February 19, 2025 • 37 mins
On today's show, we're diving deep into Netflix's gripping new Australian series Apple Cider Vinegar, which tells the infamous story of wellness scammer Belle Gibson.
From Kaitlyn Dever's eerily perfect Australian accent to the fascinating creative liberties taken with the real story, there are so many layers to unpack in this six-part drama that has everyone talking. We've broken down how the show manages to turn this well-known Australian scandal into a compelling commentary on the early days of Instagram and the dark side of the wellness industry.
Plus, we need to discuss the controversial portrayal of wellness warrior Jess Ainscough through the fictional character of Milla Blake.
THE END BITS
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Listen:
Listen to Extraordinary stories' deep-dive: Belle Gibson: From Teen Mum To Master Manipulator
Read:
Belle Gibson and Jess Ainscough's story played out in Apple Cider Vinegar, but their real relationship was more complicated.
Jess Ainscough inspired Apple Cider Vinegar's Milla. Her ex says it couldn't be further from the truth
Em Vernem is co-hosting a new Mamamia podcast. BIZ is rewriting the rules of work with no zero generic advice - just real strategies from women who've actually been there. Listen here.
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CREDITS
Hosts: Laura Brodnik & Em Vernem
Executive Producer: Kimberley Braddish
Audio Producer: Scott Stronach
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Ab
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mama Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hello, I'm m Vernon and I'm Laura Brodnick. And you've
probably clicked on this episode of the Spill because you
have seen Apple Cider Vinegar on Netflix and that's really
really good because there are some spoilers in this episode.
So the show has completely taken over Australian screens and
social media feeds. And it's a six part series that
(00:40):
stars Caitlin Diav as Belle Gibson, who's so well known
as the notorious wellness scammer in Australia. And the entire
slogan of the show is the best one ever. It's
a truest story based on a lie.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So in this episode we get into all the shocking
moments from the series, including what's real and what's not,
and when we tell you the real story behind some
of these scenes, honestly, you'll be shocked because it seems
too intense to be real.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
And if you like this episode, we've actually done another
episode on every thing That's happened and the massive fallout
from Apple side of Vinegar since the show has come
out from MoMA Mia. Welcome to the Spill your daily
pop culture fix. I'm m Burnham and I'm Laura Brodnick,
(01:26):
and today we have a very special episode. It's one
of our brutally honest review episodes, one of my favorite
of all time.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So if you're not aware what a brutally honest review is,
it is where we talk about the biggest TV show
or movie of the moment, something that we know everyone
is watching, but also something that has captured the conversation
across the world. And Apple Side of Vinegar has very
much done that. Just a little warning that we are
going to be talking through all six episodes. We're going
(01:54):
to be talking about things that happened behind the scenes,
the true stories that inspired the biggest moments, why the
ending should happen. So if you don't want spoilers, go
and finish watching it and come back and listen. But
I think from what we've been seeing from our audience,
every single person has already devoured this series, so we
should be good.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I mean, it's our national ride. It's like the story,
it's the story of the nation.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Well, it debuted at number five worldwide, in Netflix number
one in Australia, so we were primed and ready. So
Apple Side of Viningar obviously the story of Belle Gibson,
the controverversial wellness in NASA.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Mel Gibson, because every single person I recommended this show
too has been like, oh, I didn't know that he
had like a show about him?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Wait, who said that?
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Every single person I've been recommending this show.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Too before they knew what the show was about.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
I was like, have you watch Apple Side of Vinan
that I've watched about And I'm like, it's about Bell
Gibson And they're like, they think they hear mel Gibson.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Okay, well that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
So it's not about mel Gibson the actor, it's about
Bell Gibson the liar.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yes. So the Netflix series is inspired by the book
The Woman Who Fooled the World, which was written by
journalists Bo Donnelly and Nick Toscano. Obviously there are fictionalized
versions of them in the show. They are the two
journalists that originally broke the whole story around Belle Gibson
lying about being diagnosed with cancer, and they did that
by exposing the fact that she had lied about where
(03:15):
she was distributing the charity funds, which was nowhere, it
turns out, to herself. So the first reporting they did
was in twenty fifteen, and then they published a book
that had all their research in it two years later.
But it was also a bigger look at the wellness
industry and how Belle had used people's interest in the
wellness industry and how there were no regulations around it
(03:36):
to trick people, and the creators of the Netflix show
optioned the book, and then Netflix screenlit the series in
twenty twenty two, so now it's finally on our screens.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
When I first heard of Belle Gibson, like, I didn't
realize how big a deal this was until I watched
the sixty minutes interview.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Did you watch it live when it happened?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
You mean, yeah, yeah, I watched it live because it was, like,
I feel like, the most hyped up interview ever and
it went so viral, And I just remember so specifically
her in her like turtleneck pink sweater and just looking
so she looked just like very angry but also confused,
and she just never like straight away from her words.
(04:15):
She never said that she was lying. She just thought
that she honestly had cancer.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, that's so interesting. I definitely remember that interview going viral,
and I think that's why that out of all the
stories around Belle Gibson, when you see that sixty minutes
interview in the show, that's the one piece they've created
word for word, obviously because they have the audio and
there's no disputing what happened in the audio, but because
that's become her calling card across the world of people
know that story. It's interesting. I kind of knew about
(04:41):
Belle Gibson before it broke, not that I've ever been
part of wellderness cultureor anything like that, but she was
just being so hyped up by so many of the
publications I followed at the time, and you've seen the
series her going to like the Fun Fearless Awards and
all those kind of things, and like, I just remember
her being in magazines I opened and being on TV.
Really yeah, yeah, she was a big dealer. There's so
many clips circulating now. I was watching one with Sam
(05:02):
Armitage the other day. Again, not that she would have
known anything, like you just take it at face value,
and she's doing the morning show circuit. Bell Gibson and
she's just talking about her life in such a natural way.
And like she's talking about her app, which has been
translated into like five different languages, and it's just selling everywhere,
and her book is on every newsstand, you can buy
it a kmart, and like everyone's just fawning over her,
(05:23):
And why wouldn't you because she seems so natural. Like
I mean again, the book publishers probably should have checked
and the app developers should have checked about it. You
wouldn't expect the morning show hosts to check anyway. Getting
past the story of Bell Gibson because that could be
a whole other podcast. Actually, we do have a whole
other podcast or extraordinary stories all about Bell Gibson and
her life and her fall from grace, which will link
(05:44):
in the show notes. But let's get into the casting,
because I think the casting of Bell Gibson was always
going to be such a make or break and I
think people were initially a little skeptical, the people who
knew they were watching Bell Gibson's story, not Mel Gibson's story.
Those people were a bit skeptical over American actress Kate
Lindva being cast as Bell.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Initially, Yeah, I was skeptical as well, because she is American,
and I thought because most of the cast are a
stre so I thought they would have the main person
Bell be Australian. But she did it so well. Oh
my god, I was like one hundred percent believable. Even
like her mannerisms if you watch the comparison between the
real sixty Minutes interview and like the one that was
(06:25):
fictionalized on TV, her little like quirks and the way
she raised her eyebrows and even the way she like
blinks sometimes is exactly like Belle Gibson. I don't know
how she did it, but she absolutely nailed it.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, she did nail it. I think also having like
a big name but not so big enough a name,
that the casting of her overshadowed this series because I
think some people like we have obviously been long term
fans of Caitlin Diver because of book, Smart and unbelievable
and just like a lot of other different work that
she's done, but I think like a lot of people
might have been coming to her for the first time
in this so she was kind of believable as Belle.
(06:58):
Interestingly enough that the two other actresses are both Australian actresses,
but have found fame pretty much only playing until recently
American characters. I guess it's like if they can do it.
So Alicia didn't Ha plays Miller Blake. So a lot
of people would know Alisha from The hundred and one
of the best shows ever and Fear the Walking Dead,
but reason one of your favorite shows ever? No, no, no,
(07:19):
I'm a Walking Dead fan, not Fear the Walking Dead.
That's a different fandom. But she was on that show
for a very long time, and they're two big American franchises.
And then recently she was on The Lost Flowers of
Alice Hart, so she's doing a bit more Australian work.
And then Asha d very famously was an actress who
couldn't get a lot of work in Australia, and she's
talked about the fact that being a woman of color
(07:39):
initially shut her out of a lot of those kind
of soap operas or like kids shows. So she went
overseas and found huge fame on a great show I
would say the bold type. Yes as Cat and then
as returned to Australian has been starring and lots of
interesting things.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
She's got a very interesting accent. It's like a hybrid
version of American Australian and she kind of kept it
throughout the movie, like she didn't go a hardcore Australian accent,
and I thought that was quite interesting, Like no one
addressed that.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
The four kind of main females I thought were all
incredibly cast. Five, I guess if you're really counting in
Susie Porter as Tamara Miller's mother. And I think Susie
Porter's always.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Been Oh my god, she was so good.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
I've just she's one of those astrain actresses who's just
in everything but is not like an international name, but
has this huge body of work. And she was incredible.
