Apple Cider Vinegar: Why this celluloid tale of a real-life scammer is terrifying

Dubai: If you still haven't binge-watched scammer drama Apple Cider Vinegar, make sure to put it on your list this week.

The film is based on the book The Woman Who Fooled the World, by journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, who exposed convicted Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson as a fraud in 2015. 

Gibson had scammed scores of people by falsely claiming she had terminal brain cancer and used healthy eating as a self-cure. She racked up a huge following on social media, secured a book deal and launched an app, The Whole Pantry. 

 Donelly and Toscano eventually brought her real story to light in Australian daily The Age. She eventually confessed that she never had cancer, the legal fallout of which involved huge sums of unpaid fines. 

Gibson is portrayed by American actress Kaitlyn Dever in Apple Cider Vinegar, which premiered on February 6 on Netflix and is currently one of the streamer’s top 10 shows in the UAE. 

“The show has very high stakes and feels very [much like] life-and-death,” Netflix quoted Dever as saying in an interview. “I was excited to take on that kind of story because I had never played a woman like this.” 

 “Apple Cider Vinegar is a fast, drily witty, acutely intelligent, compassionate and furious commentary on greed, need, mass delusion, self-deception, the exploitation of the credulous, and the enabling of insidious new forms of all of these by technology,” writes The Guardian in its review. 

Unlike most series inspired by real-life events, Apple Cider Vinegar does not end with an update on what happened to the people it is based on. Instead, Belle tells viewers they can find out what happened to her via Google.

 Apple Cider Vinegar, a six-part series created by Samantha Strauss, is currently streaming on Netflix.