TV’s Nine Perfect Strangers and White Lotus practice the art of the wellness take-down

The luxury lifestyle industry is getting some uncomfortable treatments.

A scene from The White Lotus just one of a growing number of productions satirising the wellness industry

In Nine Perfect Strangers, a new series arriving on Amazon Prime on Friday, desperate people arrive at a mysterious California wellness retreat in search of personal transformation. When a guest objects to the serene-looking staffers secretly rifling through his luggage, the possibly psychotic wellness guru played by Nicole Kidman looks deep into his eyes, unfazed.

“But you’re mine now,” Kidman (inset, right) says, “and you want to be mine.”

The wellness industry is either a saviour of lost souls or a force slimier than snail serum – maybe a little of both – in a new line-up of TV series, podcasts and books.

The business of self-care, estimated to be a $4.5 trillion industry by non-profit research group Global Wellness Institute, has taken the wellness lifestyle from the yeasty confines of health-food stores to glossy global brands. And to artists, it is ripe for skewering.

Nicole Kidman in Nine Perfect Strangers.

“We’re all looking for that easy quick fix that’s going to make us all better people, happier people, and the inherent ridiculousness of that quest is very interesting and amusing to me,” says Jonathan Levine, director of Nine Perfect Strangers, an eight-episode series based on a Liane Moriarty novel with a cast that includes Melissa McCarthy and Michael Shannon.

Levine, whose crew put a camera in a blender to capture reverent shots of smoothies, is quick to admit that he participates in the culture he’s critiquing.

“I will do anything for the promise of just being a slightly better person,” says the director, calling himself a “two-time-a-week therapy person”. He was intrigued by his therapist’s recent musings on the hypothetical use of the drug MDMA, or ecstasy, to address an issue in his family history. “I was like, ‘OK, if you think that’ll help me, I’m all in’,” he says.

Movies, TV and books have long featured scenes of gurus and spa treatments gone wrong; wellness has been in pop culture since the 1950s era of The Jack LaLanne Show. But in the era of Instagram and designer lifestyle companies like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, wellness has evolved into the ultimate luxury item.

The White Lotus, which is set at a Hawaiian resort – an HBO satire streaming on Binge whose finale aired Sunday – features a subplot that follows Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), a wealthy woman on a quest for healing who has come to Maui with her dead mother’s ashes. Tanya gets a massage from the spa manager, Belinda (Natasha Rothwell). After showing little interest when Belinda confides about the death of her own mother, she follows Belinda’s voice in a chant, buying into it even as the words turn absurd. “Every moment ... I am being born into this life,” Tanya says. “I will drop the story ... and feel the newness of each moment ... I am my own phallic mother ... I’m my own vaginal father ... I fill my own cup.”

She emerges euphoric and ­offers to help fund a spa for Belinda. Later, she backs off the idea, crushing Belinda’s dream – all in the name of her own self-care.

Comedy podcast Poog – Goop spelled backward – launched last fall with comedians Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak sharing their wellness obsessions. Between them, Berlant and Novak have tried everything from the Shangri-La diet, an antitaste regimen whose participants may avoid smells by using a swimmer’s nose clip at mealtimes, to foot pads that purport to suck out toxins via the feet.

“I love when someone tells me that something has changed their life,” Novak says in the podcast’s first episode. “A drink, a beverage, a powder, a tincture,” Berlant interjects. “A practice, a mantra,” Novak continues.

Justine Kay, with co-host Daniela Krasner, talks about the dangers of certain wellness messages on Zen What? The self-produced podcast unveiled last month examines the industry through the experiences of people of colour rather than those of the white women often at its forefront.

“There comes a lot of guilt when you’re being told the reason you can’t get thinner is because you’re not doing intuitive eating and you live in a food desert,” Kay says, referring to trends du jour.

Novels cast the wellness industry as consumerism bathed in essential oils. “How much can you trust a company that is promising to make you better when they also have a vested interest in taking your money?” asks Sheila Yasmin Marikar, whose novel, The Goddess Effect, about an exclusive Los Angeles fitness studio with hints of Get Out, sold last month to Little A, an imprint of Amazon publishing.

A scene from Nine Perfect Strangers.

To some, wellness is just a more elegant name for diet culture. And Instagram is its natural habitat. “We don’t talk about counting calories anymore – that’s not feminist – but we post videos of ourselves doing yoga in thong leotards, deadlifting in crop tops, relishing our vegan oat bowl,” says Leigh Stein, whose 2020 novel Self Care explores the dark underbelly of an online wellness community called Richual.

“I see the extremes so much more often than I see the moderation – extreme thinness, extreme fitness, extreme indulgence. I think that’s a function of the internet. I don’t see moderation because it wouldn’t do well with the algorithm,” she says.

Wellness bashing is an easy target these days, says Beth McGroarty, vice president of research at the Global Wellness Institute. “It is fascinating to see how wellness is represented in the cultural Zeitgeist as mind control, as dystopian and positively Gothic, always focusing on the most out-there solutions and therapies that make you shriek or roll your eyes,” she says.

The wellness world didn’t always grab the spotlight. “I remember in the ’80s, when wellness was someone’s mom who would be into gross health food bread or carob cake – it was very unappetising,” says Gabrielle Moss, author of the 2016 humour book Glop: Nontoxic, Expensive Ideas That Will Make You Look Ridiculous And Feel Pretentious. In the book, Moss offers an antiwrinkle treatment that requires becoming mummified and lying motionless in a sarcophagus, a pina colada colonic and a workout that involves whispering athletic-sounding words to a glass of water. A disclaimer tells readers not to try this at home.

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