And then Tilda crobham Hervey as Lucy I thought was amazing.
She played Helen Ready in the movie about her life.
And do you hate her because she's dev Pateel's partner, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
But because of her, like dev Ptel has been spending
a lot of time in Adelaide and Adelaide together.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
That's either here nor there.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I wouldn't mind seeing bumping into him at like a
farmer's market or something.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, you might do, but he'll have Tilda with him
and she's lovely.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Thanks Tilda for bringing him.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I'd lied to welcome on the stage.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Shelle Gibson. It must have affected her that my book
was reviewed as better than hers. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Who's her Miller? She was diagnosed with cancer, so she's
consistently maintained. I have no reason to doubt her because
in her case it's true. It's funny my doctor said
you have brain cancer. He's a bloggie my life. She's
just like you. We do look incredibly well.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I've never felt better.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I have to find the right way for me. I
just got each other. Loved the session for all body goosebumps.
Thanks for coming Bell Bell Gibson the brain cancer right,
So we should probably talk about the character of Milla Blake,
(09:47):
who's also really set up to be the lead alongside
Belle Gibson. The creators of the show have said that
this was never meant to be like the rise and
fall of Bell Gibson. She was only meant to be
one part of it, and that's why it's called Apple
side of Vinegar. It's not named after her because they
wanted to show it as like how wellness influencers used
Instagram at the time but obviously because she is the
(10:08):
big name, we really have like hooked onto that. What
did you think about the disclaimers at the beginning of
each episode where they break the fourth wall, So like
the first time we see Caitlyn Diva do it where
she looks to the camera and said, some names have
been changed to protect the innocent. Belle Gibson has not
been paid for the recreation of her story.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Is there a reason why, like they do it for
every single episode, Like, is there like some contract or
legalities behind that? Because I was like, I liked it
for the first episode, especially because it was Caitlyn Diva
and she's still being bell where she says Belle Gibson
was not compensated for that, and she's like, of course
she was fucking wasn't that? Yeah, fuckers? But after like
the first one, I was like, I don't need to
(10:46):
hear this again.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
No, there's a reason they Actually there's two reasons why
they did it for every single episode. One is that
the creator and writer of Apple Side of Vinegar, Samantha Strauss,
thought it was just really important to include from a
moral standpoint, So she said she'd optioned the book and
she was going into production and she was writing the
script and she was talking to a friend whose partner
has brain cancer, and she said they were absolutely horrified,
(11:09):
Like Samantha, his friends said, horrify that she was doing
this show. And they had said, why would you give
this woman more oxygen? Don't you know what she's done,
don't you know what she's still doing? And is she
being paid from it? And that was the question that
Samantha found every time she talked to people about the show,
is that they all just assumed that Belle Gibson was
in some way involved or assumed that she had to
be paid for it in some way. And for so
(11:30):
many people, especially people who had donated to her causes
as we see in the show, and then like the
money never went to those people, People who had bought
her books and apps and you know, lost money and
they could have been spending on other things, or people
who followed her for years and felt tricked, or.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
People who could have just died from like following like.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Her by her saying I kid my cancer and using
this happy, beautiful woman and you're like, yeah, I could
have that. So people were really upset that they thought
she was profiting off the Netflix show, So they thought
they had to really hammer home in every single episode
that she wasn't just so people knew that wasn't happening.
But also the other big thing was the defamation part
of it. Obviously it would be kind of hard to
(12:09):
defame Bellgi.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
It's really confusing to me because, like they name her,
they go through a lot of things like in detail
of like everything that Belle Gibson has done, and I wonder,
like how do they get away with doing that? Like
how could they make themselves fit safe?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Well, one thing with defamation is that the person who's
claiming to have been defamed has to prove that a
publication is lying about them in a way that has
taken away their reputation. Obviously, there's a lot more legal lays.
This is just a very top white explanation.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Do they get away with it because she doesn't have
a reputation?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
No? No, she can't prove she has cancer, and she
can't prove that she gave the money to charity, and
she can't all those things. She can't prove. The other thing, though,
is that they keep saying this is a true ish
story based on a lie, and what we've seen recently
with a few shows, like namely Baby Reindeer is that
they say this is based on a true story, which
(13:04):
is why the woman who Baby Reindeer is about has
now been given the green light to go ahead with
a hundreds seventy million dollar defamation suit against Netflix because
they said this is a true story rather than saying
this is based on a true story. So every time
the characters in the Netflix show say this is a
true ish story based on a lie, names have been changed,
(13:25):
they're immediately deflecting a lot of the defamation because they're
not claiming it's real. Like and also a lot of
people like, we're going to go through the characters now
and say who's real and who's not. The creators of
the show haven't actually come out except for saying that
Bell Gibson is based on Bell Gibson. They haven't actually
come out and said a lot of these people are
based on the people who we have just been able
to piece that together because of defamation.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, there was one character, Miller Blake in particular, who
I remember we wrote about an influencer years ago named
jess Ainsko, and I was like, this is exactly the
same person, Like it's exactly Jess, And that confused me
because Jess was, like, I guess Belle's competitor in this
(14:09):
like wellness space of curing cancer through natural remedies rather
than like the clinical side of things. And she tragically
passed away from her cancer and she had the same
like Miller in the show had the exact same type
of cancer as Jes did. Jess's mother passed away from
going through Jess's like alternative medicine root, and then Miller's
(14:31):
mom passed away. So I was like, this is spot on,
but why would they change the name?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Well, that's the interesting thing with Jessica ames Co is
that the show has said that she's just one of
the influences that the character of Milla Blake is based on.
But when you look like you're saying, when you look
at the comparison, like, no, it was her, it seems
almost pretty much based on her. So in the show
we see her working in the girlfriend office, but in
real life she did work at Dolly. When being diagnosed
(14:57):
with a very rare cancer that does start in the arm,
she said yes to chemotherapy originally as Miller does on
the show, and then they have renamed the type of
alternative health medicine in the show from what she went
through in real life. But it was basically almost exactly
the same thing of the idea of like no toxins,
no alcohol, no sugar, coffee enemas. And that was how
(15:18):
Jess ains Coe became very famous, Like she was almost
became an influencer before influencers were really a thing, because
she was there at the birth of Instagram, but also
she started before Instagrayah, like she moved her blog is
where she gained so much traction, and then she was
able to parlay that fame as Belle did, into books,
into speaking to us, into winning awards. Alicia dem Nakara,
(15:40):
who plays her, said that she's meant to be an
amalgamation of different influencers, which we can obviously see.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
That ninety percent of one particular influence.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
That it's hard because a lot of Jess's blogs that
she wrote at the time have been marked a private
and the videos that she made, but a lot of
the work that she did is still around so you
can go and read it. And the way she talks
and her turn of phrase and everything is very similar
to the character. So they've really embedded that and as
you're saying the same thing with her like personal life,
like she was very much in love and married her
(16:09):
husband Talan, you know, before she passed away, and her mother,
who she was very close with, after she was diagnosed
with breast cancer, followed her daughter's health advice and that's
why she died. And one of Jessica's last blog posts,
which is horrific, as talking about how her body had
just deteriorated and saying that she didn't know how to
live in a world without her mother, which is kind
(16:29):
of like a you know, a story that we see
mirroat in the show, but they.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Also make her quite unlikable.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Did you think so? Yes?
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I hated her character, did you yeah? Interestingly I kind
of hated her more than Bell.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
It's interesting at different parts of the show, I really
dislike these women, and then sometimes I just felt so
much empathy for them, even Belle Gibson. Like so many
people who were going into the show, because obviously we
got to watch it a bit early, so many people
going into the show said to me like, oh, I
hate Belle Gibson. I can't wait to watch this, And
I had to say to them like it's not this
(17:03):
big take down of her that you think it's going
to be, Like she's humanized in a really interesting way,
is that, especially in the first episode where you see
her just this like lonely lost young woman who is
pregnant and has no support and has obviously come from
a terrible home excusing what she did. But I think
it's also interesting to sort of see that, like a
lot of people who do terrible things in life, like
(17:24):
they don't just appear out of thin air and act
that way, Like there's a lot of lead up that
goes there. Yeah, And I thought they did a really
good job of humanizing her. So by the time she
starts like lying about having cancer, I like totally understood
why she did that. Those graphics on the screen where
they have all the light and the red and the
gold colors that come out of her phone and like
envelop her in love when she reaches out for help online,
(17:46):
I thought was like a really accurate representation of the
dopamine hit you get when you get love.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
From social addictive. Like if you've ever had like a
piece of social media be validated by a whole bunch
of strangers, it's like you run on that high for
so long and you just constantly need the another post
to go as viral.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
And what part about Miller didn't you like just that
she wasn't saying yes to the cancer treatment or was
she kind of evolved as an influencer.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I think it was when she brought her mom into
it that like absolutely destroyed me, especially the scene with
her dad saying to her mom, she's killing you. She's
going to kill you and she's like, no, I'm not.
