I'm Rebecca Lavoie, and this is You Can't Make This Up. You Can't Make This Up is the podcast where we uncover the true stories behind your favorite Netflix documentaries and films. On today's episode, we take a closer look at the Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar. The thing you need to understand is...
Bell doesn't have friends. She has hosts. At the dawn of the explosion of social media, Bell Gibson became a pioneering wellness influencer, telling the world how she beat cancer with an alternative diet. Her best-selling cookbook and online app provided her success, respect, and a connection to the cancer-battling influencer she admired the most. But a curious journalist with a sick wife began asking questions that led even those closest to Bell
to suspect her of fraud. Was the online star faking her cancer and fooling the world? Caitlin Deaver stars in the Netflix hit series, Apple Cider Vinegar. Inspired by true events, the dramatized story follows Belle's journey from self-styled wellness thought leader to disgraced con artist. It also explores themes of hope and experience. and how far we'll go to maintain it.
And I'm joined by writer and executive producer, Samantha Strauss. Sam, welcome to You Can't Make This Up. Thank you for having me. Let me start off by reminding the listeners again that apple cider vinegar is inspired by the nonfiction book, The Woman Who Fooled the World. Sam, your TV series is a fictionalized version of Belle Gibson's story, and you even call it True-ish. You've taken some people and made composite characters of them. Tell me how you approached all this.
Well, I had known a little bit about Belle Gibson when I saw her 60 Minutes interview, but it was reading the book by the journalists Nick and Beau that made the series sort of... crystallize interview I loved that they tracked Belle as a grifter that they told the story of this woman who
who from nothing created a wellness empire because she had brain cancer and cured herself, only she hadn't. So there was really interesting bones to that story. But what I loved about the journalist's book is that they widened the aperture and they really told this sort of...
tapestry of other people in the wellness space, people who had followed Bell and who really did have cancer. They looked at other wellness influencers who were at... growing at the time they looked at wellness across history they looked at cancer scammers across history they spoke to oncologists and it just felt like there was a really it was an interesting way to have a conversation here
that was more than just the grifter story that would encompass themes that I'm super interested about. How did you first hear about Bell Gibson? Was it a big story in Australia at the time? It was a really big story. The pink jumper was sort of seared into our nation's consciousness. And I watched the interview for the first time just a couple of days ago. I mean, again, after having not watched it for a while.
We recreate it in the series and it is a gruelling interview. It's fascinating and how she won't answer the questions. But then also I felt at the time sympathy for her and empathy for her that she did. sort of seem very frightened and young. The real heart of it, I think, is about what it is to be a young woman on the internet, seeking validation, seeking approval. Yeah, that was something we were always interested in.
Last week, we spoke with investigative reporters Bo Donnelly and Nick Toscano, and they wrote the book that your series is based on. I found journalists can be really protective of their work, especially when you were talking about it being adapted in scripted form. So what was your pitch like? Well, there were other people pitching for it at the same time. So I had to go in.
very prepared. I had a crazy wall of post-it notes everywhere and an arc for the pitch. And really, I don't know why they trusted me. I think I spoke a lot about widening the story to not just be a... Bell and I think they really they responded to that I mean Nick and Bo speak
so beautifully and care such a lot about the effect of cancer scammers and the time that that takes away from people at the end of life. And that was something I really wanted to imbue into the story. I think we were all coming from the same. point of view, I think, from the beginning, which is rare. And it's something that Netflix shared as well. I think if you all get on the same page and want to make the same show, you know, you're sort of miles ahead.
Did you always imagine it with these sort of fantastical stylistic cheeky elements to it? We did because, you know, there's a way to do this as a straight biopic and it's just something that just never interested us. We, you know, the break of the fourth wall, the sort of the poppiness of the aesthetic. Instagram is fun. You know, we know what that dopamine hit feels like. And juxtaposing that against the real sort of life and death stakes of death felt interesting.
Yeah, so that was all baked in from the beginning and the skipping around in time. The idea of it being true-ish, you know, Belle is lying. So the whole premise of the show, you know, is we wanted the form of our style to speak to what the content of the show was about.
Well, you know what style you're sort of jumping into right from the beginning because you have this incredible opening with the four main characters dancing to Britney Spears' Toxic while they're wearing these gold lame dresses and emojis are kind of... popping up everywhere. And that really seems to encapsulate your creative vision. But tell me about these four women dancing together. What's the idea behind that?
