WeCrashed Review

With WeCrashed, AppleTV+ joins the trend of offering up a miniseries based on horrible people who had tons of power and managed to ruin other’s lives. In this case, the horrible, entitled people are Adam and Rebekah Neumann (played here by Oscar winners Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway), the co-founder of WeWork and his wife (who co-founded WeGrow, but who is also the cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow – a fact that series trots out time and again in an effort to create some characterization for the character where there is precious little). However, unlike the significantly better The Dropout (which told of the rise and fall of Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes), WeCrashed is a series that lacks a clear point of view and can’t decide just what tone it wants to set when exploring the rise and fall of the Neumanns.*

*Considering Adam Neumann is still worth nearly $2 billion, I’m not sure fall is the right word to describe his tumble from WeWork. That being said, the story being told is of his tenure at the company, which ends in disgrace. So, I’ll go with fall.

When telling the story of how someone rose to prominence and then destroyed the financial futures of those who worked for them – and who had invested both financially and personally within the growth of a company – you have to be careful not to treat the subject like a hero, while also shading the character you are crafting from the real-life individual just enough so that the audience doesn’t immediately hate them and root against them. It’s a tall order. With WeCrashed, Lee Eisenberg and Drew Crevello miss the mark in their storytelling. Both Adam and Rebekah come off as unhinged and unlikeable from the word go. But we aren’t supposed to feel that way. Early on, Adam is told he won’t succeed with his idea by a rich entrepreneur, and when he manages to get WeWork off the ground and runs into that naysayer, we’re supposed to be happy he gets to tell him off – even when that act spirals and Adam comes off as a jerk as well. When Rebekah has her words twisted by a journalist, and then manages to maneuver her way out of some bad press, we’re supposed to be impressed with her ability to get shit done and her ruthlessness. But instead, she seems petty and image obsessed.

As the story continues and Adam and Rebekah become more insular and eccentric, the series plays as a black comedy. Only, as it juxtaposes their lack of understanding of their power within their companies – and how their actions can make or break their employees’ futures, the series becomes less and less funny. It’s easy to laugh when the oddball leading man is throwing money at things and manipulating the books when you don’t see how his employees are relying on the promised IPO to fund their lives (with the stock they accepted upon joining – worthless unless the company goes public). But when the show makes a point to explore how the little people are going to get burned? Yeah, that may drive home how incredibly narcissistic the Neumanns were in their businesses, but it also serves to take the kooky leading characters and turn them into full-on villains. In The Dropout, we were shown how Elizabeth Holmes went from cocky teen entrepreneur to CEO lying and scheming in an effort to protect herself from ruin. Here, we don’t get any such journey. Adam doesn’t grow as a character from episode one to the finale. Same for Rebekah. And, as a result, Leto and Hathaway are left playing stagnant characters who you just want to punch in the face.

Sitting through eight episodes, watching awful self-absorbed people never grow or change is exhausting. Watching them destroy those “below” them with little thought toward their welfare? Also exhausting. And watching a series that is telling the story of Macbeth as something to laugh at? That’s just tone deaf and bad writing.* There was a way to tell this story and tell it well. Leto and Hathaway do the best with what they are given (which isn’t much more than caricatures, with Leto chewing a lot of scenery and Hathaway trying for more layered nuance, but not getting the writing to support her), but not even their abilities can save this series from itself.

*It’s clear Eisenberg and Crevello were looking to make something like The Big Short – there’s even a sequence where a character breaks the fourth wall to explain what an IPO is – but boy, there’s not enough humor and no real characters to serve as an entry point into any part of that story here.

WeCrashed fails on almost every level to craft an interesting, complex story of the rise and fall of Adam Neumann at WeWork. Had the series opted for a straightforward telling of this story, I might be writing a wholly different review. But if you want to explore how one person’s greed and short-sightedness managed to screw people out of money, you have to at least give us compelling characters to follow on that journey. Watching these clownish, one-dimensional takes on two very real people who made some truly horrific choices that hurt a lot of people isn’t the way to do it.

WeCrashed premieres with its first three episodes on Friday, March 18 on AppleTV+. The remaining episodes will be released weekly. All eight episodes were provided for review.