It's so like hard and then like her mom And
this is why Susie Port I thought was brilliant in
this role when she said what kind of mother would
(18:32):
I be if I don't do this?
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I know?
Speaker 1 (18:34):
And like because she let her daughter do it so
and I'm like, that's so true, Like it's all so true,
Like it felt so real and it was just she's real.
The whole scene of her speaking about it just felt
so real and it was just so tragic and you
just knew what was going to happen and you were
just so scared that it wasn't going to happen, and
it does happen. It was just really sad, and that
(18:55):
just pissed me off about her like when my mom died,
I was like, I hate you.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I know the visceral anger I felt through watching this show.
It's quite surprised.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
I felt like we all toed on her on Collogist.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, like he was just so ancrying when he was like,
just to be clear, you will die and died. Oh no,
don't do it. But doctors have to sometimes use that
language so that there's no gray area. It's like when
a doctor comes out to tell you that a loved
one has died, they have to say they have died.
They can't say passed away, they can't say anything like
that because they've been taught to like use this language
(19:26):
that it sounds harsh, but it's no gray area. There's
no brain from misinterpretation of what that means. The idea
of her mother, Like, it was hard for me to
hate her as a character for that, even though I
was really angry watching it, because it's like she was
so close to her mother and loved her so much,
and the only reason that she wanted her to go
through that same healthcare situation that she had gone through,
(19:47):
that take that same wellness journey was that because at
that point in her life, she one hundred percent believed
that he had cured her. Yeah, and that's why she
was so hesitant, Like when they're in the hospital, that
scene where she's saying to the doctor, just so you know,
our family has a really bad history, and the family
doesn't have a bad history with doctors. It's just that
at that point in time, because she hasn't had any
scans to show that her cancer is growing until later on,
(20:11):
she thinks she's saving her mother's life, and she's willing
to like make enemies. She's willing to have her father
be angry at her. She's willing to use up all
their money because she thinks she's saving her mother's life,
which makes it so much more tragic.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
And I was thinking like, and it's so easy for
me to say, as someone who's like perfectly healthy Touchwood,
is that imagine what it could have been if she
had just done the surgery.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
But then I'm also like, you can't ask a twenty
two year old woman to get rid of her arm.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Essentially, It's interesting because after Jessica aans Co died and
there was a big public memorial for her that a
lot of people went to her father and husband put
out a release, and you know, a lot of it
was like thanking people for their support and talking about
what Jessica had meant for people. But they also included
a statement where they said, it has been reported that
a Jessica had received a certain type of medical care
(21:02):
and paraphrasing here that she would have lived and that
is incorrect. So whether or not that's incorrect or not,
I don't know. I wasn't involved in her medical treatment,
but I just thought it was quite interesting that even
like at the end of her life, after all that
had happened, they were still wanting to put out this
thing saying like, don't judge her for what she did,
because she didn't do the wrong thing, like that kind
(21:22):
of protectiveness on her. I want to build something meaningful,
the love.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I've recently been diagnosed with a third of cancer.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
It has ninety thousand blikes.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
She does not have this blame cancer.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Always know what you're putting a body.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Bell, It's a simple question, do you have cancer? I
want to destroy her.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Something I thought was interesting is how they fictionalize this
kind of rivalry between Miller and Bell, which I guess
you did need to push the show along because in
real life, Bell and Jessica did cross paths, but it
was different to the show.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I read that Belle like also like attended her funeral.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Oh yeah, no, no, that funeral seems so that out
of everything in the show.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I was like, surely this part.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Of the that part is so real. So I know,
I like, we have to how did she do? I know?
I put that story up on side because I was like,
the people need to know about this. So Belle and
Jessica first met at a conference they didn't know each other,
and Jessica's manager later on, this is all coming from
the book.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It's Jessica's manager, the one who Chanelle is.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Oh no, no, this is a different job. Oh, Shanell
is a real person.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yes, we'll get to okay.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
All these stories of what was true and what's not
are coming from the original book this series is based
on because they interviewed a lot of people involved in
the situation and they said that Jessica and Bell met
for the first time at a conference where Belle came
up and introduced herself to Jessica, and Jessica later told
her manager and her manager as the one being interviewed
that she was very wary of her and felt a
(23:04):
little uneasy. But they did continue to have this Instagram
relationship after this, where they would leave comments on each
other's posts, you know, celebrating each other, love hearts, all
that sort of stuff. And then when she died, she
did attend her funeral, and it's written in the book
that her family and friends were like, one, how did
you know what was happening here? How did you know
where the house was? They don't know how she showed
(23:25):
up and how she's sobbing in the church when I
was watching that, because I went and looked up a
lot of these things later, I thought, surely this is
the fictional life. Pot Surely the real Bell Gibson did
not walk into that young woman's funeral and sob and
make it about her. But she did, and her friends
and family later said when they were interviewed that it
(23:45):
looked like she was trying to show that her grief
was more than everyone else, and that she was trying
to steal the spotlight. And it's also alleged that the
wake afterwards, again, how did she go? She went, and
she went into the bedroom like she does in the
show and tried to sob and like comfort her fiance
or her husband, her husband in real life and.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
It away so good where he was like, you gave
her the creep.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, she've had a full freak out and he was like,
get away from me. It's like obviously. But I also
think that that was kind of interesting that they took
this little nugget of what had happened in real life.
Is that Belle really seemed to idolize Jessica, or maybe
she didn't nihlize her, Maybe she just wanted she saw
this outpouring of like genuine love and affection that her
family and friends and followers had for her because she
(24:30):
was sick and she wanted to bask in that. And
they were both two beautiful, blonde, attractive women who had
made a career of these wellness platforms. But I thought
in the show was interesting how they kind of dial
that up so intensely, And I think you kind of
needed that to kind of push the story along and
show like just because everything is all light and fluffy
(24:52):
and we're best friends online, it's so much more brutal
behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
My favorite character in the whole show was I should
yeah now, oh my god. I thought she was like perfect.
I loved how she was acting as like the audience,
I guess the answer for the audience. Whenever we had questions,
she was like that person would answer it because they
used her in the different time slots right like right
from the beginning to present day where she's talking to
(25:18):
the journalist to like where she got swept away with
all of Belle's lies, but also being best friends with Miller.
And I think that she was a character that was
just kind of so angry that she also fell for it. Yeah,
and then she I felt like she had so much
weight on a chest for feeling guilty of Like I
felt like she felt guilty for her friend's death because
(25:39):
she just like left her to kind of fend for
herself with her juices and went on to support Belle,
who was at that time the more successful influencer. And
I think her portrayal of herself was so well and
how she navigated those friendships, because that would suck, Like
imagine being like one of the women who was like
perfectly healthy, who didn't actually have to like rely on
(26:01):
your life to believe these kind of things, and yet
you still fall for it.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, I know, that's a really crazy kind of event.
So she now Bill Gibson's best friend. Like, that's true.
The fictionalized part is her relationship with the Miller character.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Oh okay.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
So it's interesting that Belle and Chanell are the two
that have kept the names from the real life characters.
But I think why they've done that is that Bell Gibson,
everything she's done is on the record. And then Chanelle
was the main whistleblower who worked with the journalists and
who let everyone know what was happening. So you can
use her name in the show because she's on recorders
as doing this. So she first met Bell Gibson after
(26:37):
being signed her as an interviewee during our writing internship,
and they became really close and she worked a lot
with her. And then when she found out that Bell
Gibson was lying about her cancer and misleading people, that
scene where she gives her the opportunity like tell the truth,
like and tell me right now, and she doesn't happened
in real life. And when Belle continued to lie to her,
she made it the crying yeahhh. She made it her
(27:00):
mission to expose her lies. And it was really her
testimonial that really made it possible for those initial investigative
reports to go forward. The other thing that was true
is that Bell Gibson really did fake that seizure at
her son's birthday party. Was that true? That's true as well,
in front of her son, in front of her son
and everyone for like an extended period of time. And
(27:20):
that's another reason why a few people were just like
seeing it in real life. That's when it started to
kind of put off some warning.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Bells, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
The stuff with her son I found absolutely brutal to watch.
I've got to say, I can't stand when kids are involved.
And that scene where he's looked in his room, which
is not a proven thing, is like key fictionalized. It
was just trying to show what happens when a parent
is and he was sick and stuff, and she takes
him too an alternative therapist who does the light and
sound machine, which is what Bell Gibson said, diagnose to cancer.
