In today’s episode of Bingeworthy, our revitalized TV and streaming podcast co-hosts Mike DeAngelo and Rodrigo Perez dig into the rise and trend of tech grifter television which is all the rage at this very moment. Specifically, we discuss Apple TV+’s new series “WeCrashed,” which tells the true story of Adam and Rebecca Neumann (played by Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway, respectively), founders of WeWork, which grew from a single co-working space in New York to a global brand worth $47 billion in under a decade — until disaster struck. It’s a hilarious but also genuine and empathetic look at the hubris and greed of the WeWork grifters, their questionable-at-best business practices, and the love story that drives them to great heights (read our review)
We also discuss a similar series currently airing on Hulu, “The Dropout,” which stars Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos. In a similar vein to “WeCrashed,” it tracks the rise and fall of the Theranos brand, which touted the development of groundbreaking healthcare technology that would save lives, but oops, forgot what tiny major detail of it all: the technology they assumed they could create quickly, proved to be much more unfeasible and didn’t actually exist yet. Talk about the horse before the cart arrogance. (read our review)
After the conversation, writer/showrunners Lee Eisenberg and Drew Crevello stopped by to talk about bringing “WeCrashed” to the screen, not only because it was an interesting story but for a deeper, emotional reason as well.
“We got access to the podcast before it was even released, and we both devoured it, and we knew a little about WeWork,” Lee Eisenberg shared about their way into “WeCrashed.” “We had read a few articles, and the podcast really kind of wet our appetite. And the thing that both Drew and I landed on – the thing that was most exciting to us about even the prospect of taking it into a scripted limited series was the love story. It was the relationship between Adam and Rebecca. And, there have been plenty of rise and fall start-up stories that we’ve seen for years now but really what separated it for us was that dynamic.”
Of course, Lee and Drew were able to attract top talent like Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway to portray the famous or infamous Adam and Rebecca Neumann, but according to Eisenberg, it didn’t always feel like such a lock.
“Anne [Hathaway] is such an incredible dramatic actress,” Eisenberg said of Hathaway’s collaboration. “She immediately honed in on the things that she loved about our show, but the thing that was slightly bone-chilling at the time, but also incredibly intriguing was, in our first meeting with her after being very complimentary about our pilot, she said, ‘You haven’t cracked Rebecca yet.’ Which was terrifying because we were on deadlines and I was like, ‘Well, if we haven’t cracked her, A.) She’s not going to do it, and how will we finish the rest of our series?!’ But, we now had a collaborator because she did want to dig in and do the work with us. We dug more underneath the surface, and so much of what is so special about that character came from those early conversations.”
“WeCrashed” debuted last week and is airing new episodes on Apple TV+ every Friday through April. You can listen to the entire conversation below:
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