Is Netflix's 'Apple Cider Vinegar' Based on a True Story? It's a Sour Tale About Fraud

In February 2025, Netflix is skipping the romance and opting for more true crime. Mark your calendars because that's when you're going to want to curl up on the couch with your sweetie and kick Cupid to the curb.

We suggest you pop on Apple Cider Vinegar, the six-episode series that dips its toes into the perilous waters of a scammy wellness influencer.

The trailer dropped in November 2024 and stars Kaitlyn Dever as Belle Gibson, a woman diagnosed with a stage four brain tumor who decides to treat herself using clean living. "I was on a quest to heal myself naturally," says Kaitlyn as Gibson. "I've learned to seek out what's raw and honest." Speaking of honesty, is this series based on a true story?

Here's what we know about this tart tale.

According to the trailer, the series is a true-ish story that is based on a lie. As with all works of fiction of this nature, "certain characters and events have been created or fictionalized," per Tudum.

The series takes place in the early days of Instagram, before messages and Stories existed and every photo had to be cropped to fit a perfect square with a specific aspect ratio.

The series was created by Australian writer Samantha Strauss (Nine Perfect Strangers) who was inspired by the book The Woman Who Fooled the World by journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano.

"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," said Strauss to Tudum.

Strauss also addressed the series' title, saying she "wanted something that would capture this idea of hope in a bottle and that could be a bigger umbrella than something that would relate only to Belle." If you've ever been on any sort of social media app, you've undoubtedly been told to try apple cider vinegar for any number of things.

While it absolutely has benefits, apple cider vinegar has become a sort of snake oil cure-all for certain corners of the internet.

Belle Gibson, whose real name is Annabelle Natalie Gibson, is the founder of the food app The Whole Pantry and did in fact claim to cure cancer via holistic methods. The blogger claimed that in June 2009, she was diagnosed with malignant brain cancer and was given six weeks to live, reported The Independent.

In her book, also titled The Whole Pantry, Gibson wrote that after two months of chemotherapy, she decided to try something else.

She began a "quest to heal myself naturally ... empowering myself to save my own life, through nutrition, patience, determination, and love – as well as vitamin and Ayurvedic treatments, craniosacral therapy, and a whole lot of other treatments."

After building a robust community of people who were following her journey, Gibson revealed in July 2014 that she had cancer in her blood, spleen, brain, uterus, and liver.

It was around that time that journalists began to question Gibson's claims and even spoke with friends who said they didn't remember her being sick. Then in an April 2015 issue of The Australian Women's Weekly magazine (via ABC News), Gibson revealed she had been lying.

"No. None of it's true," she told the outlet. She went on to say she didn't want forgiveness and did it because it was the responsible thing to do.