Richard Gadd Says ‘Baby Reindeer’ Was ‘Emotionally True’ but ‘Fictionalized’

After Netflix was sued by a woman who claimed that she inspired the stalker character on the hit series “Baby Reindeer,” the show’s creator, Richard Gadd, said in court papers filed Monday that he had been stalked by the woman in real life but that the series was a “fictionalized retelling.”

In a declaration filed in federal court in Los Angeles, Mr. Gadd said that the woman, Fiona Harvey, harassed him in many of the same ways the character Martha stalks Mr. Gadd’s character, Donny, on “Baby Reindeer,” which claims to be “a true story.”

Mr. Gadd said that in real life, Ms. Harvey visited him constantly at the bar where he worked and sent him “thousands of emails, hundreds of voicemails, and a number of handwritten letters,” some which were sexually explicit or threatening. But he also argued that “Baby Reindeer” is “a dramatic work.”

“It is not a documentary or an attempt at realism,” Mr. Gadd wrote in the filing. “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. It is fictionalized, and is not intended to portray actual facts.”

Mr. Gadd gave his declaration in support of a motion filed by Netflix seeking to dismiss the defamation lawsuit Ms. Harvey filed last month.

Ms. Harvey claimed in the suit that the character Martha was based on her, and that the series defamed her by portraying the character as a convicted stalker who at one point sexually assaults the character played by Mr. Gadd. In her lawsuit, Ms. Harvey said she had never been convicted of a crime and had never sexually assaulted Mr. Gadd.