When she was found out.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Oh my, the light and sound machines absolutely sent me
the ten thousand dollar light in sound machine. What was
so sad for me and absolutely heartbreaking. Was one of
the final scenes of the series when she was with
her son and you just see how much kids pick
up and how much kids learn, and the generational trauma
(28:08):
in her family because I'm her mom wasn't a saint either,
like she had like a very troubled childhood. And her
mom has publicly spoken about Bell Gibson, like the real
Bell Gibson, some one has publicly spoken about her and
how she doesn't agree with anything she did. And that
scene with her son, how he had like his bandaged
arm and then he said he broke his hand like
while he was sleeping. Yeah, and then straight away she
(28:31):
was like, no, we can't like let this continue, like
we can't let this craziness that I've been going through
continue with like your generation and the generation after. But
that was so sad because I feel like in those moments,
because he was so young, she probably would have passed on,
like the seizure at his birthday party. She'd been like, oh,
he's too young to remember that. He won't remember that,
and my kids remember everything.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
They pick up everything, which is yeah, just another really
sobering part of the story. Also, her husband so hot Clive, Yeah, yeah,
that he was again interesting character again based on a
real person. Again, his name really was Clive. It's hard
to sort of tell if they're still together, because it's
very hard to find any information on Bell Gibson. Now,
we do know that she never went to prison at
(29:12):
the time of recording, she hasn't paid back.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
That's the while that she's never gone to prison, I.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Know, there's so many different like legalities there that make
that hard. She did join an Ethiopian community, I do
believe at one stage, and was seen wearing their traditional
dress and everything, but when the community was asked for
a statement, they said she wasn't officially part of them.
I think she's been photographed a few times allegedly she
has another child. Now it's so hard to say because
she's not. And also every single news outlet in the
(29:37):
world right now is trying to find her and contact her,
and no one's managed to speak to her. But she
did stay with Clive for a long time after this
all blew up, and I think seeing his story is
interesting too, because again I think the show humanizes people
in such a way that by the time he decides
to stay with her, like you almost do understand it, yeah,
which is really annoying, But obviously he's doing it for
(29:58):
the sun and for the family unit. He has and
he just feels that he'll go back into the world
alone and even if the life he has with Bell
isn't real, it's better than the reality he faces without her.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, that's so sad. But like they're still living in
like the mans, Like right at the end, you just
you still see them living in that match house and
the mansion, and you hear that sixty minutes is like
paying her seventy five grand, but that even though that
poor boy who actually had brain cancer needed sixty.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
It's a real story as well.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
You better give him that money, birl, But.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
She never did. That's another story that's pulled from Obviously,
there's a lot of families that were in that situation,
but it's not a real story. Yeah, there's one family
in particular who were working closely with her at the time.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Because I remember them from part of the interview.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, exactly. So they were part of the interview and
that's chronicled in the book that the show is based
on as well. And basically after it happened, mums like,
I'm absolutely blindsided. I thought this woman was helping me,
she was raising this money for my son who was
cancer and then none of the money showed up, and
I think like maybe nowadays, like people would get up
a gofund me and get that money back to that person.
But I think at the time and maybe that did
(31:02):
happen to an extent, But I also think at the
time people were just so shocked and angry and didn't
know what to believe, that it was hard to sort
of recoup that money from people who had already done donated. Yeah,
getting onto another really sad point in the show, which
I know there's so many, there's so many to choose from.
I mean, you hated hers, maybe you didn't care, But
I thought Miller's death was done in a really interesting way.
(31:22):
I also thought her character was built in an interesting
way that she's such a product of her time, of
that early two thousands when the show takes place where
she like loves Cleo, like she's a mad girl. Like
the clothes she's wearing are all of very of that hair. Yeah,
she's very obsessed with Sweet Valley High and one of
the main characters. I was like, that is a perfect
like amalgamation.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
They're like sitting on the laptop on the rock at
the beach was so tumble coded, but.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
He was so obsessed exactly. But when you see her
in that moment, I mean, when she tells her dad
and unwraps her arm, I mean, that's the most one
of the most brutal TV scenes I've ever seen, because
you think that he's going to be angry at her,
but then he's just obviously devastated. And I thought her
last blog post, which I was trying to find Jessaine
Coe's last blog post, and that it's all been taken down.
(32:08):
So but I do believe that she never wrote the words.
You know, if I could return to traditional medicine now,
I would. But again, I think that's part of the
fictionalized journey of Miller, of her coming out and saying like,
my final act is just to say I should have
done this, but this is where I am now. And
I think it's also like a really powerful moment where
she closes the laptop because you see all those messages
(32:31):
flashing up and people are being like, no, I've got
a cure, I know a healer, I know these. A
few years ago in her life, she would have jumped
on all those messages, but she just closes the laptop
and sits in peace, and we don't actually see her
pass away, but that idea of watching her close the
laptop is her death scene in a way.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah, And I think how like people perceived both Bell
and Jess at the time is evident through Lucy, her
character who actually has breast cancer and you see her
go on this journey of believing Belle and believing like
ultimate medicine to like kind of doing her own thing
and having like these big fights with the people who
(33:08):
love her who want her to just get better and
go the traditional medicine route, and then she just had
to go on that journey by herself where she did
like try it for a little bit and then she
was like, actually no, I want to go back into
chemo and like do it properly. And I think that
kind of was like a bit gave me a tiny
bit of hope that like not everyone's life was destroyed
by Belle Gibson. Yeah, like in who she Influenced.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, that's so interesting because that closing montage of how
the last episode ends has been like a little bit
polarizing in a way because obviously you could just keep going,
like obviously where she's found out is an endpoint, but
the story continued to roll on. So I think from
a creative perspective, it's interesting to know where to end
it and not do like, you know, flash forward to
where she is in twenty twenty five or something like that.
(33:52):
But in the closing montage, you see like Belle like
so happy in the sun. She's ex to this swimming
pool and you see she's with Clive and her son.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
That really annoyed me.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I know, well, it's meant to annoy you. It's meant to.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Show like she just ruined everyone's life and now she here,
she is in her mansion with her seventy five k
in pocket, just like not even bothered that that interview
is about to ruin like a reputation.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
That's so interesting because it's meant to annoy you. It's
meant to make you angry. That's what the creators have said.
It's meant to make you angry because, as they keep saying,
the show is not really about Bell Gibson. It's about
the wellness influence industry and how this is kind of
this big red flag for how you know, a lot
of times there's no regulations, you can't trust these people,
but people looking for hope so much they'll honestly believe everything.
(34:35):
And then you see Bell Gibson. We know obviously she
went on to like you know, lose money and all
this sort of stuff, but in that moment, you see
her wealthy with her family, haffy, and also completely healthy.
So she's in this wonderful safe space despite what she's done.
And then you see how her actions have affected all
the people around her and how they're worse off because
they were trapped up in her lives. So you see
(34:57):
Chanelle who has got justice in a way because she
wanted to out Bell, but at the end of the day,
she's still feeling very guilty about not being there for
her best friend and the choices.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Her best friend died, plus like the woman who like
she spent in the house where it's like twenty.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Four seven exactly, So she's mourning the death of these
people and feeling like she'll never get that back. You
see Lucy going back into more traditional cancer treat Remember,
at the end of the day, she still has cancer,
and they really leave you hanging on what happens to her.
And then Miller flashes to her empty house and back
to her funeral scene, and so you're just left with
this this moment that her dad by himself. So every
(35:33):
other story, I mean, the series is meant to be
this big takedown of Bell Gibson. Also we thought going in,
but what it really is is showing how at the
end of the day she can come out a little
bit on top and every single person around her has
been touched by death or ill health or being let down.
So ah, I guess it goes to show like I
don't know, it's while that.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
It's like we talked about such sad themes throughout the show,
but it wasn't a sad show. Yeah, Like it was
quite fast paced and like upbeats because every time I
recommended it to someone, after I told them, no, it's
not mel Gibson Gibson, they were all like, oh, and
I'm like, no, it's not like that, Like we're not
a it's like a really sad story of like people
who like, I mean, some parts are sad, but it's
(36:15):
actually such a really good explainer. It reminded me of
the ANNADELVI. Yeah, it reminded me of that kind of format,
like very fast paced, like you don't really sit in
your feelings for too long.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah, I mean my only critique at the start that
there was sometimes too many storylines and too much happening,
but I felt the end it probably needed that many
characters and storylines to justify the overall message that they
were trying to send. Also banging soundtrack with Toxic and Vampire,
all shows that were like alluding to her behavior, playing
as like remixes or like songs throughout the show. So yeah, overall,
(36:47):
very incredible, And I think also the big conversation starter
has come out of this is that so many people
keep saying things like, well, thank god, that wouldn't happen now,
And I just think, have you not been on TikTok
oh girl? It was absolutely happened now. Like I think
maybe a lot of traditional book publishers and places like that,
just because they're so aware of the Bell Gibson story
and other stories that have happened, might sac check a
(37:08):
book more so now. But I think it's still very
possible for someone to build a platform like this because
people are still looking for hope in that same PJ.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
It's got to work over time for this one.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Well, Apple Side of Vinegar. It's on Netflix if you
haven't watched it, but if you come this far and
you haven't watched it. That's come on, binge the whole thing.
