Deadline reports the feud has far from fizzled out between Netflix and Fiona Harvey, who has accused the streaming platform of defamation, even as Richard Gadd (Baby Reindeer, Sex Education) has led his hit series, Baby Reindeer, to be nominated for Limited Drama, Leading Actor, and Supporting Actress. Not to mention the Best Writer at the BAFTA Craft Awards he just secured.
Harvey, coincidentally, a lawyer from Scotland, has filed a lawsuit against Netflix for defamation due to its alleged portrayal of her as the stalker in the series. She alleges, per Deadline, that the show, billed as a true story, actually isn’t a true story at all. She argues that the show frames her as a twice-convicted stalker who was sentenced to five years in prison, although she has never been convicted of stalking Gadd. She even goes as far as to say that the show is “the biggest lie in television history.” Although critics of the Amish Mafia might disagree with her.
She may have a point. A US district court judge ruled last fall that the case would be allowed to proceed on the basis that the show was, in fact, wrongly billed as a true story. The court ruled that Netflix made no effort to fact-check Gadd’s experience and failed to hide Harvey’s identity.
Netflix has fired back, as Deadline continues to report, dragging the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Their lawyers stated that her claims fall flat as she has made no allegation that a provably false statement or fact was made about her. They dig back even deeper and state that her reputation has already been tarnished by previous news articles that implicate her in the harassment and stalking of public figures.
The controversy hasn’t seemed to put a damper on the meteoric rise of the dark comedy. Even after Harvey made an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored to set the record straight and call out the show’s inaccuracies, it continued to gain buzz and collect accolades. It has become somewhat of cultural phenomenon by pulling the veil off what has been taboo for centuries, male sexual abuse. In a report from the U.K. news outlet the Independent, male sexual abuse charities saw an astonishing eighty percent increase after the show’s debut. With over fifty percent of the referrals directly citing Baby Reindeer as their reason for calling. The limited series is available for streaming now on Netflix.