Well, we were trying to tell the history of wellness and Instagram all at once. And, you know, it's really important in a Netflix show that the first five minutes that you're not going to turn off. But for me, I mean. I come from a dance background. I always love a dance sequence. It was about these four interesting young women. They're having a pajama party in lots of ways in their pretty floral PJs on the surface and then what is going on underneath.
which is what Instagram and social media feels like. Speaking of that very specific place in pop culture, this is the beginning, the mid-2010s of social media influencers exploding. So were you thinking about themes around influencing when you were making this? And how did you think about it?
Well, no, absolutely. We've thought a lot. And the fun aspect of it was going back in time and looking at the fashions and the things that we were really aspiring to. And it was interesting, costume designer Cappy Island working with our girl.
our actresses on that because they had lived through the time. They had really clear ideas of they knew what flower crowns they were wearing. There's a very, you know, they knew the spell fashion, which is, you know, the boho sort of in Australia, it's sort of Byron Bay chic. Yeah. Bohemian fashions. Here it was called VSCO girl was the name of that kind of girl.
I mean, I always wanted to be that girl but couldn't quite pull it off. And so that was the fun aspect. And it was interesting that we, our cast and ourselves, I mean, we had lived through it. So we had seen that. I had looked around one moment and. I was making another TV show and suddenly all of our cast were sort of raw food eating, clean eating vegans. And it just sort of happened immediately. It just happened as, you know, 2010 as Instagram sort of burst through.
And so it really did feel like this sort of time to capture this, something had changed and people like Belle were, you know, we were at the real forefront of it. We didn't know how to capitalize and monetize social media and these young women. were, in her case for better or worse, figuring it out. And that felt fascinating that from a kitchen table you could become an entrepreneur, you know, selling mostly your story but also your aesthetic.
Another decision that you make is having characters break the fourth wall and reminding the audience that Bell Gibson wasn't paid for the story. This is a true story based on a lie. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Belle Gibson has not been paid for the recreation of her story. Fuckers. How come you wanted us to know that? That came in a little later, but we always knew we'd have a disclaimer up front. But that... came about, I had a friend whose partner was dying of brain cancer and they were
I was horrified that I was telling this story because, you know, how could you give Bell Gibson this money? And I thought, oh, that's such a visceral reaction. We need to sort of combat that right up front and tell the audience, no, no, no, this is not good. glorifying bell. Then it became fun to write really across the six episodes because every character has a different point of view and you're able to sort of talk.
to what the stories like this mean and the dramatic licence that the writers are taking to put this entertainment out into the world. And then, you know, we end with Belle sort of having her face smacked onto the ground again and again, you know, saying it's a true story based on a lie based on truth that wasn't true, you know. And I can have my own ideas as to why.
She did what she did, but I've never met her. We've never had a conversation. Our character, Bella, is very different to her. But to me, that sort of spoke to the sort of circularity of it that... you know, some bits are real, you know, and some sicknesses are real, you know, for her, I imagine, and so on. Yes, that's where I wanted to leave it.
Belle is played by Caitlin Deaver. I would love for you to talk about her performance in this series. Oh, I could talk forever. Caitlin, Caitlin, so she threw herself into this, obviously. When we met her, we were scared, you know, we were under a lot of pressure from Australia that her accent would be perfect or at least good.
Because there's been a lot of sort of, it's a very difficult accent to do and it's been butchered a few times. And so we'd sort of promise Netflix, yes, it will be good. But we sort of did that without really knowing whether we should be promising that. And Caitlin sort of looked at us and said, no, no, I do, I like accents. And we knew she was musical and she leapt off a cliff.
And she worked with an incredible accent coach and they Zoomed a few times, you know, three times a week for sort of eight to ten weeks, I think, leading up to our pre-production. And I think they went over the script sort of line by line, word by word, vowel by vowel. So when she arrived in Australia, all the words lived inside her in an Australian accent.
We had to shoot her out, which meant we had to shoot all of her scenes all at once. So she was on set every second. We would all watch her run from the makeup chair onto set, hit the ground running at this extraordinary level. And she'd prepared her arc for months and months and months. But she also then had the freedom to go, you know, do you think we've got it? And we'd say, yes, we've got it. And she'd be free to move on. And that level of discipline.
is so rare and also her organic ability on the day. But the Australian crew just... fell in love with her because she was just sort of a true leader, a truly kind person. She would stop other actors sort of mid-take all the time and tell them how good they were. She really set such a beautiful tone for everyone around her. And, yeah, to think that she's capable, such a kind person, capable of being so monstrous and awful and needy and sort of sniveling and, you know, the mind boggles.
But also deeply funny at times and deeply musical at times, even with that accent. Do you have a favorite scene with Caitlin Deaver playing Belle? I mean, you speak to the musical, that was a late minute decision. We had lost a poem that she was meant to recite at her book launch. And I was thinking about her and I was like, oh, you know.
