{"id":613,"date":"2025-03-31T00:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T00:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/03\/31\/kaitlyn-devey-stars-in-netflix-limited-series-apple-cider-vinegar\/"},"modified":"2025-03-31T00:12:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T00:12:13","slug":"kaitlyn-devey-stars-in-netflix-limited-series-apple-cider-vinegar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/03\/31\/kaitlyn-devey-stars-in-netflix-limited-series-apple-cider-vinegar\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaitlyn Devey stars in Netflix limited series \u2018Apple Cider Vinegar\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\u201cThe following is inspired by a true story. Certain characters and events have been created or fictionalized.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These words are written on the screen before every episode of \u201cApple Cider Vinegar.\u201d The show goes to great lengths to make this clear, even breaking the fourth wall to do so. In nearly every episode, a character will turn to the screen and speak directly to the audience in order to convey this message. Sometimes a character will say, \u201cThis is a true story.\u201d Other times they\u2019ll say, \u201cThis is a true-ish story.\u201d One character even goes so far as to say, \u201cThis is not a true story, full disclaimer.\u201d Although all these statements are seemingly different in meaning, they all convey the same general idea: \u201cApple Cider Vinegar,\u201d although based on a real controversy, is not entirely accurate.<\/p>\n<p>Netflix has found success in this true-ish genre before with critically acclaimed shows like \u201cBaby Reindeer\u201d and \u201cInventing Anna,\u201d all stories inspired by real life events but taking certain liberties in the truth for the sake of storytelling. It appears that with \u201cApple Cider Vinegar,\u201d Netflix is continuing this trend. The story centers around real-life figure Belle Gibson (Kaitlyn Dever, \u201cBooksmart\u201d), a popular wellness influencer who built a substantial online platform by sharing her health journey after being diagnosed with life-threatening brain cancer. Her fame and influence grew from her dedication to curing her illness through healthy eating habits and alternative medicine, going so far as to create a food-tracking app, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/technology\/the-whole-pantry-belle-gibsons-app-quietly-pulled-from-sale-in-australia-us-20150317-1m1234.html\">The Whole Pantry<\/a>. There was only one problem \u2014 she didn\u2019t actually have brain cancer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cApple Cider Vinegar\u201d features the narratives of four women \u2014 Belle, Milla Blake (Alycia Debnam-Carey, \u201cFear the Walking Dead\u201d), Chanelle (Aisha Dee, \u201cSafe Home\u201d) and Lucy (Tilda Cobham-Hervey, \u201cThe Lost Flowers of Alice Hart\u201d) \u2014 to tell the story of the 2015 controversy. As Belle grows her online following, she forges a competitive rivalry with fellow influencer and authentic cancer survivor Milla. Chanelle, a manager and lifelong friend of Milla, begins taking notice of Belle\u2019s many fabrications before piecing together the truth. All the while, Lucy struggles with her own mortality as she navigates her breast cancer diagnosis and is inspired by Belle to forgo conventional medicine in favor of alternative healing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>It is these four plotlines that make the true-ish element of \u201cApple Cider Vinegar\u201d abundantly clear. While Netflix treats Belle with great care and tells her story faithfully, Milla is a fictional character heavily based on real-life figure <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/monicamercuri\/2025\/02\/08\/is-milla-blake-in-netflixs-apple-cider-vinegar-based-on-a-real-person\/\">Jessica Ainscough<\/a>. Chanelle is based on a<a href=\"https:\/\/collider.com\/apple-cider-vinegar-netflix-true-story\/\"> friend of Belle\u2019s<\/a>, but is heavily edited to better serve the story, and Lucy is<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cosmopolitan.com\/entertainment\/tv\/a63703285\/apple-cider-vinegar-lucy-justin-real-story\/\"> entirely fictional<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On a narrative level, these decisions work strongly in the show\u2019s favor. Aided by a competent script and stellar acting from the whole cast, the four plotlines weave together a story that struggles to move through a timeline cohesively, often jumping from past to present at a nauseating rate. The rivalry between Belle and Milla sparks tension as the characters begin to parse through Belle\u2019s lies, and Chanelle serves as a connection between the two women throughout the stages of their lives featured in the story. Meanwhile, Lucy\u2019s story of entering, abandoning and re-entering conventional cancer therapy highlights the real-world consequences of Belle\u2019s actions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>However, the question of where the inspiration ends and the \u201ctrue story\u201d begins becomes a struggle the more you watch. Although inspired by real events, three out of these four characters have been heavily edited for the sake of the drama. Ainscough, the real-life Milla, never had a rivalry with Belle, and the pair only communicated briefly online.