WeCrashed TV Review

PLOT: The true story of WeWork founder Adam Neumann (Jared Leto) and his wife Rebekah (Anne Hathaway), whose rise and fall briefly made their company infamous.

REVIEW: I must admit to being somewhat unfamiliar with the whole WeWork saga. I suppose part of it is that I’ve always either worked in a set office or at home, so the idea of shared workspace rented out on short-term leases always seemed foreign to me, although I suppose it’s a good enough idea. After all, the company itself did well at first and has survived its founder’s explosive rise and fall (I drive past a WeWork office every day here in Montreal – the company is alive and well).

WeCrashed is another in a growing wave of shows and movies profiling the often explosive founders of Start-Ups, with Super Pumped, about the rise and fall of Uber’s CEO, beating this one to the air by a few weeks. These stories are very evocative of our time, with fortunes that can be made and unmade very quickly. One day someone can be on top in pretty much any profession; the next, they can be so down-and-out that it’s unlikely they’ll ever recover

WeCrashed profiles Adam Neumann and his wife Rebekah, who built WeWork into a company that was so huge it was primed to enter into many other spheres, including education, with Rebekah herself the face of WeGrow. What went wrong? The rise and fall of the founders are examined here in a surprisingly empathetic way, at least in the first few episodes that I’ve seen, with it set to bow in weekly instalments after the first three episodes drop on March 18th.

Neumann is a colourful character that fits star Jared Leto like a glove. A larger-than-life personality, Neumann is shown to be a charismatic, attractive Israeli whose ambitions, initially, outweigh his business-savvy. We first meet him trying to peddle a communal living idea in New York as a way to offset rent, but he’s scoffed at by the grad students he presents the idea to, as no one wants to live in a dorm. Yet, there’s a germ of a good idea there, and Neumann is able to parlay it into a work experience, with him able to lure investors thanks to his pitch, almost effortlessly. It’s about the people he says over and over, telling one potential tenant, “I want you to meet your wife here.” For people that often work alone in remote jobs (something many of us do post-COVID), the idea of socializing at work is an attractive one, and the WeWork offices are shown to be beautiful.

Leto, who adopts a fake nose for the role that’s a lot more subtle than the prosthetics in House of Gucci, has the charm to make Neumann an attractive character. Anne Hathaway’s Rebekah is more cynical, with her initially thinking he’s a clown despite him pursuing her. She’s quickly won over when he realizes she’s being exploited by the head of a Yoga studio she works at, and he puts him in his place. He stands up for her, and she becomes both a convert and his most prominent champion. Interestingly, Rebekah, in real life, is Gwyneth Paltrow’s cousin, and the second episode partially focuses on her efforts to become a noteworthy actress in her own right, with her at one point looking up Paltrow’s Country Strong on IMDB with envy. Even at her wedding, she’s overshadowed by Paltrow, with all of the guests wanting to know if “Gwyneth is coming.”

The show begins with Neumann being forced to resign from WeWork thanks to the board of directors (with the great Anthony Edwards in the role). He’s taken aback, but Rebekah won’t let him wallow, telling him to stop pouting and get ready for a fight. Both Adam and Rebekah, while architects of their own demise, have attractive qualities, and WeCrashed doesn’t make fun of them too much (although Neumann’s love of the song “Roar” by Katy Perry and an oddball acting “choice” made by Rebekah in episode two will have folks guffaw). On the contrary, it empathizes with them to some degree, with showrunners Lee Eisenberg (of The Office) and Drew Crevello clearly not intending this to be a hit piece. 

Hathaway and Leto are great in the leads, and the fact that a limited streaming series can score two big A-listers like them proves how far the form has come. At one point, I’m sure WeCrashed would have been a movie, but the streaming limited series noe seems to be the default way to tell these grown-up stories, and the form works well here. They’re supported by Kyle Marvin, of the underrated indie The Climb, as co-founder Miguel McKelvey, who’s shown to be the guy who puts in the actual hands-on work while Adam is more of a “people person”. America Ferrera enters the series as a new partner for the company a little later but is absent for the first two episodes, which focus on the firm’s growing pains and initial launch. 

Overall, WeCrashed is a sophisticated, smart telling of a story that’s very much of our time. Companies like WeWork and their founders will continue to rise and fall, and this is an intelligent but empathetic look into how these things often go awry. It’s good entertainment, and an easy series to binge on.

WeCrashed

GREAT

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