Is Milla Blake In Netflix’s ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’ Based On A Real Person? – Forbes

Netflix’s new limited series, Apple Cider Vinegar, follows two young women, Belle and Milla, on their journeys to overcome life-threatening illnesses through health and wellness. While Belle Gibson was a real-life scammer who deceived thousands, is Milla Blake, her on-screen rival, also inspired by a real person?

Apple Cider Vinegar was created by award-winning Australian writer Samantha Strauss, who lived in Melbourne during the early 2010s when Belle Gibson’s real-life fraud took place. Based on the book The Woman Who Fooled the World by journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, the series explores how wellness influencer Gibson rose to fame on social media by claiming she had cured her brain cancer without using conventional treatment.

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In the early 2010s, Gibson falsely claimed to have been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2009 and given just six weeks to four months to live. She used her fabricated story to create a bestselling app and cookbook while failing to pay the charitable causes to which she had vowed to donate almost all of her earnings.

While Gibson is a real person, some characters and events in the series have been fictionalized, with several names changed. One character viewers may be curious about is Milla Blake, played by Australian actress Alycia Debnam-Carey. Blake is Gibson’s influencer rival who is sharing her authentic journey of treating her rare cancer through holistic dieting methods.

Is Milla Blake In Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar A Real Person?

Milla Blake in Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar is not a real person. Instead, her character was inspired by multiple wellness influencers, but mainly on Jessica Ainscough, a teen magazine editor who went viral for sharing how she remained in remission from cancer without chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

Like Milla, Ainscough was diagnosed in 2008 with a rare soft-tissue cancer known as Epithelioid Sarcoma. According to The Guardian, doctors advised that her best chance of survival would be to amputate her arm at the shoulder. She underwent chemotherapy, but when it proved ineffective, amputation was recommended again.

“I didn’t chop off my arm. I didn’t go into aggressive, full-body chemotherapy. I didn’t accept that my doctor’s ‘solution’ was the only course of action,” she wrote on her Wellness Warrior blog, per The Daily Mail UK. “I decided that I would do everything in my power to thrive in life, in spite of the looming expiration date I’d been given. I learned how to treat myself with absolute kindness & self-respect. I radicalised my diet. I systematically detoxified my body — and mind.”

Instead, Ainscough tried to treat her cancer with an unproven method called “Gerson Therapy,” which relies on a diet of “organic fruits, vegetables, and whole grains to give the body plenty of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and other nutrients.” The approach is based on the belief that disease can be cured “by removing toxins from the body, boosting the immune system, and replacing excess salt in the body’s cells with potassium,” according to the National Cancer Institute.

She branded herself as “The Wellness Warrior” and documented her journey on a blog of the same name. Ainscough also hosted events called “Wellness Warrior Events,” where celebrity wellness entrepreneurs shared their alternative health journeys.

Jessica’s mother, Sharyn, also adopted Gerson Therapy after being diagnosed with breast cancer, but she passed away in 2013. In a 2014 update on her website, Ainscough shared that her health had deteriorated following her mother’s death.

“For the first time in my almost seven year journey with cancer, this year I’ve been really unwell,” Ainscough wrote at the time, according The Guardian. “I’ve lived with cancer since 2008 and for most of those years my condition was totally stable. When my mum became really ill, my cancer started to become aggressive again. After she died, things really started flaring up.” She added that “for the past few months, I’ve been pretty much bedridden.”

In February 2015, Ainscough passed away at 29, seven years after her initial diagnosis. The following month, her fiancé, Tallon Pamenter, honored her with a heartfelt post on Instagram. “Jess I want to thank you for being my best friend, my biggest cheer leader, my greatest inspiration, my rock and the constant love of my life,” he wrote.

Were Belle Gibson And Jessica Ainscough Friends?

While Apple Cider Vinegar depicts Belle and Milla as having been friends at some point, this did not occur in real life. In the series, Gibson is shown running up to Milla after one of her lectures, and for most of the show, Milla is focused on exposing Gibson as a fraud.

Although they moved in the same wellness guru circles, The Woman Who Fooled the World describes their only significant interaction as a brief meeting at a conference outside Melbourne, where Gibson approached Ainscough about her Whole Pantry app. “In reality, Jess really had very little to do with Belle Gibson,” Donelly told Time.com.

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Gibson also attended Ainscough’s funeral and wept uncontrollably, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. At one point, she even called Pamenter into a bedroom and cried on his shoulder.

“Some guests seemed put off by it,” one person told the newspaper. “She was noticeably having outbursts.” Another said, “It was like she was making a point of being seen and heard. Like she was trying to prove that she was more devastated than everybody else who was there.”

Apple Cider Vinegar is streaming on Netflix. Watch the official trailer below.