Netflix to fight woman's claim to be inspiration behind 'Baby Reindeer' stalker character

Netflix is ​​vowing to fight a lawsuit filed by a woman who claims she was “tormented” after being identified by online sleuths as the inspiration for a stalker character in the popular series “Baby Reindeer.”

Fiona Harvey is seeking $170 million from the streaming service for her portrayal in the series as Martha, a person obsessed with another character, Donny, played by Richard Gadd, the drama's creator.

The character regularly spends hours outside Donny's home, repeatedly contacting him and subjecting him to sexual and physical assault – events that did not actually occur, according to the complaint filed Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles.

Harvey, a Scottish lawyer living in London, frequented the London bar where Gadd worked but did not have a criminal record, as the character Martha has in the limited series premiered in April, his lawsuit says. She was identified as the character Martha due to a phrase used in the series that she tweeted in 2014, tagging Gadd.

“Defamed by Netflix and Richard Gadd to an unprecedented extent and scale,” Harvey could no longer go out in public, according to the complaint.

Netflix is ​​committed to “vigorously defending this case and defending Richard Gadd's right to tell his story,” the company said in an email to The Associated Press.

Harvey told British broadcaster Piers Morgan last month that she sent “a few emails,” posted about 18 tweets in which she tagged Gadd and sent a letter, at a time when she considered him a friend. She denied Gadd's claim that he based the character of Martha on a person who sent her more than 40,000 emails, 350 hours of voicemails, 744 tweets and 46 Facebook posts across four fake accounts and more of 100 pages of letters over a period of three years. .

Gadd on Instagram called on fans of the show to stop trying to identify the real people behind its characters. He cleared the name of a man who had been mistakenly identified as another person.

—The Associated Press contributed to this report.