Caitlin, what about, what about Raw by Katy Perry? She looked at me, she's like, in an Australian accent, a cappella in front of her people. And then, but she did it. But, but no, my favorite scene of hers, I think is, the intervention scene in episode five when Aisha D, who's playing Chanel, it was her first day on set actually, and she comes to the house to call Belle to account and Clive, played by Ashley Zuckerman, hides in the bathroom.
And it felt like on that day we were just witnessing tragic comic, you know, magic. Do you have brain cancer? Just show me one single piece of medical evidence one one scan one scribbled note from an oncologist and I will I'll leave it alone I'll never bring it up again. I just throw it all out I don't want the energy in my house. Who diagnosed you? Why are you attacking me? It's like I had a seizure now everyone hates me!
Which doctors? Caitlin was able to be pathetic and brilliant and manipulative. She cried all day. I think I loved her sort of neediness the most. There is nothing about Caitlin that is... Please always make me look beautiful. Please always make me likable. She's willing to go to those extreme places.
So the wellness influencer, Belle, is drawn to another wellness influencer, a character named Mila, who truly is ill and has been sharing her story about her alternative therapies, juicing, coffee enemas. She becomes a foil of sorts for Belle. Did you want this character to be someone that approached health influencing from a different place than Belded?
I mean, yes, we thought it was powerful that Belle is lying to the world and that Mila is lying to herself. It's very easy to hate Belle. And then what was interesting was dealing with the complexity of Mila. this idea that she blames herself for being sick, which is something I find deeply tragic. You know, I mean, young women are told we have to be perfect in order.
to be anything, you know, in order to be loved. And you have to be beautiful and you have to be good. And for Mila to sort of metabolize all of that and think, oh, it's my fault. it's my fault that I'm sick. I had too many cheeseburgers and drank too many tequila shots at a certain point. I need to be positive. I need to be mindful and, you know, and it's, I need to take back the power and then.
Interestingly, seeing her up against the medical establishment and lots of women, lots of people have felt disempowered, like our pain hasn't been listened to and that our life is out of our hands. And we have to put our faith in doctors who don't seem to be looking at us like we're a proper person. And you can understand why someone bristles against that as they're growing into their own power, as she's becoming.
an adult across the series wanting to make her own choices. And then it felt very, very sad, the idea of what happens when you have backed yourself into a corner and you have decided this is what I believe in, but whether or not that's working for you. you know, remains to be seen. She had, Al Miller has this platform and she's telling people she's well, you know, and I think it's definitely up to the audience to talk, to think about.
how much she's lying to herself, how much she's aware of the fact that she's getting sicker and sicker, and also how much she just desperately doesn't want that to be true. Clive is Belle's boyfriend, and there are several times along the way where we get a sense that
He knows she's lying, but he never really confronts her about it. How would you describe your version of Clive? Is he an enabler of sorts? Is he just trying to fly under the radar? What do you think? That is something we discussed endlessly. in the writer's room, you know, how can Clive stay with Belle? And I feel like I know relationships like this, you know, where he finds, you know, at first she's magnetic, she dazzles him, she's a lot younger than him.
And Albel is someone who's looking for love, who never feels like she has enough love. And perhaps that speaks to something deeply inside Clive as well. And you see him throw himself. His lot in with hers. We've witnessed that sort of maelstrom of what happens in a relationship like that where someone does become your whole world and your whole barometer of what's right or wrong. And also...
What we've portrayed in the series that I believe is true from the journalist's work in real life is that Clive did really love her son and that was a reason to stay as well. Can you talk about Belle's mother in your series? Did you want us to assume that Belle was a product of her upbringing or a product of something despite her upbringing? Ideally both. And Natalie is played so well by Essie Davis. We were lucky that we'd had quite a lot of...
Natalie that the journalists had you know they'd spoken to her quite a lot so we in the writers room had a good idea of how to create her character and obviously she's still a character we I've never met the real Natalie who sadly has passed away I mean, it was interesting in terms of the background of when to go into Belle's background. We felt if we went to her at the end of the series.
we would be saying Belle is the product, just only the product of her family and bad mum. And we've all heard the bad mum storyline, the mum's to blame for everything. So it was important that we went there early and we saw... Some of the neglect that Albel had suffered, some of the ways she perhaps learnt that being sick was a shortcut to being loved or to being unimpeachable, to getting out of things.
