Real life Baby Reindeer emails sent to Richard Gadd revealed in court document

Real-life emails sent to Scottish comedian Richard Gadd by the woman claimed to be the real-life stalker who inspired the hit Netflix show Baby Reindeer have been published in a court document in the US.

In the paper, filed to a California court on Monday, Fife-born Mr Gadd says the pair’s “shared Scottish heritage” was the catalyst for his relationship with the plaintiff, Fiona Harvey - the Scottish woman who has said she believed she was the basis for the character of Martha in the series. The document shows details of the “thousands” of messages sent to Mr Gadd by Ms Harvey, alongside a detailed account of the comedian’s dealings with the former lawyer, who has appeared on a chat show hosted by Piers Morgan, where she announced she would take legal action over the Baby Reindeer series.

In the document, Mr Gadd said he was “scared of Harvey and what she might be capable of”. He said her messages “often included sexually explicit, violent, and derogatory content, hateful speech, and threats”.

The document has been filed in response to a $170 million [£132m] lawsuit Ms Harvey took out against Netflix in June. She has publicly identified herself as the inspiration behind the series, but denied stalking Mr Gadd and sending him 41,000 emails, hundreds of voice messages and 106 letters.

In the court document, Mr Gadd details the “stalking, harassment, abuse and threats” he says he suffered at the hands of Ms Harvey. He also insisted Baby Reindeer “is a dramatic work” and “is not a documentary or an attempt at realism”.

“While the series is based on my life and real-life events and is, at its core, emotionally true, it is not a beat-by-beat recounting of the events and emotions I experienced as they transpired,” he said. “It is fictionalised and is not intended to portray actual facts.”

Mr Gadd added: “It is an expression of my views on stalking, harassment and sexual abuse told through the lens of my own experiences, emotions and self-reflections. I did not write the series as a representation of actual facts about any real person, including Fiona Harvey. Harvey is never mentioned in the series.”

The content of the emails ranges from racist attacks on Muslims to threats towards him, his family and co-workers, as well as “lewd and explicit language” detailing her sexual attraction to Mr Gadd, who says in the document that he met her in a London pub where he worked in 2014, after they noticed each others’ Scottish accents.

One states she was glad the pair had never dated because “you are gay and I’d have aids” [sic].

The messages - many of which are too graphic to publish - also regularly referenced Mr Gadd's body.

One email, which Mr Gadd said was sent in November 2015, had the subject “your show” and wrote “i [sic] liked the bit where ben was kicking your a*** cos [sic] the back view of your a*** was perfect … that’s your best bit . . . ”    

A separate message said: “Oh Richard [G]add your bum. Your bum”.  

Other messages revealed the extent to which she allegedly researched Mr Gadd’s social media activity - and that of his family.

One had the subject line “yummy mummy,” which stated “I see your mum is on twitter...I looked up yours to see what was going on in your head and you retweeted her.”   

In the court paper, Mr Gadd said: “In 2014, I met Harvey at the pub where I worked at the time, the Hawley Arms. I noticed that Harvey looked distressed and offered her a cup of tea on the house. On noticing each other’s accents, we engaged in what I took at that time to be a friendly conversation, and discussed our common Scottish heritage.

“Following that first meeting, Harvey subsequently stalked and harassed me throughout 2014–2017. She frequently appeared at the pub. It quickly became clear that she had memorised my shift pattern by hanging around the pub constantly.

“She would then arrive just before my shift started on most days I was working and sit at the end of the bar. She would also call the pub constantly on days when I was not working to check if I was in.”

The Netflix show has become one of the most successful of all time for the streaming service.