Still Not Over "Apple Cider Vinegar"? Here's Where the Real-Life People Are Today

Gibson originally claimed that she had several cancers, including those of the blood, brain, liver, spleen, and uterus. She also said that she turned to eating whole foods and using alternative therapies to cure herself.

Gibson built up a big following online, wrote a cookbook, and even launched an app called The Whole Pantry before she was exposed in 2015. A friend of Gibson's named Chanelle McAuliffe (we'll get to her in a second) ended up noticing inconsistencies in her story and alerted two investigative journalists at Australia's The Age of her suspicions.

Those reporters, Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, discovered that money that Gibson had promised to give to charity — 25 percent of her company's profits, to be exact — was never donated. Things unraveled from there.

Gibson originally tried to cover her tracks, claiming during a 2015 "60 Minutes" interview that she was misdiagnosed with cancer by a doctor named Mark Johns, who she said showed her fake scans to make her believe that she had cancer. She also said that she believed she had cancer until a few months before the interview.

But Gibson later admitted to The Australian Women's Weekly in 2015, per The Guardian, that she had lied. "None of it's true," she said. "I don't want forgiveness. I just think [speaking out] was the responsible thing to do. Above anything, I would like people to say, 'OK, she's human.'"

Gibson was investigated by Australian authorities and was fined $410,000 for misleading and deceptive conduct, according to ABC News. While her home has been raided multiple times, Gibson still has not paid the money she owes, per The Guardian.

In 2020, a video obtained by ABC News showed Gibson claiming that she was "adopted" by Ethiopia's Oromo community in Melbourne. She also went by the name Sabontu. "My heart is deeply embedded in the Oromo people, I feel blessed to be adopted by you," she said in the video. Gibson was asked to leave the community once her true identity was revealed, per Women's Weekly. It's unclear where she is now, although she's believed to still be living in Australia.

In the series, McAuliffe is a person in Gibson's circle who tips off journalists that the wellness influencer isn't who she claims to be. While she wasn't involved in the show, McAuliffe is a real person who actually had this experience.

She opened up to Stylist about realizing that her "best friend" Gibson was a fraud. McAuliffe said she first met Gibson when she was an intern who was asked to interview the influencer. "At the time, Belle was a viral influencer who claimed to be beating her terminal diagnosis by eating healthy foods and whose recipe app, Whole Pantry, had been snapped up by Apple," McAuliffe said. "She invited me to one of her events and we later ended up going for brunch, which turned into a series of brunches, and we became friends."

But McAuliffe said she realized that Gibson's cancer "was all a lie," noting that her first sign was that it was "weirdly difficult" to get information out of her friend.

McAuliffe also found it weird that her friend was "thriving" despite having cancer. "It made me feel increasingly angry and frustrated, but also a little like I was going mad," she said. "Sometimes I would feel like a horrible person for questioning my friend who had cancer. Other times, I would feel sick to my stomach when my gut instinct told me it was all a lie."

McAuliffe said she confronted Gibson and then gave a tip to a journalist who was doing a story about the influencer's charity work. "I sometimes wonder why she let me in. What did she get from me? So much of what she told me was a lie," McAuliffe said.

She's also posted about the show on Instagram. "I don't entirely feel comfortable around some of the ethics of this type of storytelling and how the truth has been distorted in the show," she said in her post. "I do really hope that the core of the important messages about this story isn't lost through the glamorisation of this show . . . Remember that there's been really vulnerable people in real life that have been impacted by this."

While Milla Blake is not a real person, her story appears to be heavily inspired by that of Dollymagazine editor Jessica Ainscough. Like Blake, Ainscough was a magazine editor and social media influencer who was diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma, a rare soft tissue cancer, when she was just 23, per The Guardian.

Ainscough's doctors recommended that she have her arm amputated at the shoulder as part of her treatment, but she refused and was outspoken about treating her cancer with holistic methods, earning her the nickname, "The Wellness Warrior."

Ainscough eventually wrote a book called "Make Peace with Your Plate: Change Your Life One Meal at a Time" and had a large social media following. She died in February 2015 at age 30 of cancer.

She wrote on her blog before her death that she had been "really unwell" after the death of her mother, per The Guardian. "For the past few months, I've been pretty much bedridden," she wrote. Ainscough died a few months later.

In the series, Lucy Guthrie is a cafe owner who is diagnosed with breast cancer. She originally undergoes chemotherapy for her cancer but starts to pursue alternative methods instead after being inspired by Gibson's messages.

While Guthrie is a fictional character, she seems to be inspired by Kate Thomas, a woman who participated in the book about Gibson's lies, "The Woman Who Fooled the World." Thomas has spoken publicly about Gibson's influence on her.

"I just remember looking at her hair and thinking it was so beautiful, and you're going through cancer treatment. And here I am, and it's fully out in clumps," she told "60 Minutes." Thomas said she was desperate to try something else after going through the pain of chemotherapy. "I was writing lists of grocery shopping that I needed to do with all these strange and exotic organic ingredients," she said.

But Thomas said her husband and mother-in-law encouraged her to continue with conventional treatments. "I honestly believe that conventional medicine saved me," she said. "It's not a walk in the park, but it got me here today, and I'm a testament to that."

In "Apple Cider Vinegar," Clive Rothwell is Gibson's partner who helps to raise her son from a previous relationship. Rothwell is a private person, but Gibson previously revealed that she and Rothwell went through a miscarriage together.

"She becomes visibly upset when questioned about this and refuses to discuss it, other than to tearfully deny allegations it was another false health crisis," according to a 2015 Woman's Day interview. Gibson also said that Rothwell was "supportive, but obviously devastated" when she revealed her lies.

Not much is publicly known about Rothwell, but it doesn't seem like he and Gibson are still together. Photos of him with another woman were published by The Daily Mail in 2023, but it's not clear if they were in a relationship. He also lives separately from Gibson, per The Daily Mail.

The journalists who originally exposed Gibson's lies ended up writing a 2017 book about Gibson called "The Woman Who Fooled The World."

Donelly is currently an editor at Bellingcat in the Netherlands, according to LinkedIn. Toscano is a business reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

Korin Miller is a writer specializing in general wellness, health, and lifestyle trends. Her work has appeared in Women's Health, Self, Health, Forbes, and more.