Piers Morgan Uncensored - Baby Reindeer: Richard Gadd Breaks Silence After $170M Lawsuit

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

It's official: Fiona Harvey, aka 'the real Martha' from Baby Reindeer, is suing Netflix for a massive $170 million dollars in what the lawsuit calls the "biggest lie in television history" - a plan which she first mooted on Uncensored. The lawsuit - which Piers is in possession of - was filed in California at the end of last week. It states that Netflix spread "brutal lies...because it was a better story than the truth, and better stories made money". As a result of "malfeasance and utterly reckless misconduct, Harvey's life had been ruined." The streaming giant, however, isn't rolling over. Far from it.  In their first public comment, they said: "We intend to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd's right to tell his story." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's official. Fiona Harvey, aka the Real Martha from Baby Rainier, is suing Netflix for a massive $170 million in what the lawsuit calls the biggest lie in television history, a plan which she first mooted here and uncensored. And you will categorically be taking legal action? Absolutely, against both him and Netflix. Have you instructed lawyers? We've instructed them in part, but we want to explore all the options out there. there are a number of people to sue.

If the investigation, if you sue and there's discovery, and it turns out that 41,000 emails did come from a device belonging to you, how would you feel about that? I wouldn't be suing if I thought there were 41,000 emails out there. Well, the lawsuit, which I have here, was filed in California at the end of last week. It states that Netflix spread brutal lies because it was a better story than the truth and better stories made money. As a result of what it says was malfeasance

and utterly reckless misconduct, Harvey's life had been ruined. The streaming giant, however, isn't rolling over. Far from it, in fact. In their first public comment, they said we intend to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gads' right to tell his story.

Interesting wording there, isn't it? His story. Is that the same as a true story? Well, here to react to this letter's dramatic twist in the Baby Rainier Saga, entertainment lawyer Mark Geragos, still fighting for pop cultural justice, popcorn planets, Andy Signore, from Outkick Podcast Tommy Layron,

and the man who first confirmed the name of Fiona Harvey to the world, Delhi Records Senior Reporter John Dingwall. Welcome to all of you. John, let me start with you, because you were the first one to kind of join the dots here in the media and name Fiona Harvey as the alleged real-life Martha. What is interesting, and I can reveal this as we start this debate, is that her legal team in America

have done now a full background check on whether she has a criminal record under any of the names that she's ever used and has come back with none. So there appears to be no criminal record attached to Fiona Harvey or any aliases she may have used. That seems to me a pretty significant development

because that goes right to the heart of the central. claim of the Netflix series, which is that the person who was stalking Richard Gadd, i.e. Fiona Harvey, was a convicted, not only was she already a convicted criminal, but then confessed to stalking him and got another eight and a half months in prison to add to the four she'd done before. None of that is true. What's your response to that? Well, that became pretty obvious to me. Well, I say pretty obvious because at the time it was an allegation by Fiona Harvey. Just to give you some...

background to that. It would, you know, the other, one of the other main points about this lawsuit is how easy it was to identify Fiona Harvey. If people couldn't identify Fiona Harvey, the lawsuit

might be somewhat weaker than it is. I managed to find that Fiona Harvey was the real-life Martha in a matter of minutes. How? That's how I was able to contact us. So that's the first thing. On that job, just to jump in there.

Just because viewers would be fascinated. You found out who she was in minutes, but how? I typed, I googled, real-life Martha Baby Reindeer. Wow. And up came Fiona Harvey? That's how simple it was, yes. Because the internet's floos had already been on the hunt.