You know, I wasn't exaggerating about Annabelle's acting ability. I'll never forget when she was dumped by her first boyfriend. She faked a heart attack. It was so convincing. They called the ambulance. Sound familiar? And after that, sort of move away from those origins in some ways and then not absolve her. You know, we might understand that this has... motivated her and you know affected her as all of our backgrounds do but yeah it was a choice of when to sort of dole out that information
Lucy is a character who seems to represent the many cancer patients who seek conventional treatment but are also intrigued by and attracted by what Bell is preaching, you know, the wellness approach. Can you talk about that character? to be a very nuanced take on probably a lot of people's experiences. Oh, I'm so glad you say that. Lucy always felt like the heart of the show in lots of ways to me and it felt very important to start.
the series with her and to end the series with her. Because for all the lies that Belle's telling and for the tragic journey that Miller's on, you know, there are the people who are listening to those influences in the world who are people like Lucy and we all.
as you say, know people who are right there dealing with cancer treatment right now, you know, who are having to listen to doctors, who are telling them what they don't want to hear, who don't want to spend the rest of their time on earth stuck in a chemo chair, who want... to either cure themselves in a different way, heal themselves in a different way or come to terms with the fact that maybe they're going to die. And so it felt like centering Lucy was an important part of the series.
You know, I love that we were able to go to Peru with her and for her to sort of really grapple with that, what am I searching for in that space and then come back to Melbourne and to her husband. And end with, you know, a bit of meditation, yes. Yoga, good, yes. Crystal, sure, if you want them. Ice baths, yes. But also chemo. Yeah. And also love. And he has to have the, I guess, the courage.
to sit there and to not try to solve it all for her, but just to sort of sit there in her space and hope, which is a real, I think, an act of courage and an act of love. Lucy's husband, Justin, is hot in pursuit of Belle's story at the same time he's navigating this very complicated thing in his relationship. Mark would like you to think that they've acted that he's also hot in real life as well as hot in pursuit.
So at one point, Justin talks to a doctor and he's trying to either confirm but more debunk Bell's claims that she has cured her terminal cancer with a healthy diet. She's meant to have cured herself using healthy eating. Is that possible? No. You can say that without looking at any scans. May I ask how? I went to medical school. So can you talk about that scene because it felt like a real...
Splash of cold water in the face of folks who might be watching this and maybe wondering whether or not Bell could be saying something valid. Well, yeah, and I mean that's pretty much taken from the book. The journalist did speak to a whole lot of oncologists and she couldn't have cured her brain cancer like this.
And that's kind of very interesting that she was able to publish a book without that being fact-checked. I mean, it's hard to sort of doubt people's medical claims. But, you know, every oncologist agreed with that sentiment. Yeah, and I'd also say, you know, I've come from a family of doctors and they are black and white like that, which is also the problem. It's also why people want to run towards other aspects. We see that with Miller across the table.
you know, a whole room of medical professionals who are telling her what she has to do, that those black and white facts can feel very cold up front, even if they are true. Bo and Nick told me that they thought one of the most troubling things the real life Belle did was to fake a seizure at her son's birthday party.
Instead of doing this quick cut with a seizure and then her waking up in the hospital or something, you let this incident really play out for this extended period of time. So can you talk about that scene? Why did you want to do it that way?
Well, in real life, I believe it was 40 minutes. So, I mean, we didn't do a 40-minute episode of the seizure. That would have been... too gruesome in our show I find it very sad that she does this she loves her son probably more than anyone in the world and yet She's feeling backed into a corner by Clive. He's doubting her. She's feeling like Chanel has doubts about her. She's wanting the love and the attention. And we talked a lot about...
What is it? Is it the frog and the hornet, the wasp? What's that story? I think that's right. I always get it wrong, but, you know, it's my nature. It's that natural instinct. I mean. It's against all sense, you know. It's the worst thing she could have done at that moment. But just the thing that she needed to, she felt like she needed to get the love and get the attention.
And so it was a very tough day to shoot that. And actually Bo and Nick were there when we shot that and, you know, poor Caitlin on the tiles with all that fruit around her for hours. At one point, Bell gets treatment from this doctor that she brings her son to. He says, can you come in and I can look at you too? And he brings out some kind of...
weird machine to do something. And then he offers to sell her a version of that machine for $10,000. So does Bell exist in this world where there are scams inside of scams? Yeah, and that's not untrue. That is something that is in the book and Belle speaks about visiting doctors who practised these sorts of modalities on her when we were...
creating that machine, you know, our production designer and her team were creating that machine. It was interesting because our producer had used that machine, you know, to give up smoking. And you see, you know, that act of just holding the pedals in your hands and hoping that it works. It was important in that sequence to try to do everything.
