Warning: contains SPOILERS for WeCrashed.
Apple TV+’s WeCrashed follows the true story of WeWork’s rise and fall, yet in the process, the show changes some things. WeWork is the brainchild of Israeli billionaire Adam Neumann—played in WeCrashed by Jared Leto—who sought to create a communal space for workers in a growing gig economy. Starting in 2008, WeWork was not the first shared workspace company, yet over time it certainly became the most well-known. Its eccentric, visionary leader coupled with its party atmosphere brought much attention to WeWork, attracting enough investors to eventually give it a $47 billion valuation.
WeCrashed is part of a long line of material that exists about WeWork. The Apple TV+ show is based on the Wondery podcast of the same name, and the past 2 years have seen the release of a Hulu documentary and two books about the company’s story. From Hulu’s The Dropout to Netflix’s Inventing Anna, limited series focusing on scams of the last 10 years are reaching new levels of popularity, and WeCrashed naturally joins its ranks. The series focuses on Adam Neumann and his wife, Rebekah (Anne Hathaway) from the moment of WeWork’s inception to its downfall, which eventually ousts Neumann as CEO.
WeCrashed is pretty accurate on many things, detailing the major points of the WeWork story and portraying how Neumann was perceived by his employees and investors. Everything from his partnership with SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son (Kim Eui-sung) to WeWork’s widely-mocked S-1, WeCrashed tells a story filled with elements that are hard to believe. Still, some aspects were left out and inevitable changes were made to the story in WeCrashed.
Adam’s Theme Song Was “Juicy,” Not “Roar”
One of the most famous Notorious B.I.G. songs from Netflix’s Biggie documentary is the rapper’s motivational anthem about his rise to fame and success from humble beginnings, 1994’s “Juicy,” which WeCrashed replaces with Katy Perry’s “Roar.” Bookending the series, “Roar” plays on Neumann’s demand when WeCrashed introduces him and is then sprinkled throughout before it closes the final episode out. Like “Roar” in WeCrashed, Neumann sometimes asked for “Juicy” to be blared on speakers upon his arrival at WeWork’s headquarters. The enigmatic Neumann built an aura around himself that he would expect his assistants to create via elements like Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy.” The song was so critical to Neumann that Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell’s 2021 book The Cult of We tells of employees sometimes having to endure listening to “Juicy” on repeat for hours on end after prepping the WeWork headquarters for his expectant arrival.
Adam and Miguel Actually Met At A Work Party
WeCrashed changes how Neumann first meets WeWork’s co-founder Miguel McKelvey (Kyle Marvin) by having the two meet after a venture capitalist meeting. In a Baruch College lecture hall with McKelvey in attendance, Neumann delivers his idea for a shared communal living space. While Neumann’s ideas don’t entice any of the VCs, McKelvey reaches out to Neumann afterward to tell him that he can acquire the necessary office space needed to house his startup ideas. From then on, the two develop the concept of WeWork.
In real life, Neumann happened to work in the same building as McKelvey and met his co-founder at an office party. The two bonded over their similar, community-based upbringing: Neumann was raised on an Israeli kibbutz and McKelvey lived on an Oregonian commune. Because of this, both valued the concept of building community in an increasingly isolated world.
Adam Met His Wife Rebekah Through A Friend
Like the Miguel-Adam introduction, WeCrashed changes how Neumann meets Rebekah, his wife and WeWork muse. Considered by Vanity Fair as the one who puts the “woo-woo in WeWork,” Rebekah Neumann is part of the affluent Paltrow family and has a penchant for the unconventional and spiritual. She studied Buddhism at Cornell University and, as shown in WeCrashed, was a yoga teacher in New York City when she met Neumann. In real life, Neumann met a friend of Rebekah’s from Cornell named Andy Finkelstein at a party. Finkelstein then introduced Neumann to Rebekah through a blind date. WeCrashed bypasses the middleman, removing Finkelstein entirely and having Neumann meet Rebekah at a rooftop party directly.
