How would you like to pay to work in a little glass office while a bunch of hipsters play table-tennis and go indoor rock-climbing outside? That’s the nightmarish dream that enabled Adam and Rebekah Neumann (Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway) to turn their little New York real-estate rental business into a $US47billion behemoth that masqueraded as both a tech firm and a social movement.
Then they ran into a spot of bother.
At first,viewers could be forgiven for thinking they’d mistakenly pressed “play” onPam&Tommy (Disney+). It’s 2019 and it’s quite the rock-star lifestyle that WeWork founder Adam is living – waking up hungover,he has a procession of servants keeping him in a very specific kind of domestic decadence.
But this is obviously a long way down the track. We’re soon whisked back 12 years earlier,to when the Israel-born entrepreneur was struggling to get a toehold in business – any business. Leto adopts a heavy accent and an almost bug-eyed intensity as Neumann runs about trying to sell onesies with knee pads for crawling babies,women’s shoes with collapsible high heels and – most presagefully of all – the idea of college-dormitory style communal living for people who can’t afford New York rents.
It’s around this time that he meets the aimless Rebekah Paltrow (Hathaway),daughter of millionaire businessman Robert and cousin of actor Gwyneth. She’s busy affecting an aura of aloof tranquillity while teaching yoga for a pittance,and the rest is about to be recent history.
The series,which is based on the podcast seriesWeCrashed:The Rise and Fall of WeWork by American journalist David Brown,is rich in detail when it comes to defining vignettes from Adam Neumann’s rapid rise. What it doesn’t do in the first drop of three episodes is give any sense of the charisma that you’d expect such an astonishingly successful salesman to have. From the very start he seems like a lunatic of the kind you’d cross the street to avoid – never mind investing in his company or joining his booze-fuelled corporate cult.
Rebekah is the more compelling and complex figure,and Hathaway gives a powerful performance of a woman tortured by a howling emptiness inside,one who despises her father’s phoniness but will say anything to get whatshe wants,and encourages her husband to do the same. Intriguing in a way you mightn’t expect.