Fiona Harvey's lawsuit against Netflix's "Baby Reindeer" isn't the first defamation case against a TV show. But it could mark a turning point.
Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI
To many, "Baby Reindeer" is known as the Netflix series that swept the internet in the spring of 2024 with its harrowing, seemingly true tale based on creator Richard Gadd's experience of being stalked.
But to Fiona Harvey, the show is "the biggest lie in television history."
Though "Baby Reindeer" dropped on the streamer with little to no marketing fanfare, the series' packaging as a moving and disturbing autobiographical drama drew viewers in immediately: Especially because Gadd, a Scottish comedian who based the series on his one-man show of the same name, also stars as the lead character, Donny.
While Gadd took pains on his press tour to emphasize that he'd changed the identifying details of his stalker, a character he'd named "Martha Scott," internet sleuths quickly identified the "real Martha" as 59-year-old Fiona Harvey, a Scottish law graduate living in England.
Ed Miller/Netflix
When the hive mind goes looking for trouble, it usually finds it. After a May appearance on "Piers Morgan Uncensored," Harvey made good on her threat to sue the streamer, bringing a $170 million lawsuit against Netflix alleging it knowingly defamed her by presenting Gadd's claims in "Baby Reindeer" as the truth. The biggest point of contention and a large portion of Harvey's legal claim is over Gadd's decision to portray Martha as a twice-convicted serial stalker; in real life, Harvey was never convicted of any crime, though Gadd did bring his complaints against her to the police.
The idea of going after a wildly successful Netflix show — "Baby Reindeer" was viewed 88.4 million times, according to Netflix's July letter to shareholders, and is credited with helping the company add 8 million subscribers and make $9.5 billion in revenue in Q2 2024 — might seem like a herculean effort, especially when Harvey is suing in California, a state famous for its anti-SLAPP law that protects artistic creators like Netflix from defamation claims.
But Harvey just might have a case. And the outcome of her suit is about more than just a potentially massive payday for one woman. The drama over "Baby Reindeer," which has been both a boon and a threat to the streamer, reflects a larger reckoning for prestige TV's favorite pastime: adapting true stories.
"Baby Reindeer" features compelling performances from its cast (four of whom are now first-time Emmy nominees) and powerful writing from Gadd. But the show is far from the first prestige drama to excel on those two fronts — nor is it the first Netflix series to face legal action from a person who didn't like how they were portrayed in it.
Rachel DeLoache Williams, a onetime friend of con artist Anna Delvey (aka Anna Sorokin) who accused the fake socialite of conning her out of $62,000, sued Netflix over its series "Inventing Anna," alleging the show portrayed her as a "greedy, snobbish, disloyal, dishonest, cowardly, manipulative and opportunistic person." The streamer lost its bid to dismiss the case in March 2024.
Former New York City prosecutor Linda Fairstein settled with Netflix and Ava DuVernay in June 2024 after she disputed her portrayal as a "villain" in "When They See Us," DuVernay's award-winning 2019 limited series about the 1989 Central Park jogger case, which Fairstein famously prosecuted (she was portrayed by Felicity Huffman on the show).
Two other pending suits involve Netflix's unscripted docuseries. Buster Murdaugh, the son of convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh, sued Netflix over allegations made against him in the docuseries "Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal," and R. Kelly's former assistant filed a complaint against Netflix and Lifetime in February for painting her in a "sinister and defamatory light" in the docuseries "Surviving R. Kelly," which aired on both the streamer and the network.
So what's different here? Harvey's lawyer, Richard Roth, told Business Insider in a phone interview that "Baby Reindeer" is a unique case because Netflix didn't market it as a fictionalized drama or say it was "based on" a true story. Instead, the show's title card called it a true story outright from the opening moments of the first episode.
While Gadd took pains to emphasize on his press tour that the series was "emotionally true" to his experience and not a line-by-line retelling of events, Netflix's marketing, which highlighted things like the show's use of real emails Gadd says his stalker sent him, fed the "true story" intrigue. Ultimately, viewers were compelled to play detective and go searching for the real Martha anyway.
Hollywood has been dramatizing true stories for as long as it has existed. The difference in the beginning was that most of the subjects were long dead: there are dozens of films about the real Macbeth, for instance, and Joan of Arc, each telling the story in a slightly different way.