You can do it.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Thank you so much for listening to the Spill today.
If you want more from us, you can always find
us on our Instagram at the Spill Podcast. We post
a lot on there, give us a follow, and also
jump into our dms if there's something that you want
us to talk about. The Spill is produced by Kimberly
British with sound production by Scott Stronik and we'll be
back here in your podcast feed at three pm on Monday.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Bye bye,
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mama Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Hello, I'm m Vernon and I'm Laura Brodnick. And you've
probably clicked on this episode of the Spill because you
have seen Apple Cider Vinegar on Netflix and that's really
really good because there are some spoilers in this episode.
So the show has completely taken over Australian screens and
social media feeds. And it's a six part series that
(00:40):
stars Caitlin Diav as Belle Gibson, who's so well known
as the notorious wellness scammer in Australia. And the entire
slogan of the show is the best one ever. It's
a truest story based on a lie.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So in this episode we get into all the shocking
moments from the series, including what's real and what's not,
and when we tell you the real story behind some
of these scenes, honestly, you'll be shocked because it seems
too intense to be real.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
And if you like this episode, we've actually done another
episode on every thing That's happened and the massive fallout
from Apple side of Vinegar since the show has come
out from MoMA Mia. Welcome to the Spill your daily
pop culture fix. I'm m Burnham and I'm Laura Brodnick,
(01:26):
and today we have a very special episode. It's one
of our brutally honest review episodes, one of my favorite
of all time.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So if you're not aware what a brutally honest review is,
it is where we talk about the biggest TV show
or movie of the moment, something that we know everyone
is watching, but also something that has captured the conversation
across the world. And Apple Side of Vinegar has very
much done that. Just a little warning that we are
going to be talking through all six episodes. We're going
(01:54):
to be talking about things that happened behind the scenes,
the true stories that inspired the biggest moments, why the
ending should happen. So if you don't want spoilers, go
and finish watching it and come back and listen. But
I think from what we've been seeing from our audience,
every single person has already devoured this series, so we
should be good.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I mean, it's our national ride. It's like the story,
it's the story of the nation.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Well, it debuted at number five worldwide, in Netflix number
one in Australia, so we were primed and ready. So
Apple Side of Viningar obviously the story of Belle Gibson,
the controverversial wellness in NASA.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Mel Gibson, because every single person I recommended this show
too has been like, oh, I didn't know that he
had like a show about him?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Wait, who said that?
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Every single person I've been recommending this show.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Too before they knew what the show was about.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
I was like, have you watch Apple Side of Vinan
that I've watched about And I'm like, it's about Bell
Gibson And they're like, they think they hear mel Gibson.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Okay, well that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
So it's not about mel Gibson the actor, it's about
Bell Gibson the liar.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yes. So the Netflix series is inspired by the book
The Woman Who Fooled the World, which was written by
journalists Bo Donnelly and Nick Toscano. Obviously there are fictionalized
versions of them in the show. They are the two
journalists that originally broke the whole story around Belle Gibson
lying about being diagnosed with cancer, and they did that
by exposing the fact that she had lied about where
(03:15):
she was distributing the charity funds, which was nowhere, it
turns out, to herself. So the first reporting they did
was in twenty fifteen, and then they published a book
that had all their research in it two years later.
But it was also a bigger look at the wellness
industry and how Belle had used people's interest in the
wellness industry and how there were no regulations around it
(03:36):
to trick people, and the creators of the Netflix show
optioned the book, and then Netflix screenlit the series in
twenty twenty two, so now it's finally on our screens.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
When I first heard of Belle Gibson, like, I didn't
realize how big a deal this was until I watched
the sixty minutes interview.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Did you watch it live when it happened?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
You mean, yeah, yeah, I watched it live because it was, like,
I feel like, the most hyped up interview ever and
it went so viral, And I just remember so specifically
her in her like turtleneck pink sweater and just looking
so she looked just like very angry but also confused,
and she just never like straight away from her words.
(04:15):
She never said that she was lying. She just thought
that she honestly had cancer.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, that's so interesting. I definitely remember that interview going viral,
and I think that's why that out of all the
stories around Belle Gibson, when you see that sixty minutes
interview in the show, that's the one piece they've created
word for word, obviously because they have the audio and
there's no disputing what happened in the audio, but because
that's become her calling card across the world of people
know that story. It's interesting. I kind of knew about
(04:41):
Belle Gibson before it broke, not that I've ever been
part of wellderness cultureor anything like that, but she was
just being so hyped up by so many of the
publications I followed at the time, and you've seen the
series her going to like the Fun Fearless Awards and
all those kind of things, and like, I just remember
her being in magazines I opened and being on TV.
Really yeah, yeah, she was a big dealer. There's so
many clips circulating now. I was watching one with Sam
(05:02):
Armitage the other day. Again, not that she would have
known anything, like you just take it at face value,
and she's doing the morning show circuit. Bell Gibson and
she's just talking about her life in such a natural way.
And like she's talking about her app, which has been
translated into like five different languages, and it's just selling everywhere,
and her book is on every newsstand, you can buy
it a kmart, and like everyone's just fawning over her,
(05:23):
And why wouldn't you because she seems so natural. Like
I mean again, the book publishers probably should have checked
and the app developers should have checked about it. You
wouldn't expect the morning show hosts to check anyway. Getting
past the story of Bell Gibson because that could be
a whole other podcast. Actually, we do have a whole
other podcast or extraordinary stories all about Bell Gibson and
her life and her fall from grace, which will link
(05:44):
in the show notes. But let's get into the casting,
because I think the casting of Bell Gibson was always
going to be such a make or break and I
think people were initially a little skeptical, the people who
knew they were watching Bell Gibson's story, not Mel Gibson's story.
Those people were a bit skeptical over American actress Kate
Lindva being cast as Bell.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Initially, Yeah, I was skeptical as well, because she is American,
and I thought because most of the cast are a
stre so I thought they would have the main person
Bell be Australian. But she did it so well. Oh
my god, I was like one hundred percent believable. Even
like her mannerisms if you watch the comparison between the
real sixty Minutes interview and like the one that was
(06:25):
fictionalized on TV, her little like quirks and the way
she raised her eyebrows and even the way she like
blinks sometimes is exactly like Belle Gibson. I don't know
how she did it, but she absolutely nailed it.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, she did nail it. I think also having like
a big name but not so big enough a name,
that the casting of her overshadowed this series because I
think some people like we have obviously been long term
fans of Caitlin Diver because of book, Smart and unbelievable
and just like a lot of other different work that
she's done, but I think like a lot of people
might have been coming to her for the first time
in this so she was kind of believable as Belle.
(06:58):
Interestingly enough that the two other actresses are both Australian actresses,
but have found fame pretty much only playing until recently
American characters. I guess it's like if they can do it.
So Alicia didn't Ha plays Miller Blake. So a lot
of people would know Alisha from The hundred and one
of the best shows ever and Fear the Walking Dead,
but reason one of your favorite shows ever? No, no, no,
(07:19):
I'm a Walking Dead fan, not Fear the Walking Dead.
That's a different fandom. But she was on that show
for a very long time, and they're two big American franchises.
And then recently she was on The Lost Flowers of
Alice Hart, so she's doing a bit more Australian work.
And then Asha d very famously was an actress who
couldn't get a lot of work in Australia, and she's
talked about the fact that being a woman of color
(07:39):
initially shut her out of a lot of those kind
of soap operas or like kids shows. So she went
overseas and found huge fame on a great show I
would say the bold type. Yes as Cat and then
as returned to Australian has been starring and lots of
interesting things.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
She's got a very interesting accent. It's like a hybrid
version of American Australian and she kind of kept it
throughout the movie, like she didn't go a hardcore Australian accent,
and I thought that was quite interesting, Like no one
addressed that.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
The four kind of main females I thought were all
incredibly cast. Five, I guess if you're really counting in
Susie Porter as Tamara Miller's mother. And I think Susie
Porter's always.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Been Oh my god, she was so good.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
I've just she's one of those astrain actresses who's just
in everything but is not like an international name, but
has this huge body of work. And she was incredible.
And then Tilda crobham Hervey as Lucy I thought was amazing.
She played Helen Ready in the movie about her life.
