SWEET TURNED SOUR

‘Apple Cider Vinegar’ dramatises the story of Belle Gibson, an Australian wellness influencer who built her empire out of a non-existent brain tumour. Helen Coffey sorts reality from fantasy to dig into bizarre true events that inspired the show

- Helen Coffey

First we had Inventing Anna, the story of how fake heiress Anna Sorokin scammed her way into the social circles of New York's elite. Next came The Dropout, documenting how entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes defrauded some of the world's biggest investors. Now, it's the turn of Belle Gibson, an Australian wellness scammer, to get a big-budget dramatisation. Apple Cider Vinegar, a new six-part series released on Netflix, charts the true story of the young influencer who tricked the world into believing she’d cured her terminal brain cancer through diet and alternative therapies.

Gibson emerged in the infancy of Instagram, leveraging an impressive social media following into a successful app and lucrative book deal. She told her followers that she had been given “four months to live, tops” by doctors due to a malignant tumour, before confounding medical expectations by rejecting conventional treatment in favour of focusing on nutrition and “holistic” therapies. But the premise she’d built her burgeoning wellness empire on turned out to be a complete fabrication.

Adapted from the book The Woman Who Fooled The World – penned by the two journalists, Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, who originally broke the story in 2015 – Apple Cider Vinegar is brought to life by an all-star cast (Unbelievable’s Kaitlyn Dever stars, alongside The Bold Type’s Aisha Dee and The Babadook’s Essie Davis). The show purports to be “inspired by a true story”, but with the caveat that “certain characters and events have been created or fictionalised”. So, just how much is based on fact?