As soon as I found out the name Fiona Harvey, I checked the Fiona Harvey's social media accounts. I saw the curtains tweet or whatever website, whatever social media it was on, and it became clear that this was Fiona Harvey. I was then able to find out where Fiona Harvey lived because she pretty much said so on her social media. And from there I was able to call her the following morning, and Fiona was in a state of distress,

because obviously people had been hounding her as a result of baby reindeer just having been on Netflix. And for me, as a reporter for the Daily Record, the fact that Richard Gadd was Scottish, the creator of the show, the fact that Fiona Harvey is also Scottish. In fact, the character Martha, where he's based is Scottish,

made that really great Scottish news and Scottish entertainment story. Fascinating. Let's go to Mark Garagos. Mark, from a legal perspective, it was that easy. Netflix's whole defence appears to be predicated on the fact they did everything they could to protect the identity of real people, particularly Martha. But that's just been exposed as complete nonsense

by a journalist who literally just Googled it. And because Netflix had allowed precise phraseology from the real Martha Fiona Harvey's social media to be used in the series, the internet sleuth had done their work. It was all sitting there on Google, and John was able to access it in literally in minutes. Where does that leave this case?

Well, and you're holding the lawsuit. And interestingly enough, if you take a look at the opening salvo in the lawsuit, they start off with the quote, this is a true story. Yeah. Quoting the Netflix preamble, if you will, which is always, I think I mentioned to you last week when we were on here. It's amazing to me knowing how robust the Netflix in-house and out. outside counsel are that they would not only just say that, but that they wouldn't at least modify that. And then they would allow somebody to testify and double down on the true story. So this does not surprise me. And maybe next time they ought to call you up before they

double down in sworn testimony because it's inexplicable to me. But Mark, tell me two things. Why have they sued the lawyers on behalf of Fiona Harvey in California? And secondly, why are they gone for such a gigantic amount of money, $170 million? I think that what they're going to say is the damage model is that they're going to back into the number from what they are estimating the total revenues are on the basis of casting her as the villain here. So they're going to have somebody who's going to get up and presumably testify that Netflix has generated that amount of money based on this story.

What they also, the reason that they're doing this in California is Netflix headquarters is there. There's not going to be, and they filed in federal court. So if they had filed somewhere else, there would have been all kinds of litigation as to whether or not it should have moved to California anyway. This is a full frontal assault against Netflix and will be litigated in the Central District of California. And I expect Netflix will immediately filed what's called a 12b-6 motion, which is basically this is a motion to dismiss. This is part of our art of storytelling and double down on this idea that they can tell

Richard Gadd's story. Interestingly, also, Pierce, you hit on one of the things that I expect her lawyers to say back is, well, you can tell his story. Just don't claim that it's the true story. Right. Tommy Lauren, I mean, this is, we're in a My Truth era, you know, as beloved by Megan and Harry and all these other characters.

Is this where My Truth hits reality of the truth? Because it's very hard when you put, this is a true story at the start of something, that then calls someone a convicted criminal and she isn't. Very hard to justify it by, saying it's my story. Well, if it ain't true, it ain't the true story. Right. Well, everybody's entitled to tell their own story. You just can't ruin somebody else's

life in the process and exploit them in the process and tell what seems to be blatant untruths in the process, make a lot of money off of it, get a lot of fame off of it, and leave somebody's life in shambles. Listen, maybe this woman is mentally unstable. Maybe she is unwell. I don't think anybody thinks any differently from watching your interview. There's obviously some inconsistency. sees from her as well. But you can't ruin somebody's life because they might be a little off their rocker. So I hope that she gets every penny from Netflix and I hope that she teaches them a lesson. You can't exploit somebody and ruin their lives and get away with it and then call yourself some kind of a storyteller. And that's why I get so sick and tired of these Hollywood

elite types. The type that claims to care about everybody and they're such humanitarians or such philanthropists, but they have no problem stepping on the little guy and exploiting them for their own fame and fortune. I hope she sues the pants off of them. I hope she gets every penny, and I hope they learn a lesson. Andy Signal, I mean, it's hard to disagree with anything Tommy just said, isn't it?

I mean, it is a kind of David and Goliath, albeit, you know, David is not perhaps the most sympathetic of characters. I mean, I clearly think that Fiona Harvey is a bit of a troll, a bit of a harasser. We've seen that from her letters to public figures. I've seen it from some of the stuff she said about me after the interview. But that doesn't make her an admitted. criminal who's done five years in prison.