And do you hate her because she's dev Pateel's partner, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
But because of her, like dev Ptel has been spending
a lot of time in Adelaide and Adelaide together.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
That's either here nor there.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
I wouldn't mind seeing bumping into him at like a
farmer's market or something.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, you might do, but he'll have Tilda with him
and she's lovely.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Thanks Tilda for bringing him.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I'd lied to welcome on the stage.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Shelle Gibson. It must have affected her that my book
was reviewed as better than hers. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Who's her Miller? She was diagnosed with cancer, so she's
consistently maintained. I have no reason to doubt her because
in her case it's true. It's funny my doctor said
you have brain cancer. He's a bloggie my life. She's
just like you. We do look incredibly well.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I've never felt better.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I have to find the right way for me. I
just got each other. Loved the session for all body goosebumps.
Thanks for coming Bell Bell Gibson the brain cancer right,
So we should probably talk about the character of Milla Blake,
(09:47):
who's also really set up to be the lead alongside
Belle Gibson. The creators of the show have said that
this was never meant to be like the rise and
fall of Bell Gibson. She was only meant to be
one part of it, and that's why it's called Apple
side of Vinegar. It's not named after her because they
wanted to show it as like how wellness influencers used
Instagram at the time but obviously because she is the
(10:08):
big name, we really have like hooked onto that. What
did you think about the disclaimers at the beginning of
each episode where they break the fourth wall, So like
the first time we see Caitlyn Diva do it where
she looks to the camera and said, some names have
been changed to protect the innocent. Belle Gibson has not
been paid for the recreation of her story.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Is there a reason why, like they do it for
every single episode, Like, is there like some contract or
legalities behind that? Because I was like, I liked it
for the first episode, especially because it was Caitlyn Diva
and she's still being bell where she says Belle Gibson
was not compensated for that, and she's like, of course
she was fucking wasn't that? Yeah, fuckers? But after like
the first one, I was like, I don't need to
(10:46):
hear this again.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
No, there's a reason they Actually there's two reasons why
they did it for every single episode. One is that
the creator and writer of Apple Side of Vinegar, Samantha Strauss,
thought it was just really important to include from a
moral standpoint, So she said she'd optioned the book and
she was going into production and she was writing the
script and she was talking to a friend whose partner
has brain cancer, and she said they were absolutely horrified,
(11:09):
Like Samantha, his friends said, horrify that she was doing
this show. And they had said, why would you give
this woman more oxygen? Don't you know what she's done,
don't you know what she's still doing? And is she
being paid from it? And that was the question that
Samantha found every time she talked to people about the show,
is that they all just assumed that Belle Gibson was
in some way involved or assumed that she had to
be paid for it in some way. And for so
(11:30):
many people, especially people who had donated to her causes
as we see in the show, and then like the
money never went to those people, People who had bought
her books and apps and you know, lost money and
they could have been spending on other things, or people
who followed her for years and felt tricked, or.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
People who could have just died from like following like.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Her by her saying I kid my cancer and using
this happy, beautiful woman and you're like, yeah, I could
have that. So people were really upset that they thought
she was profiting off the Netflix show, So they thought
they had to really hammer home in every single episode
that she wasn't just so people knew that wasn't happening.
But also the other big thing was the defamation part
of it. Obviously it would be kind of hard to
(12:09):
defame Bellgi.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
It's really confusing to me because, like they name her,
they go through a lot of things like in detail
of like everything that Belle Gibson has done, and I wonder,
like how do they get away with doing that? Like
how could they make themselves fit safe?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Well, one thing with defamation is that the person who's
claiming to have been defamed has to prove that a
publication is lying about them in a way that has
taken away their reputation. Obviously, there's a lot more legal lays.
This is just a very top white explanation.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Do they get away with it because she doesn't have
a reputation?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
No? No, she can't prove she has cancer, and she
can't prove that she gave the money to charity, and
she can't all those things. She can't prove. The other thing, though,
is that they keep saying this is a true ish
story based on a lie, and what we've seen recently
with a few shows, like namely Baby Reindeer is that
they say this is based on a true story, which
(13:04):
is why the woman who Baby Reindeer is about has
now been given the green light to go ahead with
a hundreds seventy million dollar defamation suit against Netflix because
they said this is a true story rather than saying
this is based on a true story. So every time
the characters in the Netflix show say this is a
true ish story based on a lie, names have been changed,
(13:25):
they're immediately deflecting a lot of the defamation because they're
not claiming it's real. Like and also a lot of
people like, we're going to go through the characters now
and say who's real and who's not. The creators of
the show haven't actually come out except for saying that
Bell Gibson is based on Bell Gibson. They haven't actually
come out and said a lot of these people are
based on the people who we have just been able
to piece that together because of defamation.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, there was one character, Miller Blake in particular, who
I remember we wrote about an influencer years ago named
jess Ainsko, and I was like, this is exactly the
same person, Like it's exactly Jess, And that confused me
because Jess was, like, I guess Belle's competitor in this
(14:09):
like wellness space of curing cancer through natural remedies rather
than like the clinical side of things. And she tragically
passed away from her cancer and she had the same
like Miller in the show had the exact same type
of cancer as Jes did. Jess's mother passed away from
going through Jess's like alternative medicine root, and then Miller's
(14:31):
mom passed away. So I was like, this is spot on,
but why would they change the name?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Well, that's the interesting thing with Jessica ames Co is
that the show has said that she's just one of
the influences that the character of Milla Blake is based on.
But when you look like you're saying, when you look
at the comparison, like, no, it was her, it seems
almost pretty much based on her. So in the show
we see her working in the girlfriend office, but in
real life she did work at Dolly. When being diagnosed
(14:57):
with a very rare cancer that does start in the arm,
she said yes to chemotherapy originally as Miller does on
the show, and then they have renamed the type of
alternative health medicine in the show from what she went
through in real life. But it was basically almost exactly
the same thing of the idea of like no toxins,
no alcohol, no sugar, coffee enemas. And that was how
(15:18):
Jess ains Coe became very famous, Like she was almost
became an influencer before influencers were really a thing, because
she was there at the birth of Instagram, but also
she started before Instagrayah, like she moved her blog is
where she gained so much traction, and then she was
able to parlay that fame as Belle did, into books,
into speaking to us, into winning awards. Alicia dem Nakara,
(15:40):
who plays her, said that she's meant to be an
amalgamation of different influencers, which we can obviously see.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
That ninety percent of one particular influence.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
That it's hard because a lot of Jess's blogs that
she wrote at the time have been marked a private
and the videos that she made, but a lot of
the work that she did is still around so you
can go and read it. And the way she talks
and her turn of phrase and everything is very similar
to the character. So they've really embedded that and as
you're saying the same thing with her like personal life,
like she was very much in love and married her
(16:09):
husband Talan, you know, before she passed away, and her mother,
who she was very close with, after she was diagnosed
with breast cancer, followed her daughter's health advice and that's
why she died. And one of Jessica's last blog posts,
which is horrific, as talking about how her body had
just deteriorated and saying that she didn't know how to
live in a world without her mother, which is kind
(16:29):
of like a you know, a story that we see
mirroat in the show, but they.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Also make her quite unlikable.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Did you think so? Yes?
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I hated her character, did you yeah? Interestingly I kind
of hated her more than Bell.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
It's interesting at different parts of the show, I really
dislike these women, and then sometimes I just felt so
much empathy for them, even Belle Gibson. Like so many
people who were going into the show, because obviously we
got to watch it a bit early, so many people
going into the show said to me like, oh, I
hate Belle Gibson. I can't wait to watch this, And
I had to say to them like it's not this
(17:03):
big take down of her that you think it's going
to be, Like she's humanized in a really interesting way,
is that, especially in the first episode where you see
her just this like lonely lost young woman who is
pregnant and has no support and has obviously come from
a terrible home excusing what she did. But I think
it's also interesting to sort of see that, like a
lot of people who do terrible things in life, like
(17:24):
they don't just appear out of thin air and act
that way, Like there's a lot of lead up that
goes there. Yeah, And I thought they did a really
good job of humanizing her. So by the time she
starts like lying about having cancer, I like totally understood
why she did that. Those graphics on the screen where
they have all the light and the red and the
gold colors that come out of her phone and like
envelop her in love when she reaches out for help online,
(17:46):
I thought was like a really accurate representation of the
dopamine hit you get when you get love.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
From social addictive. Like if you've ever had like a
piece of social media be validated by a whole bunch
of strangers, it's like you run on that high for
so long and you just constantly need the another post
to go as viral.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
And what part about Miller didn't you like just that
she wasn't saying yes to the cancer treatment or was
she kind of evolved as an influencer.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
I think it was when she brought her mom into
it that like absolutely destroyed me, especially the scene with
her dad saying to her mom, she's killing you. She's
going to kill you and she's like, no, I'm not.
It's so like hard and then like her mom And
this is why Susie Port I thought was brilliant in
this role when she said what kind of mother would
(18:32):
I be if I don't do this?
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I know?
Speaker 1 (18:34):
And like because she let her daughter do it so
and I'm like, that's so true, Like it's all so true,
Like it felt so real and it was just she's real.
