In 2015, two young Australian reporters named Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano broke the story that would become Netflix's latest true-crime series Apple Cider Vinegar: Belle Gibson, a successful wellness influencer who claimed to have survived terminal brain cancer, was lying the whole time.
The new Australian miniseries, based on Donelly and Toscano's book The Woman Who Fooled the World, is the fictionalized story of Gibson's rise and fall, including the investigation that eventually brought her down. While a pair of fictional reporters are a major part of the show, creator Samantha Strauss also pulled from Gibson's real-life victims to raise the subplot's emotional stakes. Below, read on for everything you need to know about how Donelly and Toscano brought down Gibson in real life, including the woman who inspired one of the show's main characters, Lucy Guthrie.
Who are Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano?
Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano were both early-career journalists working for the daily Melbourne newspaper The Age at the time of Belle Gibson's rise. During a recent appearance on Sydney Morning Herald and The Age's daily podcast "The Morning Edition," the pair recall being unaware of Gibson and the wellness guru community before receiving a tip about the then-successful scammer in 2015.
According to Donelly, the tip on Gibson came from the pair's editor at the time, who passed along the contact for Chanelle McAuliffe, a friend of Gibson's. As shown on Apple Cider Vinegar, McAuliffe doubted Gibson's cancer after seeing how Gibson would often drink and frequent tanning salons. After Gibson faked a seizure at her son's fourth birthday party, McAuliffe confronted Gibson at her home and asked her to produce evidence that she had cancer. Gibson couldn't give any proof, so McAuliffe decided to go to the police and the press. (While the fictional Chanelle, played by Aisha Dee in the series, was Belle's manager and Milla Blake's childhood friend, in real life, McAuliffe was just Belle's close friend and not connected to Jessica Ainscough.)
On the podcast, Donelly recalls being initially "critical and almost dismissive" when he got on the phone with McAuliffe. However, after an hour of conversation, the reporter "came away fascinated." Upon reviewing Gibson's Instagram, he found that the scammer's claims were "really vague, totally inconsistent, or just seemingly implausible."
Per Donelly and Toscano, their reporting process was similar to how it's depicted on the show: Unable to initially report on her false health claims, the pair first published an exposé on The Whole Pantry's missing charitable donations before releasing another article casting doubt on her cancer claims soon after. After Belle's story went viral, the pair collaborated on The Woman Who Fooled the World, which later became the source material for Apple Cider Vinegar.
According to his LinkedIn, Donelly relocated from Australia to Europe in late 2017, eventually becoming a reporter for The Times. He now works as an editor for the Netherlands-based investigative journalism group Bellingcat. Meanwhile, Toscano is still based in Australia, working as a business reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.
Is Lucy from 'Apple Cider Vinegar' based on a real person?
In the series Lucy Guthrie, played by Tilda Cobham-Hervey, is a woman diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer, who begins to admire influencers like Milla and Belle. Lucy faithfully follows Belle's meal plans and even begins researching alternate therapy, eventually giving up chemotherapy and traveling to an ayahuasca retreat in Peru.
This causes a major rift with her husband, Justin (Mark Coles Smith), a journalist at a local Melbourne paper. In a bit of television kismet, Justin is one of the reporters who speaks with Chanelle, and his investigation and exposé of Belle is fueled by his desire to stop her misinformation from hurting actual cancer patients like Lucy.
Though the fictional journalists Justin and Sean (Richard Davies) are heavily inspired by Donelly and Toscano's investigation into Belle, neither of the real-life writers had a wife battling cancer at the time of their Gibson investigation. According to creator Samantha Strauss, the character of Lucy is meant to represent how the average person could have fallen for Belle's grift.
“Lucy’s us. Lucy is the people who could suffer because of people like Belle,” Strauss told TODAY.
Who is Kate Thomas?
For The Woman Who Fooled the World, Toscano and Donelly interviewed multiple people directly affected by Gibson's lies, whether they interacted with her in person or through social media. One of these subjects, Kate Thomas, has a similar story to the fictional Lucy.
Thomas was a newlywed and a manager at a Melbourne café when she was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in February 2014. Per Donelly and Toscano, speaking with "The Morning Edition," Thomas reached out to the journalists in the wake of their exposé, since she had been one of Gibson's fans. Thomas had discovered the scammer while amid chemotherapy; like in the show, Gibson was also a regular at Thomas's café.
"She was really hooked on Belle Gibson's story because here was a woman who had terminal cancer who was traveling the world [and] successful in business... It just couldn't be further from the truth for Kate's reality," the reporters explained on the podcast. "Kate had gone through chemotherapy. She'd had a mastectomy. She felt like crap...and so she was really drawn in by this."
Eventually, Thomas decided she also wanted to stop conventional treatment and manage her cancer through nutrition and healthy eating. However, Thomas's husband Nik Donaldson was adamant that his wife stick with conventional medicine. Donaldson's mother was a nurse, and she traveled to Melbourne to help him talk Thomas out of alternative treatment, which "wasn't an easy thing to do," per Donelly. Thomas decided to continue with conventional therapy and had just ended radiation when the news about Gibson came out.
In a passage from the book, per TODAY, Thomas told Donelly and Toscano that she felt "betrayed, duped, taken advantage of" by the scammer, while also recognizing her luck that she hadn't forgone conventional treatment.
“I just don’t know how she can live with herself,” Thomas told the authors. “People would be saying, ‘You’re such an inspiration, I’ve decided not to do chemo, I don’t want to put that toxic stuff in my body, I’m just going to eat healthy and do a juicing fast-type diet.’ Belle would have been reading those comments and knowing that people were stopping treatment. That is not okay. People are vulnerable—you would do anything to survive longer or to not have to deal with that horrible toxic stuff going through your body.”
In the series and real life, Thomas's story had a happy ending. Per TODAY, Thomas revealed in a May 2024 report that she was "clear of cancer."
