Belle Gibson, the influencer who faked having cancer, told a remarkable story – it was all a lie.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_4_font=”|||on|||||” header_4_text_align=”center” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]
Words by Maria Lally<\/strong><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/02\/AppleCiderVinegar_Netflix_24-01-19_BenKing_22A4691-scaled.jpeg” alt=”Apple Cider Vinegar” title_text=”AppleCiderVinegar_Netflix_24-01-19_BenKing_22A4691″ force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″] Ten years ago, Belle Gibson was a beautiful, 20-something Australian mother who regularly shared with her hundreds of thousands of followers how she was curing herself of brain cancer. Not with conventional medicine, but with healthy eating. A hugely success- ful recipe app and cookbook called The Whole Pantry followed, alongside promises to pledge much of her newfound fortune to charity.<\/p>\n One line from her book read, \u2018I was empowering myself to save my own life through nutrition, patience, determination and love.\u2019 It was a remarkable story. It was also a lie.<\/p>\n In March 2015, investigative journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano broke the story that she hadn\u2019t actually donated money to charity. This led to the discovery she\u2019d never had cancer either. Her fall from grace was fast and furious. Her book and app were pulled, her horrified followers \u2013 many of them cancer sufferers \u2013 deserted her, and in 2017 she was convicted of misleading and deceptive con- duct and ordered to pay $410,000 AUD. Her current whereabouts are unknown.\u00a0<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/02\/imago91928513-scaled.jpg” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” alt=”Belle Gibson” title_text=”BELLE GIBSON MELBOURNE Belle Gibson centre leaves the Federal Court in Melbourne Thursday June” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″] This month, her story has come to Netflix with Apple Cider Vinegar, a six-part series created by Samantha Strauss and inspired by Beau and Nick\u2019s book, The Woman Who Fooled The World. It stars Kaitlyn Dever as Belle. Why was the show called apple cider vinegar, a health tonic loved by celebs who swear it improves gut health and skin tone? \u2018Because it\u2019s hope in a bottle, isn\u2019t it?’ says Samantha, who also worked on Nine Perfect Strangers, the TV adaptation of Liane Moriarty\u2019s book about an extreme health retreat.<\/p>\n She says she finds the \u2018allure of wellness\u2019 fascinating. \u2018Nick and Beau\u2019s book did a beautiful job of showing that while Belle was a cancer con woman, she\u2019d also spoken of having a troubled childhood, and had been lying about her health on skateboard chat forums from childhood,\u2019 says Samantha. \u2018They created a tapestry of Belle\u2019s life, speaking to people who had fallen victims to her lies, neurosurgeons, and de- tailing the history of the wellness industry.\u2019<\/p>\n The growth of which in the early 2000s, along with Instagram, lent themselves perfectly to Belle\u2019s lies that led to her ending up \u2018completely out of her depth,\u2019 says Samantha. \u2018At times I felt angry with her, but I also wanted to know what her core wounds were. What was driving her. I think she wanted to be loved and the more she spoke about having cancer, the more love she got back from her followers. But the stakes were really high, and she was playing with life and death.\u2019<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/02\/AppleCiderVinegar_Netflix_23-11-15_BenKing_0042-scaled.jpeg” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” alt=”Belle Gibson” title_text=”AppleCiderVinegar_Netflix_23-11-15_BenKing_0042″ hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″] In 2015, after her lie was uncovered, the parents of a young child with brain cancer came forward to report that Belle had been claiming to fundraise for their child\u2019s treatment on their behalf but that they had never received any funds from her. And a 2021 BBC documentary, Bad Influencer, spoke to cancer sufferers who had stopped chemotherapy treatment after following Belle.<\/p>\n Beau says the question he\u2019s often asked is, was Belle mad or bad? \u2018I think she was a little of both,\u2019 he says. \u2018But lots of people have terrible childhoods and don\u2019t grow up to do what she did.\u2019 Both Nick and Beau believe that while money was clearly a motivator for Belle, so was attention and sympathy. \u2018She also want- ed to be famous,\u2019 says Nick. \u2018She ended up be- coming more famous, or infamous, than she could ever have imagined.\u2019<\/p>\n And what of those around her? \u2018The grown- ups who should have been asking questions,\u2019 as Beau describes them. After the story broke, her publisher Penguin said it hadn\u2019t fact checked her claims. explaining they \u2018did not feel this was necessary as The Whole Pantry is a collection of food recipes\u2019 which they published \u2018in good faith\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″] Could a story like Belle\u2019s happen again? \u2018Social media companies have changed a little in terms of what they allow on their platforms, but all the factors that allowed Belle to succeed still exist,\u2019 says Beau. \u2018This could happen again very easily.\u2019<\/p>\n However, Nick says he takes solace from Belle\u2019s highly public downfall: \u2018It will give people pause for thought when it comes to those making claims about health cures. We know people who follow this sort of advice are often vulnerable, and the show captures so well the industry that flourishes around cancer remedies, and how they can give people false hope.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018It highlights the cancer scammers, the snake oil salesmen, and the Belle Gibsons, and shows them up for what they are,\u2019 adds Beau.<\/p>\n As far as they know, Belle is still being pursued for most of her outstanding fine. \u2018This scam really devastated a lot of people,\u2019 says Nick. \u2018They hoped she would have been made to pay back the money she made, but that hasn\u2019t happened as far as we know. That\u2019s a tough pill for her victims to swallow.\u2019<\/p>\n Apple Cider Vinegar is on Netflix now<\/em><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”] Photo: <\/b>IMAGO<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Belle Gibson’s story is currently being told on Netflix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":6970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"guestgrazia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6966"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6974,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6966\/revisions\/6974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}‘This could happen again, very easily.’<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” theme_builder_area=”post_content” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]