Kaitlyn Dever stars as Belle Gibson in this true-ish story based on a lie.
What happens when your health and wellness advice comes from a fraudster?
Inspired by a true story that was based on a lie, Apple Cider Vinegar stars Kaitlyn Dever as Belle Gibson, an Australian wellness influencer who claims to have cured her terminal brain cancer through health and wellness. Sounds unlikely? That’s because it is. As it turns out, Belle has never actually been diagnosed with — or cured of — the malignant brain tumor that she shares with the world through social media, the mobile app she develops, and its companion cookbook. The series is now streaming.
Dever was excited to lead Apple Cider Vinegar, as someone who “holds the wellness world so close” to her heart, the actor tells Tudum. “The show really does an amazing job at shedding light on the confusion that surrounds the medical world and the wellness industry — and also human behavior and why we lie,” Dever says. “It does have very high stakes and feels very life and death.”
Created by award-winning Australian writer Samantha Strauss (Nine Perfect Strangers, The End, Dance Academy), who was living in Melbourne during the real-life Gibson’s success in the early 2010s, the six-episode limited series serves as a cultural interrogation of the times, exploring the birth of Instagram, the allure and rise of wellness culture, peak “girlboss” start-up culture, and the age of innocence on social media when very few checks and balances were in place.
Read on to learn everything we know so far about Apple Cider Vinegar.
What is Apple Cider Vinegar about?
Set during the early days of Instagram, Apple Cider Vinegar follows two young women who set out to cure their life-threatening illnesses through health and wellness, influencing their global online communities along the way. All of which would be incredibly inspiring if it were all true. As we’ve since learned, it’s often impossible to tell what’s real and what isn’t on social media, even when it comes to the most serious subjects. “It’s really interesting to look at how media uses food as a weapon against us and how much we crave the nourishment, but how much of a privilege and how expensive it is to try to be well,” said Strauss.
Is Apple Cider Vinegar based on a true story?
The series has its inspirations in real events, but it is a work of fiction. Apple Cider Vinegar is a true-ish story based on a lie, about the rise and fall of a wellness empire, the culture that built it up, and the people who tore it down. Certain characters and events have been created or fictionalized.
The series is inspired by the 2017 book The Woman Who Fooled the World by journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano. Strauss was first introduced to Gibson’s story through Donelly and Toscano’s reporting in The Age, a Melbourne newspaper.
“They wrote about the people who had been misled by Belle and how that had impacted them,” said Strauss. “They created this beautiful tapestry that looked at how Western medicine lets us down emotionally and why people are drawn toward wellness. If the book had only been about a cancer scam, I don’t think I would have been that interested in adapting it for television. But I think we all desperately want to be well, and many of us live with chronic physical or mental conditions and are so vulnerable to being preyed on. Turning this book into a series felt like a way to have a powerful conversation about wellness and medicine — why we lie, and how we hope.”
Donelly and Toscano stopped by Netflix podcast You Can’t Make This Up to share an inside look into how their reporting became the inspiration for Apple Cider Vinegar. The duo began speaking to Strauss a few years after their book debuted, and were immediately “impressed” by the writer’s take on the story.
“While elements of [the TV series] are obviously fictionalized, it does a really good job, in our opinion, of conveying those sorts of issues that really propelled us to write the book in the first place,” Toscano says on the podcast. “It’s not just the rise and fall of a cancer con woman. It also really does a good job of exploring those deeper modern and powerful mega-trends that Belle Gibson was at the center of.”
Where was Apple Cider Vinegar filmed?
The limited series was shot on location in Melbourne. “We had so many locations that took us from far-flung parts of Melbourne one day to the Dandenong Ranges the next,” said Strauss. “We wanted to show Melbourne as an aspirational place to be.”
American actor Dever — who flew to the other side of the globe for Apple Cider Vinegar — admits filming this complex story could have felt “very stressful or overwhelming.” But once on set, she felt the opposite, and credits her co-stars for her overwhelmingly positive experience. “I love this cast so much,” she tells Tudum.
One of the first scenes Dever filmed was the Episode 5 moment when Chanelle confronts Belle about her alleged cancer diagnosis. “That day could have been very difficult, but it wasn’t because I had two brilliant actors to work alongside,” she says. “That scene took two days to film just because it was so long and complicated but, man, it was great.”
Who created Apple Cider Vinegar?
Strauss created Apple Cider Vinegar and wrote the series with Anya Beyersdorf (The Twelve, Fake) and Angela Betzien (Total Control). All episodes are directed by Jeffrey Walker (The Clearing, The Artful Dodger, Modern Family), while See-Saw Films’ Liz Watts, Helen Gregory, Emile Sherman and Iain Canning; Picking Scabs’ Strauss and Louise Gough; and Dever serve as executive producers. Jeffrey Walker and See-Saw Films’ Simon Gillis are co-executive producers. Yvonne Collins is also a producer on the show, and See-Saw Films’ Libby Sharpe is a co-producer.
Dever describes Strauss as an “inspiring” creative leader, and credits her with balancing the darker themes of Apple Cider Vinegar with its brighter moments. “When I first read the script I was like, ‘Gosh, this is some really heavy stuff we’re talking about here, you guys.’ But boy does Samantha know how to lighten the mood and keep a fire underneath everything,” Dever says.
What does the title Apple Cider Vinegar mean?
“[With the title] I wanted something that would capture this idea of hope in a bottle and that could be a bigger umbrella than something that would relate only to Belle,” explained Strauss. While apple cider vinegar does have many genuine and effective uses, and ingesting it may have some health benefits, that doesn’t mean it can perform medical miracles, like curing cancer.
Source:Tudum