And that seems to me to be at the centre of this. Now, Netflix on Friday, bizarrely, issued an uploaded version of Jessica Gunning, who plays Martha, of her original audition tape. Let's take a look. Someone out at you, didn't they?

I can see it. Like a warrior. With a chink in the armour. Like a wounding of some kind. Was it a woman? No, I'm fine. No, I'm fine. That's what warrior would say.

Wounded, have some kind of deep wounds. I mean, I don't know about you, Annie, but I'm looking at her and thinking, well, that's Fiona Harvey. I mean, that's the woman who sat in this chair opposite me. She totally had an exchange with you before the show, right, Pierce? Right, I mean, pretty much. I mean, to me, they chose an actress who physically looked pretty like her in terms of her of her physical appearance. They then gave her an accent exactly like the real Fiona Harvey. They said it all happened in a pub that was easily identifiable if you knew the pub, etc., etc.

They also said, you know, you see a scene with Richard Gad on the internet when he finds out that Fiona Harvey has apparently been convicted as stalking a Scottish woman lawyer and her MP husband. Now, there could only be one person. It was front-page news in Scotland. I'm sure John would remember it. And I interviewed Laura Ray, the Scottish lawyer, last week, and she was immediately identifiable as well.

So it just seems to me on every level, this attempt by Netflix to try and duper us into thinking that this was never going to be about Fiona Harvey. It's complete nonsense. Well, I mean, Laura also said that, you know, she was very scared by this. I think the difference here is this the harassment versus stalking. This idea that Fiona Harvey is the David and the Goliath

is kind of annoying me. Look, I agree Netflix screwed up. fact that they said this is a true story in episode one is a massive screw up that I think they're going to have to pay for tremendously. But, you know, she's, she said I didn't send 41,000 emails. I think she sent 40,000 emails. Right. You know, she denied a lot of things in this. I didn't do this, but she didn't deny writing the emails. She didn't deny harassing his family. She didn't deny assaulting his girlfriend. Like, I think both things can be true where it's like, I don't really want to sit here and defend Fiona Harvey. I don't think she's really the best person. At the same time,

I do agree, Netflix made a wrong here, that they're going to have to pay for Hansom me. I just wonder if they really care. This is the biggest show. It's making a ton of money. Even settling $20 million at the end of day, probably cheaper than their marketing budget to get us all talking about it. Weeks after? Maybe they're all prepping season two, Pierce. Could this all be part of the plan?

Well, you know what? I would not put it past them. John Dim War, I mean, you've talked to her quite a lot. I did obviously for nearly an hour. how much of what she tells you do you actually believe? Well, Piers, I know that you're a veteran journalist like myself. We tend to try to read between the lines. We don't take things at face value.

We deal with facts. We deal with provable facts. That's something that if it's true that she has never been to prison, and I have seen that document as well, if it's true, well, certainly I know this. One of the first things I did after speaking to, Fiona Harvey, like you, was called Laura Ray, speak to Laura Ray. Laura told me that she had started interdict proceedings against her.

She made it clear there was no prison sentence involved. That was one call from me. She told me right away. So I thought, hang on a minute here. This is not a true story. That's the first thing you see when you start watching the program. So there's a story in the fact that it's not a true story. But interestingly, yes, when I...

first gave Fiona Harvey, now regardless of whether she is guilty of everything that Richard Gavin, baby reindeer claims, regardless, she is a right to defend herself as part of the democratic process and if you're a serial killer or an alleged serial killer you have a right to speak your defence. Now when I spoke to Fiona Harvey and she was very distressed, I felt she had a right to at least put across her side of the stories, since Netflix is a very powerful organisation, tens of millions of people were watching this television program. Nobody had heard from her.

So when I interviewed her, and I put that first story in the paper, two very interesting things happened. One, people came to me and said, how can you speak to her? She's a convicted criminal. Yeah. That's really interesting because they were taking it as a true story. Yes.