Adam Had Close Ties To Ashton Kutcher
According to The Cult of We, Neumann and Rebekah became involved at the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles and became connected to celebrities like Lucy Liu, Demi Moore, and That ’70s Show’s Ashton Kutcher. Kutcher, who became a venture capitalist in his own right, became a major supporter of Neumann and WeWork. When the SoftBank investment fell through, leaving WeWork to build its brand back up, Kutcher became an especially important asset that Neumann liked to utilize by including him in interviews and allowing him to speak at events. However, WeCrashed doesn’t touch on the partnership. This is understandable considering how the show is a limited series focusing on the Neumanns.
WeCrashed Combines Summer Camps: Every Major Change
As is necessary for a story about WeWork, WeCrashed includes an entire episode dedicated to “Summer Camp,” the annual mandatory company get-together that engages employees in outdoor activities in a music festival-like atmosphere. Because the event happened every year, WeCrashed episode 3 opts to combine multiple Summer Camps into a singular episode for the sake of brevity, therefore forgoing some accuracy. Episode 3 focuses on Rebekah, whose family relation to Goop Lab’s Gwyneth Paltrow starts to shine through when she is forced to deal with the legal troubles of her father, Gwyneth Paltrow’s uncle Bob Paltrow. Rebekah is tasked with writing a character letter for her father after he was charged with falsifying tax returns, which occurred in 2014. However, the simultaneously-occurring WeCrashed scandal in which Rebekah states that “a big part of being a woman is to help men” occurred circa 2018.
WeCrashed’s Summer Camp was held on property owned by Rebekah’s family in upstate New York, but WeWork’s Summer Camp was held at multiple locations throughout the years. At one point, it even happened in the United Kingdom. WeWork brought its employees together for motivational conventions and festivals, even gathering in high-profile venues like Madison Square Garden. WeWork’s loyalty-building gatherings like Summer Camp gave the company a cult-like aura that WeCrashed undoubtedly needed to express.
Elishia Kennedy and Cameron Lautner Weren’t Real People
In WeCrashed’s major character list, two particular characters stand out: America Ferrera’s Elishia Kennedy and O-T Fagbenle’s Cameron Lautner. These characters are fictionalized, despite WeCrashed being based on a true story, and are fabricated for different reasons. Ferrera’s Kennedy is the co-founder of the fictional juice company Raw Revival and is based on WeWork’s former chief brand officer Julie Rice, who was the founder of SoulCycle and was one of WeWork’s most valued employees for her experience. She helped globalize the WeWork brand before she decided to leave the company only two years later, which carries similarities to Ferrera’s character who left WeWork because of the unprofessional party environment and rising tensions towards Rebekah.
Meanwhile, Black Widow’s O-T Fagbenle as Cameron Lautner becomes a standout in WeCrashed for his gumption to ground Adam Neumann when Lautner is tasked with looking over WeWork’s finances to prep the company to go public. Lautner eventually replaces Neumann as CEO, taking the place of the real-life Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham, who were WeWork’s temporary CEOs before Sandeep Mathrani took the role permanently. Fagbenle’s character actually serves as an amalgamation of Benchmark partners, helping WeCrashed by turning multiple, otherwise minor potential characters into one central figure.
WeCrashed Leaves Out A Major “We” Company Venture
Even though it’s left out of WeCrashed, there are still hints of the We Company’s venture “WeLive.” In WeCrashed episode 1, Neumann pitches the idea of a dorm-like apartment community. In episode 4, Rebekah shows Neumann a whiteboard of brainstormed ideas for the We Company which includes WeLive. However, WeLive is not given any further depth in WeCrashed. Instead, WeCrashed smartly focuses on Colossal-influencing Anne Hathaway as she shows Rebekah running WeWork’s elementary school venture WeGrow to promote the We Company’s lofty, consciousness-raising ethos outside of the workspace. Otherwise, WeLive gets a more significant mention in Hulu’s documentary WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn to portray the dedication WeWork employees had to the company. WeLive was a short-lived venture, but it nonetheless captured the kind of far-reaching, expensive concepts that eventually got Adam Neumann ousted from his own company.