show.”
Should Gadd accept his invitation to appear on Piers Morgan Uncensored, the host noted in his Morgan’s Mailbag segment that he “certainly wouldn’t give him a hard time,” but he did question some aspects of the Baby Reindeer—specifically a scene near the end of the limited series where Martha is sent to prison for nine months for stalking Donny.
“He, I think, has gone into this with the best of intentions but has he blurred the lines of his own story from non-fiction to fiction?” Morgan asked. “Did he invent that she got convicted or not? I’d love to know the answer to that because that’s a big part of the last episode.”
LONDON, ENGLAND – MAY 12: Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning present the Limited Drama Award onstage … [+]
Morgan Says Gadd Can’t Go Silent About ‘Baby Reindeer’
Before revealing herself as the real “Martha” on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Fiona Harvey gave an interview to the Daily Mail on April 26. At the time, then-unidentified Harvey told the publication that she was considering a lawsuit against Richard Gadd.
Among the claims she made in the Daily Mail interview was she was getting online “death threats and abuse from Richard Gadd supporters.”
Harvey doubled down on her threat to sue Gadd in her May 9 interview with Piers Morgan, adding that she considering suing Netflix as well. Following that, Harvey told the Daily Record that she was unhappy with the pay she was offered by Piers Morgan Uncensored for the interview and that she was seeking a lot more.
“They offered me £250 [$315] and I asked if that was what they paid everyone and, if so, I wanted to see documentation to that effect,” Harvey told the Daily Record. “That documentation has not been forthcoming. I have not signed a contract for the interview and I will be seeking far more than a piddling £250.”
Instead, Harvey added, she is seeking significantly more for the interview appearance, telling the Daily Record, “I’d settle for a million [pounds or about $1.25 million in U.S. dollars].”
While Gadd has been making the promotional rounds to discuss Baby Reindeer in the U.K. and the U.S., Morgan noted that there may be a big obstacle in getting him for an interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored.
“In response to the controversy surrounding the identity of the real Martha and other characters in the series, he’s now drawing the line, saying in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever comment on it ever again,’” Morgan said during his Morgan’s Mailbag segment. “That may be a little convenient, Richard, I’ve got to be honest with you.”
Morgan noted that he’s heard that from people that Gadd is a great guy and is a talented writer, but he still has some obligations to fill about some unanswered questions that need to be addressed about Baby Reindeer.
“You can’t just suddenly stop talking about it given the repercussions that have spun off this series, in particular for people like Fiona Harvey,” Morgan said during the segment. “There was duty of care failure regardless of whether everything in that series was true. You allowed people to find out who she was far too easily. And on these crucial questions of whether she was convicted and went to prison, you got to produce some evidence or some answers or an apology—probably a large check to her.”
Morgan didn’t let Netflix off the hook, either, noting how their duty of care policy was recently discussed during a British Parliament Select Committee hearing. In a clip of the hearing shown by Morgan, a Netflix representative told committee members, “We did take every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story.”
Baby Reindeer is streaming on Netflix, where for the week of May 6-12 where globally it was viewed 11.4 million times, equating to 45.4 million viewing hours.