Ms. Krasnow
Apple Cider Vinegar
Netflix
Created by Samantha Strauss
Starring Kaitlyn Dever
Alycia Debnam-Carey
“Apple Cider Vinegar” tells the story of Belle Gibson, a young Australian wellness influencer who pretended to have brain cancer and kept all the charity money she claimed to be donating. She published a natural foods cookbook and created a wellness app, all to promote the lie that a diet of natural foods had “cured” her cancer.
I had heard Belle Gibson’s story in some detail on the podcast Maintenance Phase. Belle’s popularity peaked around 2014/15 when a national morning news show interviewed her, Penguin Australia published her cookbook (later pulped), and Apple included her recipes app on the first Apple Watch. According to Belle, all profits from the app would be donated. When journalists started to investigate Belle’s so-called donations, the resulting rabbit hole revealed that Belle had never had cancer and had not handed over any funds. Her empire crumbled, but not before she had made and spent millions of dollars, and her pseudo-scientific message had reached millions of people. Perhaps worst of all, she pretended to fundraise for a boy with a rare brain cancer, but never delivered any of the money.
The show lampoons not just Belle, but also much more powerful wellness grifters. The episode of Maintenance Phase that I listened to focused on the irresponsibility of the networks and publishing houses that platformed Belle. The miniseries focuses on the perverse practice of offering or championing “alternatives” to chemo, none of which work. There are bigger scammers than Belle out there: Gerson therapy, under the pseudonym Hirsch therapy in the show, is a bogus treatment currently illegal to practice in the US. The Gerson Institute invites ill people to its retreats in Tijuana, Budapest, and Shangri-La to cure their cancer with juice, supplements, and coffee enemas (yes, really).
A few recent true crime stories that employed talented writers, directors, and actors nevertheless offered pretty weak adaptations. “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox,” “Inventing Anna,” even “The Droupout,” took a chronological script and slapped it onscreen without doing much that was innovative. By contrast, “Apple Cider Vinegar” seems built from the outside in. Almost every Australian knows Belle’s story, and by now many people around the world know it too. I’m ok with a piece of art that asks its audience to know something about it beforehand. Since we’ve heard this before, we can go ahead and think of the performers as actors; the actors talk directly to the camera. We already know that Belle did this for the dopamine, so we’re ready when the emojis flow all over the screen. It’s ok that some facts are fudged for better storytelling - the point is, ten years later, to consume the crazy mess distilled into some high-end candy. Is it ethical? That's the perennial true crime question, but Belle is bad enough and the show’s tone playful enough to relegate the question to a separate essay.
But even if you don’t know the story, the non-linear plot is followable and feels fresher than a chronological retelling. As for the actors, Kaitlyn Dever is the only one familiar to me, but her accent is so good, I can’t believe she’s not Australian. I’ve seen the real Belle Gibson interviewed, and I’m not sure how anyone could stand her for more than a few minutes. Dever as Belle is (appropriately) just marginally sympathetic but, more important, always watchable. Actually, a small correction: I once saw actor Mark Coles Smith in a tiny walk-on role in my favorite show ever, “Please Like Me.” Please watch it.
Belle Gibson is not the first and won’t be the last wellness scammer pushing an inane lifestyle brand. “Apple Cider Vinegar” can also serve as a PSA, as sad as that is - when we start rejecting mainstream medicine, or even just believing a little too much in the Goopiverse, let’s remember to follow the money. One thing I wish the show had included: how many real-life Gerson therapy cancer patients are still alive?