Netflix’s new scripted series Apple Cider Vinegar stars Katilyn Dever (Booksmart) as Belle Gibson, an Australian cancer survivor who turns her story — and health-conscious recipes — into an online wellness empire. It’s a glittery, social media-studded addition to the streaming services’ breadth of scammer stories, like Inventing Anna and Dirty John, both of which rely on a key detail for their success: they’re based on a true story. And Apple Cider Vinegar is no different.
While social media’s relationship with the wellness industry is commonplace at this point, Apple Cider Vinegar situates itself in the early 2010s, at a time where influencers were just beginning to realize the type of career heights they could attain just by telling heightened versions of their own stories online. In the six-episode series, Dever stars alongside Alycia Debnam-Carey (The 100, Fear The Walking Dead), Aisha Dee (The Bold Type), and Tilda Cobham-Hervey (Burn), who all play versions of influencers, cancer survivors, and friends in Gibson’s corner who were betrayed or conned by the influencer. The project, created by Samantha Strauss and directed by Jeffrey Walker, also takes aim at the contradictions and self-delusion that propped up Gibson’s empire of lies.
Gibson has maintained that while she never had cancer, she was misdiagnosed and didn’t initially intend to mislead anyone. Now 33, she no longer has any public social media presence, and could not be reached for comment. The show states early — via a direct to camera from Dever — that she did not participate and was not paid for the project at all.
Strauss tells Rolling Stone she was inspired to create the series after reading The Woman Who Fooled the World, the book written by Beau Donnelly and Nick Toscano, the two journalists who first found out Gibson was lying. “I watched Belle’s 60 Minutes interview back in 2015 and was, like many, fascinated by her inability to admit she’d lied about having brain cancer and built a wellness empire upon that lie,” Strauss says. “[The Woman Who Fooled The World] was about more than the rise and fall of a cancer scammer. It was about the allure of the wellness industry, why we sometimes turn against western medicine, the accountability of the media, the lies we tell ourselves and what it means to be young women growing up in the digital age.”
When Instagram was launched in 2010, Gibson became an early participant. Under the handle @healing_belle, she shared a compelling story: She was just 21 years old, the Australian influencer told her followers, when doctors had diagnosed her with terminal brain cancer and given her four months to live. She proclaimed she was cured, not through chemotherapy or other modern medicine, but through a diet of healthy fruit and vegetables. People believed her, and the fame turned Gibson one of the first true wellness influencers. She turned her 200,000 followers into an app called The Whole Pantry, which offered clean recipes. Its success birthed an accompanying cookbook. But there was a big problem — none of it was true.
Gibson’s followers first began to question her story in 2014, while the influencer was promoting her book. Local Sydney media reported that several charities for which Gibson had claimed to raise money had never received any funds, even as Gibson maintained she was constantly donating and called herself a philanthropist. And when Donnelly and Toscano sat down with Gibson for an interview, she revealed that she didn’t have cancer. The backlash to Gibson’s revelation was swift, but the influencer continued to obfuscate details about her health. She claimed that she really did think she had cancer, but she had been misdiagnosed in 2009 and only found out recently that she was cancer-free. That directly contradicted the recent statements she had made claiming she underwent two surgeries for heart problems and had also been told her cancer had spread to her spleen, uterus, and blood.
In a 2015 interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly, Gibson admitted that none of her cancer claims were accurate. “None of it’s true,” Gibson said. “I don’t want forgiveness. I just think [speaking out] was the responsible thing to do.” She also had a sit down interview with 60 Minutes Australia interviewer Tara Brown, where she claimed she was going to eventually tell her audience the truth, but had been scooped by reporters. “Once I received the definite, ‘No, you do not have cancer,’ that was something I had to come to terms with and it was really traumatizing and I was feeling a huge amount of grief,” she told Brown. Brown also revealed Gibson was lying about her age. She claimed to be 26, but records said she was actually 23 at the time. In 2017, Melbourne’s Federal Court found Gibson guilty of making misleading claims about her charitable donations. She was fined AU$410,000, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and as of 2025, no publication has been able to confirm whether the fine has been paid, according to Elle.
In today’s creator economy, health content makes up a large portion of social media’s focus. According to Bloomberg, the global wellness industry is worth over $6 trillion dollars — thanks, in large part, to a widespread disdain for Big Pharma. Offering health alternatives is lucrative online — and influencers who post about their own health journeys can make more money the more wild their claims are. The very nature of anecdotal health content means that Gibson won’t be the last influencer to make false claims online. But her story can serve as a warning for people who are willing to believe outrageous claims online, even if the catalyst for it hasn’t been seen in the public eye since.
“Above anything, I would like people to say, ‘Okay, she’s human. She’s obviously had a big life,’” Gibson said in 2015. “She’s respectfully come to the table and said what she’s needed to say, and now it’s time for her to grow and heal.”
