'Apple Cider Vinegar' explains how a revered wellness influencer became reviled

In the aboriginal years of Instagram, a young Australian parent named Belle Gibson rapidly became 1 of the astir fashionable wellness influencers connected the platform, inspiring thousands of followers with her communicative of overcoming malignant encephalon crab with a healthful fare and alternate medicine treatments.

Claiming that she was fixed 4 months to unrecorded aft being diagnosed successful 2009, Gibson said she yet rejected chemotherapy and radiotherapy and embarked connected a quest to heal herself naturally “through nutrition, patience, determination and love.” Her inspirational communicative attracted a ample societal media following, which Gibson leveraged into a palmy manner app called the Whole Pantry, a concern with Apple and a publication woody with Penguin.

The occupation is that Gibson ne'er had cancer. As yet became clear, she’d besides lied astir countless different things — from her property (she was 3 years younger than she claimed to be) to her professed enactment for assorted charities (she hadn’t fixed them immoderate wealth until reporters started asking). As her communicative unraveled publically successful 2015, Gibson went from media darling and celebrated miss brag to nationalist pariah — similar an Australian Elizabeth Holmes.

The twisted saga is present the absorption of “Apple Cider Vinegar,” present streaming connected Netflix. Created by Samantha Strauss, the six-episode bid is adapted from “The Woman Who Fooled the World: The True Story of Fake Wellness Guru Belle Gibson” by Nick Toscano and Beau Donelly, the investigative journalists who exposed Gibson’s scam done their reporting astatine Australian newspapers the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Kaitlyn Dever — doing an astonishingly convincing Australian accent — stars arsenic Belle, playing the wannabe guru arsenic a lonely but conniving young pistillate who uses lies to evoke sympathy. But she is not the sole absorption of the drama, which besides follows Milla Blake (Alycia Debnam-Carey), an influencer who touts the cancer-fighting benefits of rootlike foodstuff and java colonics; and Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), a young pistillate undergoing brutal crab treatments who finds herself drawn to Belle and Milla’s seemingly gentler remedies. The bid toes a delicate line, showing wherefore alternate remedies tin beryllium truthful appealing to patients frustrated with accepted medicine, but besides illustrating however dangerous charlatans are consenting to exploit that desperation for idiosyncratic gain.

Tilda Cobham-Hervey plays Lucy, a pistillate battling crab who finds herself drawn to Belle and Milla’s seemingly gentler remedies.

(Ben King / Netflix)

“The allure is truthful almighty due to the fact that it seems kinder, easier, prettier. We didn’t privation to conscionable accidental medicine good, wellness bad, due to the fact that determination are beauteous things similar assemblage that radical don’t find needfully successful hospitals,” says Strauss successful a video telephone from Australia. Because crab treatments similar radiation and chemotherapy tin permission patients feeling wholly depleted, “It’s intoxicating to privation to tally distant from that and spell to the idiosyncratic promising, I’ll hole you successful an easier way.”

The show’s rubric alludes to the thought of a magical yet readily disposable remedy successful a bottle, and the flawed conception that “you tin outsource wellness alternatively of doing each the boring, medically proven things” to support health, she says.

Like galore successful her location country, Strauss became alert of Gibson astir the clip she granted a disastrous, laughably evasive interrogation to Australia’s “60 Minutes” successful 2015. (When asked her age, Gibson, dressed successful a agleam pinkish turtleneck sweater, replied, “I’ve ever been raised arsenic being presently a 26-year-old.” She was really 23.)

“There was a batch of speech astatine the clip astir her pinkish jumper and conscionable however excruciating it was to watch,” Strauss says. “She conscionable felt truthful young and mode successful implicit her head, not that it’s excusable. The different happening I recovered absorbing was the recklessness of the manufacture each astir her — the publishers who published her publication without fact-checking and the wellness manufacture that loved to prop her up arsenic this aureate miss and heroic mum who’d beaten cancer.”

For Dever, the taxable substance is intensely personal: her parent died past twelvemonth pursuing a protracted conflict with bosom cancer. “I became rather obsessed with the wellness satellite and non-conventional therapies due to the fact that I was looking for different options for my mom, who was inactive doing each the accepted worldly astatine the aforesaid time,” says Dever, successful a Zoom interrogation with her co-star, Debnam-Carey. “I learned that determination was a full satellite retired determination of accusation that does connection a batch of hope.”

“Apple Cider Vinegar” is the latest bid successful what has go a thriving subgenre astir scammers and con artists, particularly women — from “The Dropout” to “Inventing Anna.” Though astir of the enactment takes spot a decennary oregon much agone successful different hemisphere, its themes of medical quackery, alternate facts and social-media echo chambers are much applicable than ever successful 2025.

Kaitlyn Dever arsenic wellness influencer Belle Gibson successful “Apple Cider Vinegar.”

