LOS ANGELES, Oct 1— Netflix has lost its bid to throw out a defamation lawsuit filed by the woman who says she was the inspiration for the stalker in the Emmy-winning hit Baby Reindeer. The streaming giant had asked a judge to toss the suit brought by Fiona Harvey, who has identified herself as the real-life “Martha”, the delusional, violent and abusive woman at the center of Richard Gadd's global television phenomenon. The show, which has been seen by millions around the world and won six Emmys, claims in its opening episode to be “a true story” — a characterisation that has landed it in legal trouble after the script did not strictly hew to real-life events.
The seven-episode series, which is based on Gadd's one-man play, follows a fictionalized version of the writer who meets a woman in the pub where he works. What unspools is a deeply disturbing, yearslong ordeal for Gadd in which Martha sends thousands of emails, texts and voice messages as she harasses him, his girlfriend and his family. Martha, whom the show portrays as having been previously convicted for stalking a lawyer, is also shown to sexually assault Gadd.
Netflix had argued that it could not be sued for defamation because the events depicted in the series were “substantially true,” and that in any case viewers would know it was not entirely factual because it was a drama. The streamer had offered as evidence the fact that Harvey had been investigated for stalking, had touched Gadd sexually with.
