Baby Reindeer’s ‘real-life’ Martha brands Netflix series ‘a load of rubbish’
The woman believed to be the inspiration for stalker Martha Scott in Richard Gadd’s Netflix hit Baby Reindeer has labelled the show “a load of rubbish”.
Warning: Spoilers follow for Baby Reindeer.
The true story follows successful funny man Gadd as not-so-successful comedian Donny Dunn.
After offering a Scottish middle-aged woman, and apparent lawyer, Martha (played by Jessica Gunning) a cup of tea, all hell breaks loose when she begins stalking him, both virtually and physically, over the course of the next 18 months.
Martha also stalks his girlfriend Terri (trans actress Nava Mau) and other loved ones.
Gadd’s pleas for social media sleuths to stop trying to discover the identity of the real-life Martha have fallen on death ears and some people think they’ve found her online.
Now, the woman in question has spoken to Scottish publication the Daily Record about the show, in which Martha is sent to prison, saying it is “all made up”.
The woman, who PinkNews has chosen not to name, said she is considering legal action against Gadd and streaming giant Netflix.
“I’ve not been to prison. I don’t know where the four-and-a-half years and nine months comes in. None of this happened. It’s a load of rubbish,” she claimed.
“Gadd needs to prove I went to jail which just didn’t happen. I’ve never been sent to jail. That is blatantly obvious.
“Police at your door would be the first thing, then you’d be charged, then you would have a trial. Then you’d be fined or something or go to prison,” she continued.
Gadd has previously made it clear that certain details of his all-too-real stalking experience were omitted from the drama, and it has previously been reported that the real-life culprit was never jailed.
“This is all made up and hyperbole,” the woman said. “There are no restraining orders, injunctions or interdicts anywhere. There’s just no way. I’ve not had the police at my door about any of these things.
“I don’t have any money but I’m a perfectly capable lawyer so I will represent myself.”
She previously suggested that she was planning to sue Netflix.
According to defamation lawyer Rory Lynch, it’s possible that she has grounds to sue for defamation because she could have been found using “jigsaw identification”, whereby someone is not identified by name, but enough details are shared for them to be recognised.
She would have to prove that the allegations in the show are untrue, although Lynch presumes that Netflix would have worked closely with its legal team to ensure “they could rely on the fact that it is a drama” and “not supposed to be a factual documentary”.
The lawyer told the Daily Record: “Although Netflix said it’s a true story, essentially it’s a dramatisation of a true story. But I think that Richard Gadd could have been a bit more careful in changing a lot of the scenes to be more fictitious, but also covering up the identity of the people it was based on.”
Baby Reindeer is streaming now on Netflix.
