Belle, Milla, Chanelle, and Lucy’s tales unravel across a collection of Australian locales, with the country and its myriad regional social dynamics playing their own characters. “We had so many locations that took us from far-flung parts of Melbourne one day to the Dandenong Ranges the next,” says the writer, who was living in Melbourne during Gibson’s heyday and was introduced to her story by journalists Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano’s reporting for the city’s newspaper The Age. “We wanted to show Melbourne as an aspirational place to be.” What began as an investigation into Gibson’s charitable donations spawned an extensive book about her scam and the climate that enabled it; titled The Woman Who Fooled the World, it became the source material for Strauss’s Apple Cider Vinegar. Strauss (Nine Perfect Strangers), who is joined by some of Australia’s biggest powerhouses in front of and behind the camera, including co-writers Anya Beyersdorf and Angela Betzien, adds, “Everybody we met while filming seemed to have a Belle Gibson story. She had very long tentacles.” 

Taking on the thorny lead role of Belle is American wunderkind Kaitlyn Dever. “[When I first got] the email about this project, I thought they sent it to the wrong person,” the actor laughs. As Belle, Dever transforms, not only playing a convincing Australian but also inhabiting the range of Belle’s duplicitous personas. “Her accent work was extraordinary,” says Strauss. “It was a masterclass watching her and Jenny Kent, our accent coach.” Dever meticulously took apart each line, word, and vowel with the Melbourne-based dialect expert: “Jenny and I were seeing each other three times a week over Zoom and going over every single word that I say, kind of like I would a song, memorizing those sounds.” 

For Dever, the intensive accent preparation unlocked access to the shadowy, enigmatic Belle, allowing the actor to immerse herself in the character. “I love accent work in general, but there’s something about this accent in particular and how it allowed me to dive deep into someone else,” she says. “It was really helpful for me to separate myself from the character.” She understood how integral the country was to the legendary figure’s identity, especially working alongside such an exceptional all-Australian cast. “I knew I just really wanted to get every part of it exactly right, or do it as best as I possibly could,” says Dever. “I didn’t want to let Australia down.”

It comes as no surprise that Dever was able to pull it off, considering the incomparable range of credits she’s amassed over her decade-plus career. The actor got her start in acclaimed indies (The Spectacular Now, Short Term 12), before captivating with leading turns in theatrical blockbusters like the rollicking coming-of-age Booksmart and star-studded family dramedy Ticket to Paradise. She’s also tackled heavier subjects, taking on demanding roles in lauded series such as Unbelievable, in which she plays a teenager accused of lying about assault, and as a coal miner struggling with opioid addiction in Dopesick, which earned Dever an Emmy nomination in 2022. 

Apple Cider Vinegar captures a moment in the zeitgeist right at the birth of Instagram — the collective smoke and mirrors of social media and medicalization of new-age wellness — with striking specificity. For Strauss, however, the story was appealing because of its contemporary universality, that the ingredients enabling Belle’s story are just as pernicious today. “It’s 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,” Strauss reflects. “[With the title,] I 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.”