Things got a little more tangled once writers started dramatizing stories involving people who were still alive. One of the earliest examples of a case filed by an individual against a major media company was Street v. NBC, tried in Tennessee in July 1977.
The case has similar echoes to the defamation lawsuits we see today. Victoria Street (formerly Victoria Price) sued the network over her portrayal in "Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys," a 1976 docudrama that recounted one of the many trials in the highly publicized Scottsboro case, in which she and another white woman named Ruby Bates accused nine Black teenage boys of raping them on a train forty years earlier. Eight of the nine were sentenced to death for the crime despite a lack of medical evidence, but none were executed after Bates recanted her testimony and the accused received new trials on appeals.
Street, who never recanted her testimony, took offense to the way she was portrayed and sued the network on charges of libel and invasion of privacy, arguing that she was no longer a public figure. The case was ultimately settled out of court, and Street died at 77 a few years later in 1982.
Scores more defamation lawsuits have been filed in the years since, against everything from the 2013 Michael Bay movie "Pain & Gain" (the real kidnapping victim didn't like how the character based on him was portrayed as "an unlikeable, sleazy, rude, abrasive braggart") to the 2017 FX drama "Feud: Bette and Joan" (Hollywood legend Olivia de Havilland, then 101, would have preferred to be excluded from this narrative).
With the advent of the streaming wars in the late 2010s, there was a rush to produce the most compelling content to win the largest share of subscribers. And while we're still retreading (and re-retreading) old IP and always chasing the dangling carrot of the ever-elusive Original Idea, more and more shows are riffing on true events. Except instead of focusing on historical figures (though there's plenty of that too), they're increasingly about contemporary stories and people who arguably aren't hugely public personas.
And unlike Macbeth and Joan of Arc, those people will absolutely sue you.
Netflix is an incredibly lucrative company with presumably deep pockets — it's settled with everyone from a Georgian chess grandmaster who says she was defamed in "The Queen's Gambit," to former New York prosecutor Fairstein for "When They See Us," to drug queenpin Griselda Blanco's family over "Griselda." Whether they fight Harvey's case in court or opt to settle, the amount it would cost to do either won't bankrupt them. That much we know.
The real question is whether the sheets are balanced in the end: Would the cost of legal fees and a potential settlement or damages be more or less than what Netflix has made off "Baby Reindeer"? If it's more, will that stop Netflix and others from making more of these legally risky but creatively compelling shows?
Harvey's lawyer Roth doesn't think Netflix particularly cared about the risk of legal action when it greenlit "Baby Reindeer."
"I think they say, 'We're going to make so much money on this. If someone sues us, let them sue us,'" Roth says.
There's also an argument to be made that any press, even a lawsuit, is good press.
"I don't know if I have any inside knowledge about Netflix in particular, but I can say this: This is a very unique time for streamer wars, and Disney+ and Netflix and all these companies trying to land on top, or Netflix trying to stay on top," Jeff Lewis, a First Amendment attorney in Los Angeles, told Business Insider.
"And it could be for this window of time, while there's some uncertainty as to which streamer will survive, perhaps Netflix might be more willing to take a risk and get more attention and eyeballs on their screens in exchange for paying some lawyer fees. Who knows?"
That said, there's a chance Netflix will have to pay a hefty settlement to make the Harvey situation go away.
The streamer has the advantage of the suit being filed in California, which has "one of the most robust pro-defendant defamation laws in the country," Lewis says. The case could be dismissed if Netflix brings and wins an anti-SLAPP motion, which would dismiss the case and make Harvey responsible for paying all of Netflix's legal fees. (As of writing, Netflix hasn't filed one.)
But if Netflix doesn't file an anti-SLAPP motion, or does file one and doesn't win it, Harvey could potentially see a payout anywhere from $200,000 all the way into "mid-seven figures," according to Lewis.
Jackie Ward, a Los Angeles-based entertainment attorney specializing in rights and clearances, points to the million-dollar donation Netflix made to the Innocence Project as part of Fairstein's settlement for "When They See Us" as a comparable example.
"For Netflix to make something where they think that they do have some sort of liability, to make that go away for something like a million dollars, it's probably worth it to them for a company of that size," Ward says. "A smaller distributor, maybe not."
