I have to admit, I watched the entire show in 24 hours. I couldn’t stop watching it! I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t even know the story.
Well, it was a real tabloid-y moment. The 60 Minutes episode was huge, but really, but it was really Nick [Toscano] and Beau’s [Donelly] book, they were the journalists who broke the story. And so it was reading that, that sort of solidified the series potential to me.
Kaitlyn Dever’s accent was probably the most realistic I’ve ever heard by any American actor.
Yes. It was really great because Netflix Australia, understandably, were really, really nervous about us casting a non-Australian. They were worried that we would get picketed by the Australian community (laughs). We met Kaitlyn and I think she’s one of those extraordinary actors of her generation, I just love her body of work. She started working with Jenny Kent [dialect coach] who is like a national treasure. She’s one of our great accent coaches and she worked with Dev Patel on Lion which is the other amazing Australian accent I think. And Kaitlyn and Jenny worked together three times a week over a period of weeks. Jenny was also on set with her all the time and it was astonishing watching them work together in between takes. Jenny would run in and adjust a vowel here or there. Kaitlyn was painless. She wasn’t that person who was like, ‘Get away from me, I am acting now!’ It was pretty fantastic to watch.
I thought it’d be interesting to talk to you about this for MiNDFOOD magazine because, as you know, they like to promote wellness, and Belle Gibson was pretending to promote wellness, much to the detriment of others. Do you see her journey as a cautionary tale?
I do. But I also don’t want to only be pro-medicine in this either. It was important to show that not all doctors are like this, but oftentimes in the medical system you feel like you are not being listened to or it’s difficult to get clear answers, or you feel like they are not looking at the whole body and the whole person. So, it’s very, very understandable why people want to run towards wellness. And the series ends in what I hope is this balance. It was always important for us to start and end the story essentially with Lucy (played by Tilda Cobham-Hervey) because she is us, she is the victim of fraudulent scammers like Belle. And Lucy ends up doing her yoga and her meditation and those things that are terrific and she also ends up in the chemo chair. It’s in that balance and that’s what I wanted to say with this series. It is up to the audience’s interpretation.
It’s incredible that Belle got away with this enormous deceit for so long.
Belle was at the very start of Instagram and she was able to capitalise on it. She had this supercharged platform and was able to go out to the masses in a way we hadn’t seen before. And now, I’ve been on TikTok just checking out about Apple Cider Vinegar, and there is wellness information and other information about the show, and [still] there are people selling you something. Even if it is coming from good intentions, it’s still selling you something.
Did you hear back from Belle or anyone around her?
No we haven’t. No, she has really kept her distance. There’s so much anger towards her in the online community. To be honest I found that quite sad. In the series, we wanted to show that she did something that was unforgivable, she pretended that she had cancer and that she knew how to cure herself. But we spent a lot of time thinking about what motivated her and what might have driven her and the love that she was looking for and also the culpability of the wider industry that enabled her, the journalists that published her stories without fact checking her claims and the publisher who published her book. She even had an app with Apple.
What’s the reaction been so far?
I’ve been receiving a lot of people who feel like they’ve been scammed by a wellness scammer and they are pointing me in different directions through emails. It’s something people care about very passionately. You feel often very alone in the medical system and you have to advocate for yourself and it’s very tempting to Dr. Google it and then doctors roll their eyes, but maybe they are not thinking enough about nutrition, maybe it’s corrupt. So we look to people who seem to be offering much care and kindness and what their modus operandi is and what their education is.
Tell me a bit about your career. You’ve done some huge shows, most recently, Nine Perfect Strangers. How did you start?
My first job that I created was Dance Academy, which was a sort of global sensation. We were so proud of it, we made 65 episodes and a film and it went to 180 countries. We still get fan mail all the time. It was beautiful writing for that age group with those stories that really do seem to matter. And since then I worked on some other people’s shows and then created a show called The End, and that was very much about the right to die and end of life and what makes life living. And that threw a few stones at doctors and how we give care and how you are taking away people’s autonomy at the end and the ethics surrounding that. I also worked on Nine Perfect Strangers which was a fantastic, huge experience for me and the opportunity to work with David E. Kelley and Jonathan Levine, the director, and the actors. It was life changing.
WATCH THE TRAILER: Belle Gibson’s Story Dramatised in ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’
What’s next?
I have another show coming out in March, which is The Last Anniversary and it’s another Liane Moriarty book and it’s her first one that is based in Australia. And then after that, I am off to do Grown Ups, which is an adaptation of a Marian Keyes novel and we will be filming in Ireland.
What advice would you give an up-and-coming writer wanting to break in? It’s a difficult period, but I imagine more so coming from Australia where the industry isn’t as robust.
Well, Australia is busy right now. There’s a lot being made and I think there are opportunities for new writers. On all of our shows we have emerging writers come in and they start observing and they start contributing into the writer’s rooms and hopefully create pathways that way. If you are sitting at home with absolutely no contacts, I think it’s writing the story that you can’t get out of your head, that you feel like you are the only person on the planet that has to write that. When I was writing Dance Academy, I did that for years and years and years before it got out and I just loved those characters so much, it felt like I would be doing them a disservice if I didn’t bring them to life. And so I think it’s just coming back to that. Sitting down and writing. And maybe not getting stuck on just one story and writing that one and then try to write another and another.
What do you love about writing?
When we hang up today I have got to go into the script for Grown Ups and that means dealing with a whole messy family so I can ignore anything that’s going on with Apple Cider Vinegar on the internet and I can just be in this Irish family. It’s good therapy.
