[imagesource:Piers Morgan/Instagram]

If Baby Reindeer wasn’t wildly spotlit already then it certainly is now.

In a ‘world exclusive’ interview, Piers Morgan had a little chinwag with the real Baby Reindeer stalker. Naturally, (real name) Fiona Harvey discredits the show’s writer Richard Gadd as “psychotic”, and the “ultimate misogynist” who she claims is actually “obsessed” with her.

Piers is practically beside himself, relishing in the fortune of having this 58-year-old Scottish woman who inspired the TV phenomenon to sit down with him for her first TV interview.

It has been less than a month since the Netflix show premiered, and already the ‘Martha’ character has revealed herself, going full-force to deny that Richard’s portrayal of her is accurate. (At this point we really recommend that you watch Baby Reindeer first).

Speaking with the bumptious TV host on Thursday’s episode of his YouTube show, Fiona said she was forced to go public after the show premiered on April 11, per Vanity Fair:

“The internet sleuths tracked me down and hounded me and gave me death threats,” she said. “So it wasn’t really a choice.”

Fiona referred to the seven-episode series, which she admits she hadn’t seen, as “obscene,” “horrifying,” and “misogynistic” in its depiction of her character Martha, played by actor Jessica Gunning.

“Completely untrue. Very, very defamatory to me, very career-damaging. And I wanted to rebut that completely on this show. I’m not a stalker. I’ve not been to jail, I’ve not got injunctions. And this is just complete nonsense,” she said at one point in the interview.

There is also evidence that she was previously accused of stalking, although her name appeared as ‘Fiona Muir’.

Netflix and Richard have also confirmed that the comedian is in possession of around 41,000 emails, 350 voice messages, 106 letters, and a number of tweets she sent to him, something Fiona downplayed big time.

Harvey admitted to sending “a handful” of “jokey banter emails,” one letter, and some tweets, which can still be publicly viewed. One, dated September 1, 2014, reads, “Did you get my emails or am I emailing the wrong address?”

Between her first (not TV) interview with the Daily Record and the Piers (TV) interview, Fiona offered an unclear picture of her relationship with Richard, initially claiming to have met him “two or three times” only for that number to have shifted to “five, six times” by the interview’s end.

Fiona also said that unlike what’s depicted in Baby Reindeer, the real Richard did not offer her a cup of tea during their first encounter, claiming that he approached her and “commandeered the conversation” she was having with another person at the bar.

“He seemed to be obsessed with me from that moment onwards,” Harvey said. She later added, “I should never have gone in that bar.”

At another point, Piers asked her – after she revealed that she’s had “four to six” different email accounts and four phones in her past – if she was ever in love with Richard. “Piers, is that a serious question?” she replied. “No.”

She did admit, however, that the title had some merit.

“I had a toy reindeer and he’d shaved his head, that bit is true, and there were reindeers in the shops because it was Christmas time or something. It was a joke. So I have inadvertently penned the name of the show.”

Piers pressed Fiona to fact-check a number of other details from the series, most of which she vehemently said were untrue. She claimed to have only gone to one of Richard’s comedy shows and said that she had never heckled him, she also denied contacting Richard’s parents, loitering outside his home, attacking his girlfriend, or sexually assaulting him in an alley.

On Richard’s part, he has previously acknowledged taking creative liberties in Baby Reindeer.

Some details have been “tweaked slightly to create dramatic climaxes,” he told The Guardian. “It’s very emotionally true, obviously: I was severely stalked and severely abused. But we wanted it to exist in the sphere of art, as well as protect the people it’s based on.”

Asked what she feels now about the comedian, Fiona told Piers: “I think he’s psychotic. And I think that anyone going along, being in that play and doing this to somebody, I find that I find the behaviour outrageous.”

Piers added, “Richard Gadd said he didn’t see you as a villain, but as somebody who is unwell and needs help,” to which she responds “Yeah, well, he maybe he should look a bit closer to home, to himself as someone who needs help… Yes, I think he always was. Whether there was an alleged rape or whether that rape was real or conceived in his mind, I think that would make him more unwell…”

It is interesting, in light of this, how Richard Gadd seemingly went out of his way to make himself look just as troubled and pathetic in the show. One watches his scenes alongside Martha and thinks, ‘Shame, they really are cut from the same cloth’. The Guardian wrote that the 34-year-old “is incredibly hard on himself and his part in this nightmare dynamic” and has remained resolute on the part he played, admitting:

“People are afraid to admit they made mistakes, and I think a lot of mistakes by humans are made through people-pleasing. You stay in a lie because it’s easier to circumvent the tension of a situation. I never wanted to upset someone who was vulnerable.”

He also added via Netflix:

“People came up to me at the end and would tell me things like “I didn’t know whether to punch you or hug you” and “I felt sorry for you, then I hated her, then I hated you and I felt sorry for her” and to me that was the biggest compliment the show could get.”

“All I ever wanted to do was capture something complicated about the human condition. That we all make mistakes. That no person is ever good or bad. That we are all lost souls looking for love in our own weird way.”

Fiona asserted that Netflix and Richard “are lying” in their presentation of the series and are simply out to make “money out of untrue facts”. She has vowed to sue the show’s makers after being thrust into the spotlight and suffering online abuse, saying “I wouldn’t be suing if I thought there were 41,000 emails out there”. Well, let’s see how that transpires.

You can read the full interview transcript here or watch the hour-long showpiece below:

Hey, what do you expect when a pathological liar sits down for an interview with a buffoon narcissist to talk about a toxic empath? A whole lot of crazy, that’s for sure.

[sources:vanityfair&nypost]