They believed it. So that's really interesting. The second interesting thing is, I need to be careful because of legal reasons. I was contacted, and I was criticised for putting true story in quote marks and forgiving, and I'm talking about on the side of the V side, if you like, criticized for giving Fiona Harvey a voice. Yeah.

So there were... And so was I. Well, it's interesting on that point. So was I, and I was also accused of platforming somebody who was clearly, as you say, many people assumed that she was a criminal because they'd seen the series, but secondly that she was mentally ill, and yet Richard Gad, by his own admission, had already said he had suffered from a lot of mental illness, and nobody had any compulsion about the fact he had this gigantic platform,

both at the Edinburgh Festival in a theatre format, then in the Netflix series, then on interviews. He was on the Today program in America, and he was asked if he was worried about the real Martha's identity being revealed. Let's take a look. Oh, I'm super glad I put it all out there. I think, you know, there's obviously a lot of noise in social media. There's a lot of people saying a whole bunch of things.

But I think at the end of the day, you can't deny just how popular this show is and how much is touching people around the globe and the incredible sort of charity response that has had. I mean, stalking referral rates in the UK are up 47 percent, abuse referral rates for up 53%. You know, the show is having a phenomenal impact in doing a hell of a lot of good in the world. And I know there's a lot of talking, a lot of conversation online

and a lot of people saying different things. I think for every single part, there's about five people claiming to be a part. You know, I've been sent videos, oh, this is the real life Terry. I'd never seen them before in my life. So there's a lot, the internet's always going to do its thing. But I think it all just serves as distraction

from the actual good that this show is doing. Were you worried? Forget about what the internet was saying. Were you yourself concerned? I've learned to be robust in my life. I've sort of had to be sitting on a couch like this, having been through the things that I've been through. So I wasn't worried. And ultimately, I was so fixated on just trying to make the show as good as possible.

And that's what kind of took up my headspace during the writing process. The trouble is Mark Geragos. I mean, all of that is fine. But it doesn't change the central point of all this, which is Netflix says a true story. And there's a bunch of lies in there about this woman, Fiona Harvey, who they've dragged through the ringer. And when he says, oh, there could be loads of people,

presumably including Martha, only one person in the world has either been identified as a real-life Martha by anybody or admitted they are the real-life Martha. And that is Fiona Harvey. There is no rush of other people going, actually, it's me or it's my auntie or it's my horrible neighbour down the road. There is unanimity about who this is. It can only be Fiona Harvey.

And I will tell you, he's obviously not listening to his lawyer before he did that interview. There's a lot of responses that you could give on her and on this particular discrete issue. That was not scripted by a lawyer who gave him the advice or he rejected the advice because that's going to come back to Biden. What's going to happen here, Mark? Will they settle it? Is this the play? or is it one of those cases where if they actually went to court in California and didn't settle,

would they end up potentially with a much higher award? I don't see this settling right away. The fact that it's in federal court begs for litigation, meaning the Netflix is going to and the production company will most probably file these motions to dismiss. That will take months and months and months.

They will do all kinds of litigation tactics, if you will. And, you know, you may end up at the end of the day getting something like what happened with Linda Fairsteen last week, which was widely reported on the Central Park case, where settled many years later, but by them making a donation in terms of the Central Park Five of a million dollars to a charitable organization. The thing about litigation is somebody once said to me, it's very accurate. It's a rich man's sport. Right.

Andy, this has become such a huge cultural phenomenon. Here we are four or five weeks after this series was put up by Netflix. And everyone is still talking about it. Everyone is making headlines in their own different ways. The real actors, the real Martha, the real lawyer in Scotland and so on. It's become an extraordinary phenomenon, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, there's a part of me that still thinks, you know what, she does deserve some of that money because he wouldn't have been able to make the show without her and they're making a buttload. And yeah, she's now got to deal with a lot of people harassing her.

