Los Angeles, June 7 (UNI) A Scottish woman who apparently inspired the stalker character, Martha, in hit Netflix drama “Baby Reindeer” is suing the OTT platform for defamation, negligence and privacy violations, media reports said.
Fiona Harvey – who identifies as the Martha character – has argued in the lawsuit that Netflix told “brutal lies” about her to its over 50 million viewers around the world, a BBC report said.
Harvey, who lives in the UK, told BBC that since the series was released in April she has received numerous death threats.
The lawsuit, filed in a California court, seeks over $170 million in damages for Harvey. She claims the Baby Reindeer series falsely depicted her as a convicted criminal who spent time in prison for stalking.
Netflix has vowed to “defend this matter vigorously”, the BBC reported.
It said it would stand by the right of the show’s creator and star, Scottish comedian Richard Gadd, to “tell his story”.
Gadd wrote the series about his alleged experience of being stalked by a woman he met at a pub. He is not named in Harvey’s lawsuit.
The first episode of the hit mini-series claims that “this is a true story”.
End credits say it “is based on real events: however certain characters, names, incidents, locations, and dialogue have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes”.
Harvey alleges in her case that Netflix “did literally nothing” to confirm that Gadd’s story was true, BBC said.
