Apple Cider Vinegar star Susie Porter on the Belle Gibson story and the legacy of Wentworth
Logie-winning Aussie actor Susie Porter reveals why signing on to the new Netflix series based on the Belle Gibson story was a no-brainer and why Wentworth is the gift that keeps giving.
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Like so many people in Australia and around the world, actor Susie Porter was fascinated by the rise and fall of wellness influencer Belle Gibson.
The Logie-winning Wentworth star clearly remembers the inspirational story of the aspiring author and entrepreneur who claimed she had beaten her terminal brain cancer by using what she claimed was “nutrition based therapy” and how she parlayed that exposure into a cookbook and app, all the while claiming that she was donating to worthy causes and fellow cancer sufferers.
Except that she wasn’t. After an initial blaze of glory as a media and online sensation – fuelled by her breathless posts on the then-fledgling Instagram platform – her seemingly miraculous claims of survival and philanthropy were revealed to be a web of lies and in 2017 a federal court judge ruled that Gibson had “played on the public’s desire to help those less fortunate” and hit her with a $410,000 fine.
Porter particularly recalls Gibson’s car-crash, paid interview with 60 Minutes, in which she continued to dodge and obfuscate in the face of the evidence of her deceit, desperately trying to keep her empire afloat and salvage a reputation that was already in tatters.
“It was such a full-on thing that happened and I suppose the first thing would probably be of Judgement of her and what she did,” says Porter. “And then as time goes on, especially because there are a lot of people have been affected by it, you almost have some empathy for her as well that she may not have been the well-set person at that time.”
Given the stranger-than-fiction nature of the whole sordid story, Porter was intrigued when she heard that Gibson story was going to be made into the Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar, by See-Saw Films, the production company behind Oscar-winning movie The King’s Speech and TV hits including Top Of the Lake and Slow Horses.
Although the six-part, Melbourne-shot series is inspired by the book The Woman Who Fooled the World, by journalists Beau Donnelly and Nick Toscano, everyone involved is at pains to impress that fictional liberties have been taken and it’s not supposed to be a direct adaptation of events. Each of the episodes is introduced with a character saying that Gibson wasn’t paid and that “this is a true story, based on a lie”.
“I read the scripts and I was just really moved,” says Porter of the story that also puts the spotlight on the wellness industry, the rise of social media and misinformation and the sometimes uncomfortable nexus between the two.
“More than anything it’s about human beings and how we navigate life, how we navigate death, how we navigate illness and I think it’s a really interesting topic.
“There’s been a dramatic change over the last 14 or 15 years of the wellness industry on Instagram and YouTube and that sort of stuff. It was the birth our life that we live now, which is kind of online.”
American actor Kaitlyn Dever, star of Booksmart and Dopesick, is magnificent as Gibson, with one of the best Aussie accents ever produced by an overseas actor. Although they didn’t have any scenes together, long-time fan Porter was seriously impressed.
“It’s one of the hardest things to do, a really good Australian accent,” says Porter. “What a phenomenal actress she is. And also so brave to jump on a plane and come here and take on this particular character with an Australian accent takes a massive amount of courage.”
Sydney actor Alycia Debnam-Carey plays Gibson’s role-model turned rival Milla, a fictionalised version of Jess Ainscough, the alternative medicine influencer and self-proclaimed “wellness warrior” who treated her own cancer with a controversial and unproven mix of raw juices and coffee enemas. Porter plays Milla’s mother, Tamara, whose devotion to her daughter and her convictions comes at a serious cost.
Although the character is clearly based on Ainscough’s mother Sharyn, Porter says she didn’t do any homework by way of preparation and chose not to even read the book, rather finding inspiration for the woman who would literally do anything for her family much closer to home.
“She’s completely devoted to her child and her husband,” says Porter of Tamara. “She’s very selfless and very similar to my mum, who was a stay-at-home mum and basically dedicated her life to us. I have three other sisters so there are four of us all together and she was just someone who devotes their life to their families and I really admire it. What a loving, brave, selfless person I think she was.”
That said, having grown up “in a medical family” with a doctor father and nurse mother – and after losing a dear friend to cancer at the age of 41 – Porter says she’s attracted to “more orthodox medicine but with room for alternate”.
“That’s a very complex one isn’t it?,” she muses. “I think the wellness industry has a lot to offer but you have to pick and choose. Each side says they are right and I suppose you can get a bit from each. If I was cancer patient, I’d probably do the main treatments, but I would supplement it with a whole lot of other stuff. I would have the massages. I would meditate. I would have all the good food. I would use all of it. But I just think that people will choose to do what they want to do and you can’t stop people. You can’t really police the universe.”
As for Tamara’s blind devotion to a daughter who is determined to go her own way despite the nay-sayers, Porter admits that she too was a headstrong young adult. She was initially reluctant to tell her parents that she wanted to be an actor – “they were probably not too excited about that” – but she says they started to come around once she was accepted into the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Arts.
“But still I’m sure a parent would think ‘wow’, with so much unemployment and the ups and downs, I’m sure they weren’t that enthused, but they never stopped me doing it,” she says. “I think that would be the important thing and I think that you’d always want the best for your children, but I think it’s really important not to stop them doing what they believe.”
Certainly Porter’s decision has played off handsomely – she’s worked solidly on stage and screen ever since graduating from NIDA in 1995 in movies including Two Hands, The Monkey’s Mask, Little Fish and Gold and TV hits such as RAN, East West 101, Puberty Blues and last year’s acclaimed drama Plum.
But there’s one show that connected globally in a way that all her other projects didn’t. When Porter joined the Wentworth cast in 2017 it was already five seasons in and a cult hit around the world but her cold, calculating and sometimes brutal inmate Marie Winter quickly became a fan favourite. Porter has been a regular on the convention circuit ever since, appearing at Wentworth Cons in Sydney and Melbourne last year, as well as travelling to New Jersey to meet the faithful.
“It is the gift that keeps giving,” she says of the beloved prison drama.
“They’re just a very dedicated group of people and the show means so much to them that they see themselves represented and they just get so much joy and love out of it. These things have been going for quite a while now and I don’t know how many more years they have left in them, but it’s certainly a show that a lot of people will fly all around the world to meet us.”
Apple Cider Vinegar streams on Netflix from February 6.
Originally published as Apple Cider Vinegar star Susie Porter on the Belle Gibson story and the legacy of Wentworth
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