WeWork: the legend, the myth

Hi all, it’s Ellen in San Francisco. The story of WeWork’s rise and fall is now its own eight-hour TV series. But first...Today’s top tech n [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hi all, it’s Ellen in San Francisco. The story of WeWork’s rise and fall is now its own eight-hour TV series. But first... Today’s top tech news: - Sanctions have bankrupted the [delivery app Buyk]( - Amazon closed its deal for the [film studio MGM]( - 5G phones are now [more than half]( the market The WeWork drama For those who couldn't get enough of WeWork after [two]( [books](, two [podcast]( [series]( and [two]( [documentaries](, there’s a new version of the hard-partying startup saga to guzzle down — and this time, it’s dramatized. Jared Leto plays the megalomaniacal co-working visionary Adam Neumann, and Anne Hathaway plays his actress-yogi-spiritualist wife Rebekah Neumann in “WeCrashed,” the Apple TV+ adaptation that follows recent scripted treatments of other Silicon Valley fever dreams, [Uber Technologies Inc.]( and [Theranos](. The first three episodes of WeCrashed aired Friday, and I watched them with one question in mind: What’s made up and what’s real? I’ve covered WeWork since 2016 — and even made a [podcast series]( about it! — so watching the TV version felt like an Easter egg hunt that I’ve trained five years to do. (I may or may not have shouted at the screen once or twice, “That's not how it happened!”) The show highlights the relationship between Adam and Rebekah — which, after their rocky initial encounter, became a surprisingly grounded partnership in a rocketship business story. And the actors’ transformations are both oddly compelling: Hathaway dropped her voice an octave to capture Rebekah’s deep speaking tone, and Leto puts on a thick Israeli accent (as well as a nose prosthetic and dark contact lenses, though there’s no way to make him as tall as Adam’s 6-foot-5 frame). The show’s writers clearly had fun slipping in many of the eyeroll-inducing details of startup mania that came from real life: Adam walking barefoot on the sidewalk of New York City, WeWork labeling its office “Galactic Headquarters,” canoes full of beer cans at Summer Camp, excessive pours of 1942 Don Julio tequila, and metal water cups in the office that declare “Always Half Full.” There are more subtle touches, too. Just like in the show, the real Adam has trouble reading words but no trouble at all spouting off numbers when it comes to lease prices, square footage and revenue projections. At one point, he throws his arm jovially around a reporter and tells them, “This will be the best piece you ever wrote … You just tell me whatever you need.” When I [interviewed]( Adam a few years ago, he also assured me he would get me whatever I needed to make a good story. (He later called me by the wrong name several times.) Co-founder Miguel McKelvey, on the other hand, is relegated to a clueless punchline much of the first few episodes, even though many former employees saw him as a key architect of the company culture. Plenty of smaller details changed, too. In one instance, Rebekah talks a reporter out of writing a story that [was indeed published](. Sometimes, the mix of reality and fiction manages to capture an overall truth. In the third episode, “Summer Camp,” a fictional character joins WeWork and is immediately swept into the company’s annual summer offsite bacchanal, full of coworker hookups, jet ski high jinks and outdoor dance parties, accompanied by an early 2010s soundtrack from MGMT, the xx and the Naked and Famous. A nitpicker like me noticed the Neumanns arrive at the lake by helicopter in the show; in real life they arrived by sea plane while the Weeknd was flown in by helicopter. On TV, Rebekah steps on a used condom on the front lawn and employees joke about a “f--- closet”; in the past, staffers said they found [used condoms]( in the WeWork meditation rooms. For the arc of that episode, the writers mashed up two different Summer Camps. Yes, a New York Times reporter attended and [covered]( one of the summer events — in 2014. Yes, Rebekah really did say, on stage, that “a big part of being a woman is to help men manifest their calling in life,” but that was in 2018, and it was captured by a different [reporter](. As far as we know, there wasn’t a session afterward in which female employees chastised Rebekah — but the issues they brought up were real, like alleged [pregnancy discrimination](. It's one moment where the show moves away from the portrait of the Neumanns and gives the workers a voice. “You keep saying we’re a family,” one of the employee characters tells Rebekah. “But none of that is true. So please just stop saying it.” We’ll probably never know if anyone ever said that to Rebekah’s face, but based on my own reporting, I know plenty of real-life former employees who wish they’d had the chance to. —[Ellen Huet](mailto:ehuet4@bloomberg.net) If you read one thing The big fight over the future of app stores: Proposed new legislation is [pitting Apple and Alphabet against]( Microsoft and a long list of other tech giants. What else you need to know Fake LinkedIn profiles using AI images are a new [strategy for hackers](. GameStop reported a surprise loss during the holiday quarter. The company also said it would launch a [marketplace for nonfungible tokens](. Kanye West was [banned from Instagram]( for a day. What to listen to: The third episode of Bloomberg Technology’s podcast Foundering: The Amazon Story delves into Jeff Bezos’s [adventures in Hollywood](. Follow Us More from Bloomberg Dig gadgets or video games? [Sign up for Power On]( to get Apple scoops, consumer tech news and more in your inbox on Sundays. [Sign up for Game On]( to go deep inside the video game business, delivered on Fridays. Why not try both? Like Fully Charged? | [Get unlimited access to Bloomberg.com](, where you'll find trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Fully Charged newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. [Unsubscribe]( [Bloomberg.com]( [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( [Ad Choices](