Child Reindeer creator and star Richard Gadd has responded to Fiona Harvey‘s lawsuit in opposition to Netflix. After Harvey sued the streaming platform over her alleged portrayal because the character Martha Scott, Gadd insisted that the miniseries and his one-man present are “fictionalized,” based on a brand new court docket submitting.
“Though these stage productions had been emotionally true and based mostly on actual occasions in my life, they dramatised individuals, locations, issues, and occasions to inform a narrative [sic],” the actor and author wrote within the court docket paperwork. “I didn’t write the collection as a illustration of precise info about any actual individual, together with Fiona Harvey.”
Gadd added, “Martha Scott shouldn’t be Fiona Harvey” and went on to notice that his “private struggles with my sexual identification, and experiences with sexual abuse, harassment, and stalking, impressed me to write down and star within the theatre model of Child Reindeer, and subsequently, the collection.”
“The collection is a dramatic work,” he defined within the court docket paperwork. “It’s not a documentary or an try at realism. Whereas the collection is predicated on my life and real-life occasions and is, at its core, emotionally true, it isn’t a beat-by-beat recounting of the occasions and feelings I skilled as they transpired. It’s fictionalized, and isn’t supposed to painting precise info.”
Within the miniseries, Gadd performs Donny Dunn, a struggling comic who’s stalked and harassed by a lady named Martha Scott. Throughout episode 1, Donny meets Martha on the bar he works at. After providing her a free cup of tea, Martha latches onto Donny and visits him on the bar each evening. Quickly, she turns into obsessive about him. As time goes on, Martha follows him round and even bodily assaults his girlfriend at one level. Whereas coming to phrases together with his underlying private struggles, relating to his sexuality and being raped prior to now, Donny lastly stories Martha to the police.
For the reason that present is predicated on true occasions from Gadd’s life, Harvey spoke out in opposition to him and claimed that she has confronted criticism due to Child Reindeer.
Based on his new court docket submitting, Gadd identified that he “used my experiences to craft the Martha character particularly to each feed into Donny’s determined want for consideration and shallowness points and problem him in ways in which make him confront his previous abuse and its results on him.”
Though he insisted that the collection shouldn’t be a illustration of the real-life Harvey, Gadd identified that her earlier alleged harassment of him included “1000’s of emails, tons of of voicemails, and a lot of handwritten letters,” lots of which had been “sexually express, violent” with “derogatory content material, hateful speech, and threats.”
“The cumulative impact of all of Harvey’s actions was huge,” he claimed within the court docket docs. “It was exhausting and very upsetting to take care of her fixed private interactions within the Hawley Arms, her following me round London together with close to the place I lived and her relentless and deeply disagreeable communications.”
Gadd concluded that this was “an extremely tense and worrying time” coping with Harvey’s alleged harassment.
Should you or anybody you recognize has been sexually abused, name the Nationwide Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). A skilled workers member will present confidential, judgment-free assist in addition to native assets to help in therapeutic, recovering and extra.
