Netflix Posts Jessica Gunning’s ‘Baby Reindeer’ Audition Tape Hours After Being Slapped With Lawsuit From Real-Life Martha

Is Netflix sending a message about its support for Baby Reindeer?

The streaming giant has posted Jessica Gunning‘s audition tape for Martha in Richard Gadd‘s gripping “true story” about his experience with an alleged stalker.

The video is likely a sign that Emmy voting is around the corner, but it dropped just hours after Netflix was slapped with a $170M lawsuit by Fiona Harvey, the real-life Martha.

In the 80-second clip, Gunning reads a scene from Baby Reindeer’s first episode, in which Donny (Gadd) and Martha go for coffee and the latter erupts with anger.

The Clerkenwell Films series is expected to be competitive come awards season and Netflix said it would defend the show “vigorously” against allegations made by Harvey.

Harvey is suing Netflix for defamation and negligence, according to a suit filed at a federal court in Los Angeles, which claims that the “biggest lie in television history” was told about the Scottish woman.

Netflix said: “We intend to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story.”

Snagging around 60M views in its first month on Netflix, Baby Reindeer won the Breakthrough Limited Series award this week at the Gotham TV Awards.