Belle Gibson’s story of deceit, fraud and misleading conduct has been turned into a Netflix series, Apple Cider Vinegar, starring one of Hollywood’s leading young actors.
Kaitlyn Dever, 27, will play the famed “cancer scammer”, who profited for a number of years from claims she cured herself of brain cancer with natural remedies, including diet and alternative therapies. In 2013, at the age of 21, Gibson founded The Whole Pantry, creating an app and publishing a cookbook purporting to share the ways she healed her inoperable brain tumour through diet and alternative treatments.
She made $280,000 over 24 months from her Apple smart phone app, $28,000 over 3 years period from her Android app, and received a book advance of $132,000. During this time, she claimed that proceeds from sales of her book and app, her company earnings and one public event would be donated to charities or other good causes.
In March 2015, Fairfax Media uncovered that the charities she had named did not in fact receive any donations. A few weeks later, she was interviewed by Australia Women’s Weekly, where she admitted she never had cancer.
“None of it’s true,” Gibson said in the interview. “I don’t want forgiveness. I just think [speaking out] was the responsible thing to do. Above anything, I would like people to say, ‘OK, she’s human.’”
In 2017, Gibson was convicted of engaging in misleading or deceptive conduct and found to have made false claims about her charity donations, which were described as constituting “unconscionable conduct” by a judge.
She was fined $410,000 for misleading and deceptive conduct and for breaching consumer laws by Consumer Affairs Victoria. Her publisher, Penguin stopped printing her recipe book and the app was discontinued.
The first trailer for the Netflix limited series was dropped this week, and will join the ranks of scammer-fraud stories that have been popular in the last few years, including The Dropout (about the founder of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes); Inventing Anna (about Anna Delvey, the social media influencer who stole money from New York elites); Fyre Fraud (which follows the fraudulent conduct of American businessman Billy McFarland in creating a fake music festival in the Bahamas) and WeCrashed (which follows the rise and fall of WeWork founders Rebekah and Adam Neumann).
American actor Kaitlyn Dever, who plays Gibson in the series, has already accrued an impressive resume, working with Hollywood’s most coveted director and actors, including Olivia Wilde (Booksmart), Toni Collette (Unbelievable), George Clooney and Julia Roberts (Ticket to Paradise) and Amy Adams (Dear Evan Hansen). In 2022, she played the titular role in the Hulu series, Rosaline, a romantic comedy which follows the life of the cousin of the female heroine in Romeo & Juliet.
Samantha Strauss, the show’s creator, told news.com about the title of the show, Apple Cider Vinegar.
“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,” she explained.
“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.”
Strauss has worked on series including Nine Perfect Strangers, The End and Dance Academy. Apple Cider Vinegar is a six-part series and is set to be released in early 2025.