(Ben King / Netflix)

“Where we’re getting our quality from, and what rabbit holes we’re down, wholly look to pass and infect our content system,” Strauss says. “We are seeing however unsafe it is to go truthful tribal, due to the fact that it conscionable takes you distant from facts.”

“Apple Cider Vinegar” avoids spoon-feeding a tidy mentation of events to the audience, alternatively utilizing a scrambled timeline and shifting communicative perspectives to complicate the narrative. A disclaimer astatine the beforehand of each occurrence calls the bid “a existent communicative based connected a lie.”

There’s besides a repeated caveat, delivered by assorted characters speaking straight to the camera: “Belle Gibson has not been paid for the recreation of her story.” The notation hardly seems accidental: Netflix was criticized for paying fake heiress Anna Sorokin a hefty interest for the rights to accommodate her beingness communicative into “Inventing Anna.”

In Australia, Gibson remains a wide reviled figure. “I was talking to a person whose spouse was dying of encephalon cancer, and they were horrified that I was telling this story. They’re like, ‘Belle is going to nett from this. She’s going to go much famous.’ And I was like, no, no,” Strauss says. “I felt similar it was conscionable truthful important to archer the assemblage close up beforehand [that she wasn’t paid].”

“I’ve ne'er met Belle, truthful my mentation of Belle is based connected the facts the journalists had written successful the publication and my research. I created who I imagined Belle mightiness be,” Strauss continues. “If existent Belle called maine up, she would constituent retired each the things that I got wrong.”

The bid ne'er excuses Gibson’s behaviour oregon attributes it to a azygous cause, alternatively presenting her arsenic idiosyncratic with a hopeless request for support that was fueled by societal media. “I deliberation astir apt ne'er feeling capable and wanting to beryllium radical incorrect is astatine the precise halfway of her,” Strauss says.

Like the existent Gibson, the bid mentation of Belle grew up successful the dingy suburbs of Brisbane, and arsenic a dark-haired goth teen became progressive connected skateboarding forums, wherever she archetypal started spinning gangly tales astir her wellness successful a bid for attention. The show’s mentation of Belle views sickness arsenic “a shortcut to being loved and to getting retired of things. If you’re sick, radical can’t beryllium mean to you,” says Strauss.

Aisha Dee, left, arsenic Chanelle, champion person to Milla, played by Alycia Debnam-Carey. In the series, Belle models herself aft Milla, different societal media star.

(Ben King / Netflix)

In her quest for net fame, Bella models herself connected Milla, a rising societal media star. Instead of amputating her limb to halt the dispersed of cancer, arsenic her doctors urged her to do, Milla turns to a severely restricted fare consisting chiefly of juice. Milla’s choices are vexing, but her vexation with the condescending aesculapian constitution is besides understandable.

“The accepted aesculapian manufacture tin consciousness truly sterile and impersonal, arsenic overmuch arsenic it is unthinkable successful what it’s capable to accomplish,” Debnam-Carey says. “While it’s hard to ticker [Milla rejecting aesculapian advice], you travel distant with immoderate compassion for that determination and wherefore she’d privation to find antithetic alternatives.”

Milla is simply a composite character, but her communicative is akin to that of Jessica Ainscough, a self-proclaimed “wellness warrior” who was diagnosed with a uncommon crab successful her aboriginal 20s and pursued alternate treatments including Gerson therapy, a dietary regimen involving hourly depletion of caller rootlike juice. The crab dispersed and she died successful 2015 astatine 29. As documented successful “The Woman Who Fooled the World,” Gibson was strangely fixated with Ainscough, adjacent attending her funeral.

For the Milla character, Strauss researched orthorexia, an eating upset successful which radical are obsessed with “healthy” food, and besides delved into the past of alternate medicine retreats similar the 1 Milla visits successful Mexico.

By the extremity of “Apple Cider Vinegar,” Gibson’s app and publication person been pulled from the market, but her scam has had dire consequences. There is nary postscript to archer viewers what happened to Gibson aft the ungraded blew up, oregon whether she faced immoderate consequences. Instead Dever, successful quality arsenic Belle, tells the assemblage to Google it for themselves. They whitethorn find the results disappointing: In 2017, a tribunal ordered Gibson to wage $410,000 successful fines for her mendacious claims. As of 2021, she had not yet paid the fines, and authorities began to prehend her assets. She besides resurfaced concisely successful 2020, claiming she had been “adopted” by Melbourne’s Ethiopian community. (Spoiler alert: She had not.)

Gibson volition soon beryllium thrust backmost into the planetary spotlight acknowledgment to Netflix. But don’t expect her to get the personage treatment, says Strauss. “I don’t deliberation she’s going to spell connected ‘Dancing With the Stars’ successful Australia aft this.”