I just, I hope we get to see this case through and really find the truth of it, not his truth, not her truth, but the truth of it based on Laura Ray and your experiences and others that we've heard. Yes, it does seem like there might be a mental illness, but I think it's more. She does seem a little diabolical. And those things may have happened, but she's still able to use this lawsuit as a way to still get at her prey. And that's what I worry. And that's why I worry about trying to treat her as this,

oh, she's now the hero and winning all this money. And the reality is this is only going to inflame her to do it more and get away with it. That's what I'm worried about because it can be hard to actually convict a stalker. Well, interestingly, you know what's interesting? And I'll come to John for this. What was interesting about her is when Laura Ray sat with me here last week,

she revealed that the moment she got the interim interdict awarded by a court against Gena Harvey, telling her to back off. She did back off completely. She didn't hear from her again. In fact, the next time she heard from her was when this all blew up a few weeks ago. And she was horrified. So on that, that's not normal stalker behavior. They're not normally put off.

So do you think she's dangerous? You don't think she's dangerous. Well, no, I think a genuine stalker would not be put off by a bit of paper from a court telling them to back off. So on that, I think she's more of a troll and a pretty unpleasant one, but not, I don't think, necessarily the danger that Laura Ray thought she was, albeit I would caveat by saying Laura Ray had to live through years of harassment and was genuinely freaked out by to the extent that she's really worried now. John, I think you may have an update on this because she was also concerned that she'd read report. that Fiona Harvey might be planning to move back up to Scotland very near to where she's living. And I think you have an update on that.

Yeah, I mean, I spoke to Fiona Harvey about this, and she denies emphatically that she says, look, I can't even leave my house unless it's undercover of darkness. I'm terrified people are going to recognise me. And this is part of the lawsuit. Part of the lawsuit is here's a woman who is ill as a result, stressed out as a result. You know, they list a whole range of things.

things that are wrong with her and they say that's on Netflix. The thing is, I actually believe that's true. I don't think she's, you know, jumping on a train and heading to Scotland. As far as I can tell, this is a woman who feels like a bit of a prisoner in her own home. And, you know, I think she is terrified. She's terrified to Google, you know, in case she sees things about herself. She's asked me if I can send her specific artist. because she doesn't want to have to go on mind

because she might see something else. So yes, you know, what's said about, you know, she may have done this, she may have done that. That's all very well. But it's the things that she hasn't done that this lawsuit is about. Now, interestingly, though, Pierce, if it ever did get to court,

then a lot of dirty washing is going to come out. Remember Amber Heard versus Johnny Depp? Yeah, yeah. I mean, people feasted on that for weeks, weeks and weeks. And so both people will be put through the ring out. But I think in the end, if you're Netflix, you don't want it to go to court. You don't want to see that there was perhaps a situation where you believe what Richard Gadd told you didn't do your due diligence and then failed in your duty of care to protect the people who you were putting in the series,

which is clearly they failed on that. And I think Netflix will avoid that like the plague because it makes them look incredibly incompetent. But listen, we've got to leave it there. It's fascinating all this. The big development, I think, is that they now have what appears to be conclusive proof from this background check

that she has no criminal record, which means the two central revelations, really, outside of the rape story, which remains bizarrely not follow very much in the media compared to the rest of it, which I find very odd. and that needs to be addressed because there's an allegation of a rapist in the industry

is still apparently still around. Who is that person and why have they not been brought to account? But on Fiona Harvey, it now appears that this claim that she did a four-year prison sentence for terrorizing a Scottish lawyer as a stalker and then terrorised Richard Gannon, got an eight-and-a-half-month sentence,

none of that appears to be true. And that is at the core of this dispute and you can like or dislike Fiona Harvey. I think, you know, I can see qualities and I can see a lot of flaws, but that doesn't change the facts, which they are now beginning to get irrefutable evidence to support, which is that she's not a criminal. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it.

And my thanks to Tommy Learing, who sadly, we lost transmission with her, but we'll get her back next time. Thank you very much.