The Apple TV Plus's miniseries focuses on the mutually delusional marriage that almost destroyed WeWork.
TV A professional critic’s assessment of a service, product, performance, or artistic or literary workJared Leto and Anne Hathaway’s ‘WeCrashed,’ about WeWork’s fall, is as essential as a WeWork in a pandemicJared Leto and Anne Hathaway as Adam and Rebekah Neumann in “WeCrashed.” (Apple TV Plus)On a good day in 2016, WeWork, the office-share chain, would only lose $1.2 million in a 24-hour period. Of the two, Rebekah, a vegan yoga teacher haunted by the kind of existential aimlessness that only those with no bills to pay can afford, is the slightly more sympathetic character; not a one of her several therapists can disabuse her of what she knows deep down to be true: There’s absolutely nothing special about her.“WeCrashed” never lets us — or failed actress Rebekah — forget she is a cousin of Gwyneth’s. But the show never leans fully into camp or cattiness, frustratingly stuck instead somewhere between dishy and humanizing (not unlike Leto’s “House of Gucci”). The New York-set miniseries spans roughly a decade, with the couple meeting-cute at a party Adam throws trying to gin up cash for he and his pushover business partner Miguel McKelvey’s (Kyle Marvin) first iteration of WeWork. As previewed in the pilot, Adam will become in just a few years the company’s most toxic asset. (When he’s about to lose their company, Rebekah gives him a few moments to process the news, then chides, “Are we done pouting?”) A perpetually underrated actor despite her Oscar, Hathaway — perfectly mimicking the real-life Paltrow Neumann’s patronizing noblesse-oblige contralto — brings coherence to a character who desperately wishes she had a core.The series’ strengths also include lavish production values and a diverting escalation in Adam and Rebekah’s ambitions and self-regard, which culminate in her starting a private school called WeGrow that’ll “feed our children’s souls.” But if you’re wondering whether you should just learn about the Neumanns’ outrageously expensive and extravagantly silly antics through the Hulu doc or one of the countless exposés about the couple, well, maybe you should. But perhaps because it’s from Apple TV Plus, the drama, based on the podcast of the same name, retreats from any larger critique of the tech industry (in one of the first, and certainly most prominent, instances of Silicon Valley putting forth a narrative about itself through television). So we’re back to square one, wondering why, other than the very big numbers being thrown around, ordinary people are supposed to give a hoot about demigods pilfering from one another’s Scrooge McDuck-like vaults.The best that creators Drew Crevello and Lee Eisenberg come up with is the delusion-fueled marriage between Adam (Leto) and Rebekah (Hathaway), an amoral striver and a coddled dilettante who bring out the best and worst in each other. Previous versions of this story, like the 2021 Hulu documentary “WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn,” have used Neumann as a poster child for the now banal (if no less correct) observation of how thin the line in Silicon Valley can be between visionary and fraudster. That figure would soon double, though, as co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann, its shoe-shunning master salesman, sought to “elevate the world’s consciousness” — his company’s official mission — by out-franchising Starbucks. But what does it mean to lose $400 million in a single year?
When Jared Leto last appeared in a TV series it was 1995 and he played Claire Danes' high school crush, Jordan Catalano, in ABC's "My So-Called Life.
"I just don't want to drag anybody. She wanted to take a holistic approach to education and also teach its students (who were as young as 2) to be young entrepreneurs. I think it's really fascinating to work that way and rewarding. I love immersive work, I love to dive deep with character. I mean, really, method was used to describe a certain school of acting — a certain approach — but it's become the default word to describe extreme approaches to acting or something that people think is weird. "The approach was the same.
Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway portray WeWork co-founders Adam and Rebekah Neumann in limited series.
Then, in less than a year, the company's value plummeted — and so did the dynamics of those running WeWork. "Anybody want to howl?," and they did. Alongside the couple were WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey and Cameron Lautner, an investment firm partner. "And I think that's normal. He completed the look with a white flounce shirt, mesh gloves and red boots. That was really appealing."
It's rags to riches to (relative) rags for the Hollywood stars as the husband-and-wife duo behind WeWork … and this deeply enjoyable schadenfreude tale will ...
Should we expect investors – who are, however rich, still human – to be able to resist it, or should we price in the possibility that they are at least a bit susceptible to promises so powerfully made? Neumann is about to be removed as CEO of his own company by the board (led by Anthony Edwards, playing a similar but more savvy version of his financier role in Inventing Anna, another show about the willingness of people to believe in a reality constructed for them by someone with endless chutzpah, nary a jot of documentation and barely more cash than that). The unicorn – the tech industry term for a privately held startup that gets valued at more than $1bn – is about to be severely hobbled. What WeCrashed doesn’t do is bring us much in the way of insight into the structures, systemsor mindset that allow this kind of extraordinary untethering from reality in a field that is supposedly full of the brightest and best number crunchers there are.
Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway are the ultra-rich, ultra-quirky couple atop. Created by Lee Eisenberg and Drew Crevello, "WeCrashed" differentiates itself by focusing on Adam and Rebekah's love ...
It's a shame that sometimes the writers get so into the weeds following every step of the WeWork journey that they miss opportunities to highlight more than just Adam's manipulations and crazy ideas. A serial entrepreneur (as he calls himself), Adam has several miracle businesses going at once, from baby clothes with knee pads to high heels that convert to flats. Leto comes to dominate "WeCrashed" (streaming Fridays, ★★★ out of four) which details how the company became a failed "unicorn," going from a $47 billion valuation to near bankruptcy in just six weeks.
Jared Leto, Anne Hathaway and co-creators Lee Eisenberg and Drew Crevello broke down their research on founders Adam and Rebekah Neumann and one of Leto's ...
That choice to stay in character on- and off-screen was also witnessed by those around Leto, as co-creator Drew Crevello remembered after starting the first few days of production with just Hathaway’s scenes, “In the middle of a shoot day, Jared — as Adam, with the accent and everything and this fully formed character — just walks onto the set and it was electric. Thank you so much, I actually don’t have the words so I’ll write them to you later.” “This is a dramatic portrayal and we take artistic license and so we really wanted to maintain some artistic independence and distance,” said Crevello of that decision.