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s easy to wave these decisions off as prioritizing an engaging story over a complete and total recreation of reality. After all, this isn\u2019t a documentary, but a drama series. However, \u201cApple Cider Vinegar\u201d tries to have its cake and eat it too by attempting to tackle this issue within the show itself. In episode three, Belle\u2019s crisis manager, Hek (Phoenix Raei, \u201cTehran\u201d), turns to the audience and gives them the usual spiel: \u201cThis is a true-ish story based on a lie,\u201d he says. But rather than turning away from the camera and continuing the scene, he continues to stare into the eyes of the viewer and asks, \u201cDo you care? <em>Should <\/em>you?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This is where my mounting frustration with \u201cApple Cider Vinegar\u2019s\u201d identity problem began.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>As if embarrassed to be true-ish, \u201cApple Cider Vinegar\u201d attempts to use self-awareness in order to comment on the genre\u2019s shortcomings. The show attempts to add nuance to the genre itself while still existing within the genre. It almost feels like lampshading, attempting to mitigate any ethical concerns about narrativizing a real-life event by pushing the dilemma onto the viewers: Does it really matter if the story isn\u2019t true as long as you like it?<\/p>\n<p>A similar issue appears in episode six, where a 12-year-old Belle is about to enter the house of an older man. Before she closes the door, she turns to the camera and stops the scene entirely. \u201cNo,\u201d she tells the viewer, \u201cI\u2019ve already given you a trauma origin story \u2026 You don\u2019t need this. <em>Why do you want it anyway?<\/em>\u201d In theory, young Belle raises a good point that is worth considering: the media\u2019s obsession with trauma and our desperation to \u201cpeek behind the curtain\u201d of a person\u2019s personal life. But in practice, the showrunners have written a scene for the express purposes of telling the audience they shouldn\u2019t want to watch it.<\/p>\n<p>Frustratingly, \u201cApple Cider Vinegar\u201d asks its audience to participate in the discourse of whether or not it\u2019s right to tell a story in this style. It wants to insist on its fiction, all while using the actual name of Belle Gibson and following her life nearly beat by beat. It refuses to pick a lane, so it asks the viewers to choose for themselves, forcing the audience to be complicit in this moral quandary. In the end, this element of the story soured the experience for me and left a bad taste in my mouth as I finished the show. This was a tragic outcome, as the fictional story really did endear itself to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This is not to say \u201cApple Cider Vinegar\u201d is a bad show \u2014 in all of its fictional elements, I really do think it had great qualities: Dever\u2019s performance was a marvel to watch, many of the characters felt well-fleshed out and the unfolding drama was near impossible to look away from. It is to say, however, that the show is a terrible true story. And although the show avoids the label of true story like the plague, a true-ish story still feigns honesty.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Arts Contributor Ana Torresarpi can be reached at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/arts\/tv\/apple-cider-vinegar-another-true-ish-good-ish-story-from-netflix\/mailto:atorresa@umich.edu\">atorresa@umich.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe following is inspired by a true story. Certain characters and events have been created or fictionalized.\u201d These words are written on the screen before every episode of \u201cApple Cider Vinegar.\u201d The show goes to great lengths to make this clear, even breaking the fourth wall to do so. In nearly every episode, a character [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[624,625,621,620,402,622,623,466,626],"class_list":{"0":"post-613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-cider","10":"tag-devey","11":"tag-kaitlyn","12":"tag-limited","13":"tag-netflix","14":"tag-series","15":"tag-stars","16":"tag-vinegar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":615,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions\/615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}