The whole scene of her speaking about it just felt
so real and it was just so tragic and you
just knew what was going to happen and you were
just so scared that it wasn't going to happen, and
it does happen. It was just really sad, and that
(18:55):
just pissed me off about her like when my mom died,
I was like, I hate you.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I know the visceral anger I felt through watching this show.
It's quite surprised.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
I felt like we all toed on her on Collogist.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, like he was just so ancrying when he was like,
just to be clear, you will die and died. Oh no,
don't do it. But doctors have to sometimes use that
language so that there's no gray area. It's like when
a doctor comes out to tell you that a loved
one has died, they have to say they have died.
They can't say passed away, they can't say anything like
that because they've been taught to like use this language
(19:26):
that it sounds harsh, but it's no gray area. There's
no brain from misinterpretation of what that means. The idea
of her mother, Like, it was hard for me to
hate her as a character for that, even though I
was really angry watching it, because it's like she was
so close to her mother and loved her so much,
and the only reason that she wanted her to go
through that same healthcare situation that she had gone through,
(19:47):
that take that same wellness journey was that because at
that point in her life, she one hundred percent believed
that he had cured her. Yeah, and that's why she
was so hesitant, Like when they're in the hospital, that
scene where she's saying to the doctor, just so you know,
our family has a really bad history, and the family
doesn't have a bad history with doctors. It's just that
at that point in time, because she hasn't had any
scans to show that her cancer is growing until later on,
(20:11):
she thinks she's saving her mother's life, and she's willing
to like make enemies. She's willing to have her father
be angry at her. She's willing to use up all
their money because she thinks she's saving her mother's life,
which makes it so much more tragic.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
And I was thinking like, and it's so easy for
me to say, as someone who's like perfectly healthy Touchwood,
is that imagine what it could have been if she
had just done the surgery.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
But then I'm also like, you can't ask a twenty
two year old woman to get rid of her arm.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Essentially, It's interesting because after Jessica aans Co died and
there was a big public memorial for her that a
lot of people went to her father and husband put
out a release, and you know, a lot of it
was like thanking people for their support and talking about
what Jessica had meant for people. But they also included
a statement where they said, it has been reported that
a Jessica had received a certain type of medical care
(21:02):
and paraphrasing here that she would have lived and that
is incorrect. So whether or not that's incorrect or not,
I don't know. I wasn't involved in her medical treatment,
but I just thought it was quite interesting that even
like at the end of her life, after all that
had happened, they were still wanting to put out this
thing saying like, don't judge her for what she did,
because she didn't do the wrong thing, like that kind
(21:22):
of protectiveness on her. I want to build something meaningful,
the love.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I've recently been diagnosed with a third of cancer.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
It has ninety thousand blikes.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
She does not have this blame cancer.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Always know what you're putting a body.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Bell, It's a simple question, do you have cancer? I
want to destroy her.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
Something I thought was interesting is how they fictionalize this
kind of rivalry between Miller and Bell, which I guess
you did need to push the show along because in
real life, Bell and Jessica did cross paths, but it
was different to the show.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I read that Belle like also like attended her funeral.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Oh yeah, no, no, that funeral seems so that out
of everything in the show.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
I was like, surely this part.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Of the that part is so real. So I know,
I like, we have to how did she do? I know?
I put that story up on side because I was like,
the people need to know about this. So Belle and
Jessica first met at a conference they didn't know each other,
and Jessica's manager later on, this is all coming from
the book.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
It's Jessica's manager, the one who Chanelle is.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Oh no, no, this is a different job. Oh, Shanell
is a real person.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yes, we'll get to okay.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
All these stories of what was true and what's not
are coming from the original book this series is based
on because they interviewed a lot of people involved in
the situation and they said that Jessica and Bell met
for the first time at a conference where Belle came
up and introduced herself to Jessica, and Jessica later told
her manager and her manager as the one being interviewed
that she was very wary of her and felt a
(23:04):
little uneasy. But they did continue to have this Instagram
relationship after this, where they would leave comments on each
other's posts, you know, celebrating each other, love hearts, all
that sort of stuff. And then when she died, she
did attend her funeral, and it's written in the book
that her family and friends were like, one, how did
you know what was happening here? How did you know
where the house was? They don't know how she showed
(23:25):
up and how she's sobbing in the church when I
was watching that, because I went and looked up a
lot of these things later, I thought, surely this is
the fictional life. Pot Surely the real Bell Gibson did
not walk into that young woman's funeral and sob and
make it about her. But she did, and her friends
and family later said when they were interviewed that it
(23:45):
looked like she was trying to show that her grief
was more than everyone else, and that she was trying
to steal the spotlight. And it's also alleged that the
wake afterwards, again, how did she go? She went, and
she went into the bedroom like she does in the
show and tried to sob and like comfort her fiance
or her husband, her husband in real life and.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
It away so good where he was like, you gave
her the creep.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, she've had a full freak out and he was like,
get away from me. It's like obviously. But I also
think that that was kind of interesting that they took
this little nugget of what had happened in real life.
Is that Belle really seemed to idolize Jessica, or maybe
she didn't nihlize her, Maybe she just wanted she saw
this outpouring of like genuine love and affection that her
family and friends and followers had for her because she
(24:30):
was sick and she wanted to bask in that. And
they were both two beautiful, blonde, attractive women who had
made a career of these wellness platforms. But I thought
in the show was interesting how they kind of dial
that up so intensely, And I think you kind of
needed that to kind of push the story along and
show like just because everything is all light and fluffy
(24:52):
and we're best friends online, it's so much more brutal
behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
My favorite character in the whole show was I should
yeah now, oh my god. I thought she was like perfect.
I loved how she was acting as like the audience,
I guess the answer for the audience. Whenever we had questions,
she was like that person would answer it because they
used her in the different time slots right like right
from the beginning to present day where she's talking to
(25:18):
the journalist to like where she got swept away with
all of Belle's lies, but also being best friends with Miller.
And I think that she was a character that was
just kind of so angry that she also fell for it. Yeah,
and then she I felt like she had so much
weight on a chest for feeling guilty of Like I
felt like she felt guilty for her friend's death because
(25:39):
she just like left her to kind of fend for
herself with her juices and went on to support Belle,
who was at that time the more successful influencer. And
I think her portrayal of herself was so well and
how she navigated those friendships, because that would suck, Like
imagine being like one of the women who was like
perfectly healthy, who didn't actually have to like rely on
(26:01):
your life to believe these kind of things, and yet
you still fall for it.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, I know, that's a really crazy kind of event.
So she now Bill Gibson's best friend. Like, that's true.
The fictionalized part is her relationship with the Miller character.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Oh okay.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
So it's interesting that Belle and Chanell are the two
that have kept the names from the real life characters.
But I think why they've done that is that Bell Gibson,
everything she's done is on the record. And then Chanelle
was the main whistleblower who worked with the journalists and
who let everyone know what was happening. So you can
use her name in the show because she's on recorders
as doing this. So she first met Bell Gibson after
(26:37):
being signed her as an interviewee during our writing internship,
and they became really close and she worked a lot
with her. And then when she found out that Bell
Gibson was lying about her cancer and misleading people, that
scene where she gives her the opportunity like tell the truth,
like and tell me right now, and she doesn't happened
in real life. And when Belle continued to lie to her,
she made it the crying yeahhh. She made it her
(27:00):
mission to expose her lies. And it was really her
testimonial that really made it possible for those initial investigative
reports to go forward. The other thing that was true
is that Bell Gibson really did fake that seizure at
her son's birthday party. Was that true? That's true as well,
in front of her son, in front of her son
and everyone for like an extended period of time. And
(27:20):
that's another reason why a few people were just like
seeing it in real life. That's when it started to
kind of put off some warning.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Bells, Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
The stuff with her son I found absolutely brutal to watch.
I've got to say, I can't stand when kids are involved.
And that scene where he's looked in his room, which
is not a proven thing, is like key fictionalized. It
was just trying to show what happens when a parent
is and he was sick and stuff, and she takes
him too an alternative therapist who does the light and
sound machine, which is what Bell Gibson said, diagnose to cancer.
