Asher Keddie’s new series, Fake, is based on the true story of journalist Stephanie Woods and her relationship with a serial scammer.
Since premiering on Paramount+ this month, the Australian series is already getting people talking (and become more cautious about their online dating profiles).
While the series is chilling enough to make you delete your Hinge, how does the real story stack up?
Below, we share the true story behind Fake.
What Is ‘Fake’ About?
Fake follows Melbourne-based magazine features writer, Birdie Bell (played by Asher Keddie) who falls in love with someone she believes to be a farmer-turned-architect called Joe Burt (played by David Wenham) after meeting on a dating app. Turns out, he’s actually a serial scammer.
The series follows Birdie and Joe as their relationship progresses and Birdie begins to realise that her boyfriend might not be who he says he is.
How Does Fake Compare To The True Story?
Fake is based on Stephanie Wood’s 2019 memoir of the same name, which told the story of Stephanie’s experience dating a serial scammer who seduced and manipulated women to get what he wanted.
Paramount+ says that the new story is “inspired” by Wood’s memoir.
“Stephanie Wood poses the question; what leads people to deny their instincts? This inquiry lies at the heart of Fake as we journey into the depths of our protagonist Birdie Bell’s psyche, and explore how the narratives instilled in us from childhood create fertile ground for deception to thrive,” Kindling Pictures producers said in a statement.
The most obvious difference between the show and the book for Australians is that the show’s events take place in Melbourne while in real life, Wood was living in Sydney.
Since the show’s release, Wood has spoken about the experience of having her experience turn into a program.
“For years I’ve barely given a thought to the man who claimed to be a farmer and property developer, who led me to think he was a man of integrity and that we had a future together, but who turned out to be of no fixed address, morally and financially bankrupt, a man with a criminal conviction for a fraud-related offence in his past and another lover, maybe more than one,” she wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald.
Wood explained that watching it felt like it was “someone else’s story.”
“Already, in the weirdest of transmogrifications, if I think of my real story, Joe appears in my mind as David and it’s Asher in his arms, not me; this process, this big, crazy, star-studded thing, has further clouded my long-ago experience, laid down new layers of thought and memory like stratified sandstone,” she wrote.
Stream Fake on Paramount Plus from $9.99/mth, with a 7-day free trial.
This article originally appeared on Marie Claire Australia and is republished here with permission.
