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."