Is he wearing, he's not wearing shoes, is he? No, he's a pretty dirty guy in a pretty dirty building. We're in a dirty building. We're filming at a box factory and Callan Mulvey plays him fantastically. And he tells her. what she wants to hear, which is that she has cancer. She's desperate to be told that she's sick, that she's truly sick. It's not just in her head. I mean, it's difficult not to explain all your reasoning.
to the audience. But he also gives her something beautiful. You're a good soul, Annabelle. And you're a great mum. And you deserve to be well. For me, that encapsulates wellness or even going to a clairvoyant. You get the answer that you need in the moment sometimes. I don't think anyone can say what the motivations of the real Belle Gibson were. But what about your version of Belle? What do you think she gets out of all of this? I don't think she was doing it for the money.
I think it was for love and for attention, our character. She was lonely and lost and she was a single mum and she had learnt that being sick.
was a shortcut to love. And we see the internet sort of wrap its arms around her when she's a victim of... of this illness therefore she is a hero and we see how powerful that is and then you tell you know you tell one lie and then you tell another she gets backed in to a corner but hopefully We enter in a place where there is hope for her, even if it's fragile, that perhaps the relationships.
right in front of her and particularly with her son perhaps that's the way forward to try to not repeat this behavior again on the flip side of people being nicer to you and giving you love when you're sick is I think it's very hard when you believe somebody isn't sick to confront them about it, to sort of say out loud, I don't think you have cancer. Were you thinking about how hard that would be when you were making this series?
Absolutely. And Chanel, she's living that all the time. And Clive, it is... hard to confront something, someone. And we know that that's what the journalists really came up against that we betrayed in our last episode, that they can't just accuse her of lying about her health claims. It's just not something you're able to do, journalistically.
They have to go via the charity fraud route. There are sort of cancer scammers all around us and health scammers, you know, are popping up on the social platforms all the time. It does feel sort of like an epidemic of them. So I want to talk about the ending. You do that standard card explaining where Belle is today, what happened, but then she breaks the fourth wall again. You know what? You can Google it. What were you saying there?
I mean, a few things. I mean, first of all, it's kind of, it's a bit of a bummer what's happened to Belle. And, you know, she hasn't paid a fine to date. She didn't go to jail. She lost her reputation for sure and was cancelled. But really, go and Google it. I mean, we're aware that a lot of people are maybe watching a show with two screens open, Wikipedia-ing, you know, what's real, what's not at the same time. I hope they don't.
We jam a lot into every frame. But the earlier iteration of it, and it was just a bit too political, was do your own research. And that's a comment on wellness culture as well. And also, you know, this show, Beyond Wellness, it is about...
Social media is about sort of going into our own silos, our own sort of echo chambers of what we believe and then sort of backing us into I believe that and you believe that, therefore we hate each other. You know, we see how dangerous that sort of polarisation. is, you know, a last frame of speaking to some of that. Yeah. What would you say if I told you that what I got out of it was kind of a commentary on our culture of just looking stuff up on Google instead of getting the real information?
Well, yeah, as well. I'm glad you got that. That's great. So when people finish streaming apple cider vinegar, what do you want them to turn to each other and talk about? That's a nice question. I mean, the conversations that I'm having right now, you know, a friend of my mom called me and she's like, oh, I've been using Black South. Well.
Maybe talk to a doctor as well about that. And I've got a friend who's this morning taking her three-year-old to do chemotherapy and how frightening that is and how we all want to run away and eat. Blueberries. It sounds so nice. What the hell are the influences? I'm, you know, presented, I'm barely on Instagram. I never, I never really wanted to join because I just always thought all.
the shots of the pretty people would do my head in. But being on it, you were just bombarded by health advice after health advice after health advice, you know, and we're told all the things that we're doing wrong and I'm sure there are wonderful things that we can...
learn from. But, you know, we've all lived through the pandemic now. We've all seen how important it is to listen to scientists and doctors and what happens and how terribly dangerous it is when we don't. And it's that sort of stuff.
stuff that I'd love to, I'd love people to talk about. Well, Samantha Strauss, your series is apple cider vinegar, and it is just fantastic. A great watch. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk to me about it. Thank you, Rebecca. It's been lovely. Thank you.
That's it for this week's episode. Thanks again to Samantha Strauss. For more of my takes, check out my other podcast, Crime Writers On. Each week on that show, we break down the latest in true crime documentaries, TV shows, podcasts, and pop culture. please rate and review this show and share it with your friends.
Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. And make sure to follow the show to stay tuned for all new episodes. You Can't Make This Up is a production of Netflix. I'm Rebecca Lavoie. Thanks so much for listening.