From ‘Ghislaine, partner in crime’, to ‘Who is Anna?’: the latest series and docuseries about real scandals

It is not the first time that the case of corruption and abuse of minors by producer Jeffrey Epstein has been reflected in a documentary series such as the one published by Netflix in 2020, ‘Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich’. The difference of ‘Guislain, partner in crime’ is that it focuses on what would be one of the secondary characters in the plot, but who really had a key role: Ghislaine Maxwell. She is the woman who appears in all the images alongside Epstein, a high-society woman turned madam for the tycoon. She is in charge of capturing many of the young women of the network, she is also considered a witness to the alleged inappropriate behavior of a member of the British royal family, Prince Andrew.

The docuseries explores the most unknown figure in this entire case, that of Ghislaine Maxwell, who just a week ago was sentenced to 20 years after being found guilty of five crimes. How does a woman from high society become Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile accomplice? What has become of her after her trial?

‘Who is Anna?’

And from one scandal we move on to another that has recently been reflected in the successful Netflix series ‘Who is Anna?’ In this case it is fiction and it is also set in the exclusive world of New York high society. Julia Gardner plays Anna Delvey, a mysterious woman of Russian origin who comes to the United States from Germany and introduces herself as a wealthy German heiress.. But nothing could be further from the truth, Delvey was nothing of what he said and, nevertheless, based on that non-existent fortune of 60 million dollars he managed to deceive the cream of New York society and even tried to obtain important loans. of the City National Bank and the investment group Fortress Investment Group. He didn’t get everything he asked for, but enough to get some bills paid.

Behind the idyllic image of luxury and glamor that Anna Delvey projected on Instagram, there was a trail of unpaid bills, hotel changes, loans from friends that he never paid and that allowed him to maintain the deception for a while. She was later arrested, tried and sentenced to xx years in prison. She is currently waiting to be deported to her country of origin.


‘The Dropout’

From one hoax we went on to another, but this one set in the business world of Silicon Valley. This Disney+ series tells the story of Elizabeth Holmes, played by Amanda Seyfried, and her company Theranos that promised to revolutionize the health sector with their diagnoses based on the analysis of a minimum amount of blood obtained without even needles. Producer Elizabeth Mereiwether (‘Single Parents’) brings to fiction the true story of a promising young woman who became the world’s youngest billionaire businesswoman in record time, but whose fall was as fast as her rise.

The idea of ​​a machine that would immediately test blood for a diagnosis sounded great on paper, and with that alone, Holmes managed to convince big investors who didn’t bother to ask for proof that it was possible to take the idea from concept to production. reality. And no, it wasn’t. The fascination for success stories with protagonists who achieve everything from scratch based on the example of Steve Jobs was, on the other hand, the ideal fuel and the rest of the story can be seen in the Disney + series.


‘Pam & Tommy’

Also on Disney + you can see the series that returns to one of the biggest sex scandals of the 90s. The theft of the sex tape of Pamela Anderson and her husband Tommy Lee Jones became the first viral scandal in the incipient era of Internet. Lily James and Sebastian Stan play the attractive actress and the musician in low hours who, with their fleeting courtship and marriage, fed magazines and gossip shows. Undoubtedly, the passage of time has left the necessary residue to return to this story with perspective and verify the injustice with which the events were treated at the time.

Fiction recreates how the couple met, but also delves into the story of the carpenter Rand Gauthier (in the real story he was an electrician) who perpetrated the robbery of the safe where the video was to collect a debt. Gauthier was nobody, he wasn’t in general, least of all to Lee Jones so self-absorbed that he didn’t even notice the robbery until it was too late. Especially too late for Pamela Anderson who was the actress of the moment and whose career ended since the video went viral and that then that concept was far from having the meaning it has today.


‘WeCrashed’

Apple TV+ also has its own series about the rise and fall of a tech business. A story with many parallels to ‘The dropout’, which in this case Starring Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto as the entrepreneurial couple behind the fall of coworking company WeWork.. It took just a decade for the brand to spread around the world and reach a value of 47,000 million dollars and then collapse in just one year.

Hathaway and Leto play the marriage of Rebekah Paltrow and Adam Neumann who managed to captivate Silicon Valley with their revolutionary vision and business philosophy close to the new age movement. They were the picture of charisma and yet no spirituality could save the company from collapse when the value of its shares began to plummet. His business ended up being compared to a pyramid scam that ranged from the real estate sector focused on renting coworking spaces, schools to train future technology entrepreneurs, and even the wellness sector with a chain of gyms.


‘Dopesick: Story of an Addiction’

Disney+ is also behind the series that fictionalizes the real scandal involving a pharmaceutical company, causing the largest epidemic of drug addiction in the history of the United States. Michael Keaton is the protagonist of this production that shows the fight against opioids of some anonymous heroes.

The miniseries is inspired by the book by Beth Macy and narrates the scandalous attack against public health by the pharmaceutical company Big Pharma, which marketed a drug intentionally concealing that it was addictive and devastated an already desolate mining community in the state of Virginia. A series of unsung heroes led the fight against corporate forces blinded by greed taking advantage of a national crisis and their allies.


From ‘Ghislaine, partner in crime’, to ‘Who is Anna?’: the latest series and docuseries about real scandals