Truth: it really can be stranger than fiction. Few know this as well as television producers, who have been mining ripped-from-the-headlines stories for the plots of TV dramas for years now.
In recent times, there have been a plethora: there are the fictionalised retellings of terrible true crimes — think The Staircase, Until I Kill You and any of the American Crime Story series.
Dramas detailing torrid periods in the lives of prominent people — the pulpy Pamela Anderson-inspired Pam and Tommy springs to mind — plus all those millions of TV biopics.
Netflix’s lavishly expensive drama The Crown might look high-concept, but at its heart, it’s simply another in a long line.
But by far the most popular of this genre are the tales of scammers and con artists.
The latest to hit screens is the locally-produced Apple Cider Vinegar, landing on Netflix next week — and it’s a story that hits close to home.
The six-part limited series is the fictionalised re-telling of the rise — and spectacular fall — of Australian cancer scammer, Belle Gibson, who built an online fanbase and amassed a small fortune off the back of claims she’d cured her terminal brain cancer through healthy eating and nutrition.
She harnessed the power of early-days Instagram to launch her own app, The Whole Pantry, plus an accompanying cookbook, making a small fortune in the process.
Trouble was, it was all built on a lie.
Her web of deceit unravelled spectacularly in 2015 when two Melbourne journalists, Nick Toscano and Beau Donelly, ran an expose, detailing her deceit and forensically investigating her health claims.
Through their investigations, they also discovered she’d failed to pay charities money she’d allegedly raised for them.
Gibson tried to explain it all away, famously appearing on 60 Minutes for an interview — dressed in that striking pink turtleneck — and sitting down with The Australian Women’s Weekly to come clean about her deceit.
But the damage was done: fans reacted with anger, her cookbook was pulped, her app withdrawn from a planned Apple Watch launch, and in 2017 Consumer Affairs Victoria brought legal action against her for allegedly breaking Australian consumer law — she was ordered to pay $410,000 the following year.
All of this, as you might imagine, makes brilliant fodder for a television series.
“True crime (usually murders) has always been part of Netflix’s offering but I think it was the overwhelming success of Shonda Rhimes’ Inventing Anna (a series that detailed the scams of “fake” New York socialite Anna Delvey) that made Netflix suddenly think that stories about con-women were streaming gold,” says journalist and TV industry expert Colin Vickery.
“(It) probably made them start hunting around for other examples — the Belle story fits that bill.
“So it doesn’t surprise me that out of all the streamers, this series is on Netflix.”
But they’re mining tricky territory: Gibson’s lies made an impact on real people’s lives. Many of those who listened to her and followed her advice were actually battling cancer — to think of the ramifications of them taking her claims seriously, stopping treatment in favour of holistic healing, is almost too awful to comprehend.
Gibson is also still very much alive, though at the time of writing, her whereabouts were unknown.
After going to ground following a 2017 court ruling, she briefly surfaced in 2020.
Journalists tracked her down, reporting that she was seen attending an event for Ethiopia’s Oromo community in Melbourne.
She’s shown in a video wearing a headscarf, telling the person filming her name was Sabontu — she speaks in the Oromo language, before switching back to English.
While this part of Gibson’s story is not detailed in the Netflix series, those remarkable years leading up to that point are — and in great detail.
The Gibson on screen is, for all intents and purposes, the Gibson people will remember from the extensive reporting into her crimes — right down to the bright pink skivvy she wears in a scene where she’s being grilled by a TV journalist named Tara, played in the series by Sibylla Budd.
In Apple Cider Vinegar, Gibson’s family is also front and centre — her child and partner Clive (played by Ashley Zukerman) play pivotal roles, as does her mother, portrayed by Essie Davis.
For her part, creator, showrunner and EP Samantha Strauss is quick to point out that this is not a simple re-telling of the Gibson saga, but rather an exploration into something much bigger.
“I’ve never met the real Belle Gibson. I only know what has been written about her,” Strauss said in a statement to accompany the series’ release.
She admits she loosely followed the Belle Gibson story when it was unfolding in 2015, watching that famous interview, but it wasn’t until reading Toscano and Donelly’s book, The Woman Who Fooled The World, that she realised its TV potential.
“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,” she says.
“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.”
To get around the grey area of Gibson’s story, each episode has a disclaimer at the start: “The following is inspired by a true story. Certain characters and events have been created or fictionalised.”
They address it in dialogue at the beginning of each episode, having central characters “break the fourth wall” and voice the fact that it’s a “true-ish story based on a lie”, and that Gibson was not paid for her story.
But it’s hard not to wonder what the real Gibson would make of her life being dissected for TV entertainment.
“Through the process of adaptation I’m sure the character has become someone quite different to the real Belle,” Strauss points out.
“From the interviews I’ve read and the research the journalists did for the book, I was able to imagine the neglect she might have experienced as a child, and how that might’ve informed her relationships and extreme need for approval.”
In other words: they’ve editorialised her life.
My version of Belle has messy, vulnerable contradictions, and I find these kinds of characters to be some of the best protagonists because they will always surprise you, Strauss goes on to point out.
Gibson’s real story is the backbone for Apple Cider Vinegar, but through six compelling episodes, Strauss weaves that tale in with those of two other women battling cancer — a fellow wellness blogger named Millie (Alycia Debnam-Carey), and another woman, Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) who is the cancer-suffering partner of the fictional journalist who investigates Belle’s lies, played in this by Mark Coles Smith (versions of these women are detailed in the book).
Minor characters, like Millie’s parents — played sensationally by Susie Porter and Matt Nable — are also fleshed out, their own stories woven into the narrative.
There’s still an embargo in place, so not much more about the TV show can be said, but American-born actress Kaitlyn Dever is sensational in the title role.
Dever admits she was unfamiliar with Gibson’s story prior to signing on to play her, but was excited by the opportunity, “because I think it’s a deeply layered and complex case study that needs to be shared”.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever know who the real Belle Gibson is. I think that’s honestly up to interpretation. Our Belle is someone who is extremely broken and desperately craving community and love,” she says.
“I like to imagine the character of Belle as someone completely monstrous and completely relatable,” says Strauss.
“Her lies were unforgivable. But they came from a very human place.
“When we filmed in Melbourne, it was amazing how many people seemed to have a Belle Gibson story.
“For a young Australian woman, she seems to have had very long tentacles. She accomplished a lot with very modest means.
“I like to think about what she might have done if she had used her powers for good.”
Read more about the new Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar in STM in The Sunday Times.
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