When she was found out.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Oh my, the light and sound machines absolutely sent me
the ten thousand dollar light in sound machine. What was
so sad for me and absolutely heartbreaking. Was one of
the final scenes of the series when she was with
her son and you just see how much kids pick
up and how much kids learn, and the generational trauma
(28:08):
in her family because I'm her mom wasn't a saint either,
like she had like a very troubled childhood. And her
mom has publicly spoken about Bell Gibson, like the real
Bell Gibson, some one has publicly spoken about her and
how she doesn't agree with anything she did. And that
scene with her son, how he had like his bandaged
arm and then he said he broke his hand like
while he was sleeping. Yeah, and then straight away she
(28:31):
was like, no, we can't like let this continue, like
we can't let this craziness that I've been going through
continue with like your generation and the generation after. But
that was so sad because I feel like in those moments,
because he was so young, she probably would have passed on,
like the seizure at his birthday party. She'd been like, oh,
he's too young to remember that. He won't remember that,
and my kids remember everything.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
They pick up everything, which is yeah, just another really
sobering part of the story. Also, her husband so hot Clive, Yeah, yeah,
that he was again interesting character again based on a
real person. Again, his name really was Clive. It's hard
to sort of tell if they're still together, because it's
very hard to find any information on Bell Gibson. Now,
we do know that she never went to prison at
(29:12):
the time of recording, she hasn't paid back.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
That's the while that she's never gone to prison, I.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Know, there's so many different like legalities there that make
that hard. She did join an Ethiopian community, I do
believe at one stage, and was seen wearing their traditional
dress and everything, but when the community was asked for
a statement, they said she wasn't officially part of them.
I think she's been photographed a few times allegedly she
has another child. Now it's so hard to say because
she's not. And also every single news outlet in the
(29:37):
world right now is trying to find her and contact her,
and no one's managed to speak to her. But she
did stay with Clive for a long time after this
all blew up, and I think seeing his story is
interesting too, because again I think the show humanizes people
in such a way that by the time he decides
to stay with her, like you almost do understand it, yeah,
which is really annoying, But obviously he's doing it for
(29:58):
the sun and for the family unit. He has and
he just feels that he'll go back into the world
alone and even if the life he has with Bell
isn't real, it's better than the reality he faces without her.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, that's so sad. But like they're still living in
like the mans, Like right at the end, you just
you still see them living in that match house and
the mansion, and you hear that sixty minutes is like
paying her seventy five grand, but that even though that
poor boy who actually had brain cancer needed sixty.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
It's a real story as well.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
You better give him that money, birl, But.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
She never did. That's another story that's pulled from Obviously,
there's a lot of families that were in that situation,
but it's not a real story. Yeah, there's one family
in particular who were working closely with her at the time.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Because I remember them from part of the interview.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, exactly. So they were part of the interview and
that's chronicled in the book that the show is based
on as well. And basically after it happened, mums like,
I'm absolutely blindsided. I thought this woman was helping me,
she was raising this money for my son who was
cancer and then none of the money showed up, and
I think like maybe nowadays, like people would get up
a gofund me and get that money back to that person.
But I think at the time and maybe that did
(31:02):
happen to an extent, But I also think at the
time people were just so shocked and angry and didn't
know what to believe, that it was hard to sort
of recoup that money from people who had already done donated. Yeah,
getting onto another really sad point in the show, which
I know there's so many, there's so many to choose from.
I mean, you hated hers, maybe you didn't care, But
I thought Miller's death was done in a really interesting way.
(31:22):
I also thought her character was built in an interesting
way that she's such a product of her time, of
that early two thousands when the show takes place where
she like loves Cleo, like she's a mad girl. Like
the clothes she's wearing are all of very of that hair. Yeah,
she's very obsessed with Sweet Valley High and one of
the main characters. I was like, that is a perfect
like amalgamation.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
They're like sitting on the laptop on the rock at
the beach was so tumble coded, but.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
He was so obsessed exactly. But when you see her
in that moment, I mean, when she tells her dad
and unwraps her arm, I mean, that's the most one
of the most brutal TV scenes I've ever seen, because
you think that he's going to be angry at her,
but then he's just obviously devastated. And I thought her
last blog post, which I was trying to find Jessaine
Coe's last blog post, and that it's all been taken down.
(32:08):
So but I do believe that she never wrote the words.
You know, if I could return to traditional medicine now,
I would. But again, I think that's part of the
fictionalized journey of Miller, of her coming out and saying like,
my final act is just to say I should have
done this, but this is where I am now. And
I think it's also like a really powerful moment where
she closes the laptop because you see all those messages
(32:31):
flashing up and people are being like, no, I've got
a cure, I know a healer, I know these. A
few years ago in her life, she would have jumped
on all those messages, but she just closes the laptop
and sits in peace, and we don't actually see her
pass away, but that idea of watching her close the
laptop is her death scene in a way.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah, And I think how like people perceived both Bell
and Jess at the time is evident through Lucy, her
character who actually has breast cancer and you see her
go on this journey of believing Belle and believing like
ultimate medicine to like kind of doing her own thing
and having like these big fights with the people who
(33:08):
love her who want her to just get better and
go the traditional medicine route, and then she just had
to go on that journey by herself where she did
like try it for a little bit and then she
was like, actually no, I want to go back into
chemo and like do it properly. And I think that
kind of was like a bit gave me a tiny
bit of hope that like not everyone's life was destroyed
by Belle Gibson. Yeah, like in who she Influenced.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, that's so interesting because that closing montage of how
the last episode ends has been like a little bit
polarizing in a way because obviously you could just keep going,
like obviously where she's found out is an endpoint, but
the story continued to roll on. So I think from
a creative perspective, it's interesting to know where to end
it and not do like, you know, flash forward to
where she is in twenty twenty five or something like that.
(33:52):
But in the closing montage, you see like Belle like
so happy in the sun. She's ex to this swimming
pool and you see she's with Clive and her son.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
That really annoyed me.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I know, well, it's meant to annoy you. It's meant to.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Show like she just ruined everyone's life and now she here,
she is in her mansion with her seventy five k
in pocket, just like not even bothered that that interview
is about to ruin like a reputation.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
That's so interesting because it's meant to annoy you. It's
meant to make you angry. That's what the creators have said.
It's meant to make you angry because, as they keep saying,
the show is not really about Bell Gibson. It's about
the wellness influence industry and how this is kind of
this big red flag for how you know, a lot
of times there's no regulations, you can't trust these people,
but people looking for hope so much they'll honestly believe everything.
(34:35):
And then you see Bell Gibson. We know obviously she
went on to like you know, lose money and all
this sort of stuff, but in that moment, you see
her wealthy with her family, haffy, and also completely healthy.
So she's in this wonderful safe space despite what she's done.
And then you see how her actions have affected all
the people around her and how they're worse off because
they were trapped up in her lives. So you see
(34:57):
Chanelle who has got justice in a way because she
wanted to out Bell, but at the end of the day,
she's still feeling very guilty about not being there for
her best friend and the choices.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Her best friend died, plus like the woman who like
she spent in the house where it's like twenty.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Four seven exactly, So she's mourning the death of these
people and feeling like she'll never get that back. You
see Lucy going back into more traditional cancer treat Remember,
at the end of the day, she still has cancer,
and they really leave you hanging on what happens to her.
And then Miller flashes to her empty house and back
to her funeral scene, and so you're just left with
this this moment that her dad by himself. So every
(35:33):
other story, I mean, the series is meant to be
this big takedown of Bell Gibson. Also we thought going in,
but what it really is is showing how at the
end of the day she can come out a little
bit on top and every single person around her has
been touched by death or ill health or being let down.
So ah, I guess it goes to show like I
don't know, it's while that.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
It's like we talked about such sad themes throughout the show,
but it wasn't a sad show. Yeah, Like it was
quite fast paced and like upbeats because every time I
recommended it to someone, after I told them, no, it's
not mel Gibson Gibson, they were all like, oh, and
I'm like, no, it's not like that, Like we're not
a it's like a really sad story of like people
who like, I mean, some parts are sad, but it's
(36:15):
actually such a really good explainer. It reminded me of
the ANNADELVI. Yeah, it reminded me of that kind of format,
like very fast paced, like you don't really sit in
your feelings for too long.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah, I mean my only critique at the start that
there was sometimes too many storylines and too much happening,
but I felt the end it probably needed that many
characters and storylines to justify the overall message that they
were trying to send. Also banging soundtrack with Toxic and Vampire,
all shows that were like alluding to her behavior, playing
as like remixes or like songs throughout the show. So yeah, overall,
(36:47):
very incredible, And I think also the big conversation starter
has come out of this is that so many people
keep saying things like, well, thank god, that wouldn't happen now,
And I just think, have you not been on TikTok
oh girl? It was absolutely happened now. Like I think
maybe a lot of traditional book publishers and places like that,
just because they're so aware of the Bell Gibson story
and other stories that have happened, might sac check a
(37:08):
book more so now. But I think it's still very
possible for someone to build a platform like this because
people are still looking for hope in that same PJ.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
It's got to work over time for this one.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Well, Apple Side of Vinegar. It's on Netflix if you
haven't watched it, but if you come this far and
you haven't watched it. That's come on, binge the whole thing.
You can do it.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Thank you so much for listening to the Spill today.
If you want more from us, you can always find
us on our Instagram at the Spill Podcast. We post
a lot on there, give us a follow, and also
jump into our dms if there's something that you want
us to talk about. The Spill is produced by Kimberly
British with sound production by Scott Stronik and we'll be
back here in your podcast feed at three pm on Monday.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Bye bye,
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