Kaitlyn Dever as Belle Gibson in Apple Cider Vinegar
(Netflix)

The incredible true story behind ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’

Fans of true crime, you’ll soon have a new series to obsess over. This is Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar, inspired by the true story of “wellness” influencer Belle Gibson, a woman who claimed to be suffering from cancer.

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In the new trailer for the show, Belle (Kaitlyn Dever) is questioned as to whether she’s lying about her diagnosis and she answers, “You’d have to be an actual sociopath to do that, and I am not.” But the real Gibson was very much lying.

The Australian Belle Gibson was one of the first major social media influencers. She built up a huge following on Instagram because so many people were drawn in by her apparently true story. Here was a young woman who was seemingly suffering from multiple types of cancer, and yet she seemed to be perfectly healthy. Her Instagram showed pictures of an aspirational, sun-soaked life. How was she doing it? Well, she wasn’t.

For a long time, no one questioned Gibson’s story, but there were red flags all over her Instagram account. She was anti-vax and claimed that her cancer was caused by the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine. She advocated for drinking raw milk and using “wellness” techniques to treat cancer. Many people, plenty of them cancer sufferers growing desperate, were drawn into her dangerous world. “[I thought] maybe she’s got the right idea, maybe I’m doing it all wrong,” one woman told the BBC after the scandal broke. “I’m dying on the inside, getting worse with every single treatment. I look horrendous. And she’s out there living her best life.”

In 2013, Gibson released a food app, The Whole Pantry, which promised to help people eat their way to a healthier lifestyle. It was hugely popular and was even voted Apple’s Best Food and Drink App of 2013. After that came a cookbook of the same name, which promised, “over 80 scrumptious new recipes to heal the body.” All the while, Gibson was spreading lies over her Instagram, and claiming to have been diagnosed with yet more cancers.

Then, it came out that Gibson failed to deliver on the charitable donations she had promised, and people started digging. They were starting to wonder how on earth she still looked so healthy while apparently suffering so much. Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano from the Australian paper The Age began trying to verify Gibson’s claims and she began to flounder. Suddenly, she was unable to explain exactly what cancers she was suffering from, and the questions put to her got more and more intense. Her web of lies started to unravel and finally, she admitted she’d made the whole thing up. “None of it’s true,” she told Australia’s Women’s Weekly magazine, as per the BBC. “I am still jumping between what I think I know and what is reality.”

But the reality for Gibson was, she went down in history as one of social media’s biggest scammers. Donelly and Toscano wrote a book about their investigation, The Woman Who Fooled the World. That book is the basis for Apple Cider Vinegar.

However, the show, which Netflix is advertising as, “a true-ish story based on a lie” has changed a few things. Most notably, there’s a new addition to the story: Alycia Debnam-Carey’s fictionalized Milla Blake, another influencer. According to the trailer, she actually does have cancer, and she is Gibson’s main rival for attention in the show.

As for what else has been changed from the remarkable true story, we’ll just have to wait and see. Apple Cider Vinegar debuts on Netflix on February 6.


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Sarah Barrett
Sarah Barrett (she/her) is a freelance writer with The Mary Sue who has been working in journalism since 2014. She loves to write about movies, even the bad ones. (Especially the bad ones.) The Raimi Spider-Man trilogy and the Star Wars prequels changed her life in many interesting ways. She lives in one of the very, very few good parts of England.