Few phrases carry more weight or more risk than “based on a true story.” It promises authenticity while leaving room for invention, persuading viewers that what they are about to see actually happened. Yet as the Netflix series Baby Reindeer has shown, the line between dramatization and defamation can be perilously thin. The show’s acclaim for emotional honesty has been matched by controversy over its factual accuracy, turning one artist’s personal story into a test case for the limits of creative freedom.
Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer, released in 2024, presents itself as the dramatization of his real-life experience with a stalker. Across seven episodes, it traces a shifting relationship between Donny Dunn, a struggling comedian based on Gadd himself, and Martha, an older woman whose obsessive attachment becomes destructive. The series was marketed as “a true story,” a confession rendered cinematic.
Soon after the series debuted, a Scottish woman named Fiona Harvey publicly identified herself as the alleged inspiration for Martha. She filed suit against Netflix for defamation and invasion of privacy, arguing that the “true story” framing made the portrayal unmistakably about her and that millions of viewers accepted the fictionalized conduct, including hundreds of emails, violent threats, and a prison sentence, as fact. Netflix responded that Baby Reindeer was a dramatized work of art and that Gadd’s personal narrative qualified as protected expressive speech. The ensuing case, Harvey v. Netflix, allowed Harvey’s defamation claims to proceed, finding that the show’s marketing could itself suggest “reckless disregard for truth,” which is the constitutional threshold for actual malice. The decision did not determine that the series was false, only that the question of falsity deserved to be tried, but its implications reach far beyond this single dispute. Baby Reindeer exposes the fragile boundary between autobiographical storytelling and legal accountability, and it asks whether emotional truth can justify factual invention.
What makes Baby Reindeer so effective is also what makes it dangerous: its realism. Shot in muted tones and performed by Gadd himself, the series feels less like fiction and more like evidence, an act of disclosure disguised as art. Viewers are invited into scenes of psychological intimacy so specific that they seem unverifiable by anyone but the creator. This aesthetic of authenticity lies at the center of modern docudrama. Streaming platforms thrive on stories that claim to be “real,” using that claim as moral and marketing capital. Yet the law’s definition of truth is narrower than it is for art. The First Amendment protects interpretation, not invention. Since New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, courts have required public-figure plaintiffs to prove actual malice (knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for it) before recovering for defamation. Later decisions, such as Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, clarified that paraphrase and creative framing are constitutionally permissible so long as they do not materially alter meaning.
Part of what distinguishes the Baby Reindeer controversy is how quickly spectators became investigators. Online users compared screenshots, traced social-media accounts, and identified real-world analogues to on-screen characters. In the networked public sphere, every viewer is a potential fact-checker. The assumption of truth that fuels engagement also fuels identification. If this really happened, then someone really did it. That dynamic blurs the boundary between storytelling and accusation. Even if a dramatization avoids explicit naming, identification can arise through context, such as details of geography, profession, or circumstance. When millions of viewers collectively recognize a person through digital sleuthing, anonymity becomes impossible and reputational harm becomes concrete. The legal system was not designed for this participatory mode of spectatorship. The Harvey court’s focus on Netflix’s marketing reflects an emerging recognition that platforms, not just creators, construct truth claims. The repeated tag “based on a true story” may be more than advertising. It may be evidence of intent.
Baby Reindeer raises a deep ethical question: what does it mean to tell one’s own story when that story inevitably involves others? Gadd’s series positions itself as catharsis, an artist reclaiming power from trauma. But autobiography, like journalism, imposes duties of fairness when it depicts real people. To transform lived experience into narrative is to exercise interpretive control, and when that control inflicts reputational harm, morality and legality begin to converge. The tension here is not new. The “autofictional” mode from memoir to true-crime docuseries has always blurred the boundaries of ownership and truth. What makes today’s docudramas distinct is their reach and realism. High-definition intimacy persuades audiences that they are watching evidence rather than imagination. As a result, creators are held to journalistic standards even as they claim artistic freedom.
Disclaimers help but rarely suffice. The familiar end-credit line “some events have been dramatized” functions less as a boundary than a ritual acknowledgment that no boundary exists. Once viewers have experienced the story as true, the disclaimer reads as a technicality. The emotional truth of performance overwhelms the legal fiction of uncertainty.
Baby Reindeer ultimately dramatizes not just a stalker’s obsession, but our own obsession with reality itself. In a culture saturated with personal narratives, authenticity has become both commodity and creed. We want our stories to be true, but we also want them to move us. When those imperatives conflict, we rarely choose restraint.
The law of defamation functions as society’s reminder that truth is not infinitely elastic. It protects the reputational dignity of individuals against the expressive freedoms of others. Yet the doctrine of “substantial truth” recognizes that absolute accuracy is impossible. What matters is not literal precision but whether the overall impression of a story is false and injurious. Baby Reindeer lives precisely in that gray area, both emotionally honest and factually unstable at the same time.
As streaming platforms continue to market confession as content, these tensions will deepen. Creators will need to balance vulnerability with verification, ensuring that their claims of truth are as transparent as their emotions. Platforms must recognize that “true story” branding carries legal as well as artistic consequences. The more convincingly they sell reality, the more accountable they become for its distortions. The challenge of Baby Reindeer is the challenge of our storytelling age: how to honor the truths that art reveals without obscuring the truths that law protects.