A tip from us to you – add Apple Cider Vinegar to your 2025 watchlists right now. We don't have long to wait now until it drops.
This six-episode Netflix series is taking on the murky world of health influencer culture – and what happened when a certain real-life influencer's brand was built on a lie. A full-length trailer has just dropped, and we're beyond intrigued.
It explores the true story of Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson (played by Kaitlyn Dever), who claimed to have cured her terminal brain cancer through various health and wellness-related methods – not through medicine – but it is soon discovered that Belle was never diagnosed with cancer, let alone cured. Her entire social media campaign around it, which encompasses her own app, social media channel and cookbook, is a fraud.
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It really lifts the lid on so many things: the fraudulent element of influencer and girlboss culture, the birth of the Instagram era and how it impacted us and how we think, as well as the toxic side of the health and wellness space. “It’s really interesting to look at how media uses food as a weapon against us and how much we crave the nourishment, but how much of a privilege and how expensive it is to try to be well,” the show's creator, Australian writer Samantha Strauss has said in an interview with Netflix's TUDUM.
Here's everything else we know about Apple Cider Vinegar.
Apple Cider Vinegar plot
Netflix's synopsis reads as follows: "Set at the birth of Instagram, Apple Cider Vinegar follows two young women who set out to cure their life-threatening illnesses through health and wellness, influencing their global online communities along the way. All of which would be incredibly inspiring if it were all true.
“This is a true-ish story based on a lie, about the rise and fall of a wellness empire; the culture that built it up and the people who tore it down.”
Is Apple Cider Vinegar based on a true story?
It is based on true events and inspired by The Woman Who Fooled the World, a book written by journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano – who reported on the story as it was happening for Melbourne newspaper The Age. That said, Netflix has stressed that some characters and events have been fictionalised. It looks at the rise and fall of a wellness empire, and the ways in which it was based on a lie.
Apple Cider Vinegar cast
Kaitlyn Dever (Dopesick, Unbelievable) will play Belle Gibson, while Alycia Debnam-Carey (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Fear the Walking Dead) will play Milla Blake, a woman who builds a platform promoting the power of food to beat cancer. The Bold Type star Aisha Dee plays Milla's close friend, who meets Belle and helps her grow her business. Tilda Cobham-Hervey (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, I Am Woman) plays a cancer patient who is drawn in by Milla and Belle's online presence and promises.
Also joining the Apple Cider Vinegar cast are Ashley Zukerman (Succession), Mark Coles Smith (Mystery Road: Origin), Susie Porter (Irreverent, Wentworth), Matt Nable (Transfusion, Last King of the Cross), Phoenix Raei (The Night Agent), Chai Hansen (Night Sky, The New Legends of Monkey), Rick Davies (Offspring), Kieran Darcy-Smith (Mr Inbetween), Catherine McClements (Total Control) and Essie Davis (One Day, The Babadook).
Apple Cider Vinegar release date
Apple Cider Vinegar will premiere on Netflix on 6 February.
Apple Cider Vinegar trailer
Watch below for a the shocking trailer. The series is set to be stylish and tongue-in-cheek take on this shocking true story. We can't wait for it.
