'WeCrashed': Jared Leto told ex-WeWork CEO Adam Neumann to not watch AppleTV+ show in 'top secret meeting'

Jared Leto is almost unrecognizable, alongside Anne Hathaway, in the captivating new series WeCrashed, based on the scandal surrounding WeWork founder Adam Neumann and his wife Rebekah, now on AppleTV+.

“I do think when you play a real person, you have a responsibility to do the diligence, to do the work to try to bring an idea of that person to screen in as accurate a way as possible,” Leto explained. “It's never going to be that person, it's going to be a painting not a photograph,…but you hope to capture some spirit, some sort of essence of who they were.”

“I don't worry too much about making someone like me, I think it's kind of a waste of time. I did meet with Adam before this, we had kind of this top secret meeting and I told him not to watch the show because it's going to be critical of his life. It examines not only successes, it examines his failures, and you can't do that without some criticism and exploration.”

Many city dwellers around the world will have seen, if not experience, a WeWork communal working space, but WeCrashed, based on the six-part audio series “WeCrashed: The Rise and Fall of WeWork,” tells the story about the rise of Adam creating one of the most valuable start-ups, and when things started getting out of control, resulting in him ultimately stepping down as chief executive of the company.

Alongside the corporate scandal is the evolution of the love story between Adam Neumann and Rebekah Paltrow Neumann (yes, cousin to Gwyneth Paltrow), who was an aspiring actor and yoga instructor in the early days of their relationship.

As Adam’s persistence continues, Rebekah essentially becomes Adam’s muse who also pushes him to believe in himself and his ideas more and more, building his confidence, some may say, too much.

“You’re a supernova,” Rebekah consistently tells Adam when he is under pressure.

“I don't think Adam would have been able to do it without her, I think Adam would be the first person to say that, and I think he would mean it,” Anne Hathaway said. “I think Rebecca was absolutely crucial in his development as a successful entrepreneur.”

“She was the person that got him to focus, that got him to share his vision and I think also, she was responsible for giving him a lot of the language that at least initially allowed him to connect with people.”

As the financial situation with WeWork got dicey, with Adam pushing to expand faster and faster, which then requires money from more investors to pay for that expansion, not only was the WeWork founder pushed into the spotlight, but media coverage of the “rise and fall” of the CEO shifted to reports of Rebekah firing employees because she didn’t like their “energy" and other oddities related to the perception that she was pushing her spirituality into We operations.

“Whenever I play a character, whether or not it's a real person or not, I always have to be very mindful that I don't judge them,” Hathaway explained. "In this case, I was very lucky to speak to a lot of people who knew Rebekah."

"Based on the media reports of her, I kind of thought I knew what to expect when speaking with them and the word almost everybody used to describe her was ‘sweet,’ and you could have knocked me over with a feather, I was so surprised to hear that. But I just remember thinking that this is a very complex person and I felt even greater resolve, just kind of on a human-to-human level, to really give her the dimensionality that she does have and to kind of respect the truth where it lay.”

Jared Leto, Anne Hathaway are the perfect pair for 'WeCrashed'

Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway are a perfect pairing for these characters, tackling the WeWork narrative alongside a real love story. Leto and Hathaway expertly show the dynamics of people who could easily be completely villainized within the context of the story.

For Leto, being the iconic immersive actor that he is, that process very much shines through in this performance, from Adam's mannerisms, to his voice and look.

“I really enjoy immersive work, I love character work, I love to be challenged beyond a reasonable amount and I find there to be great reward in that, and I also find it to be really fun, which is something that people don't talk about, probably enough, but it's really fun to work this way,” the actor said.

“I think the voice is a big key into the character here, not just his accent, the dialect, but the way that he spoke with that passion and purpose, and that assertiveness, the way he willed his dreams to reality… For me, I'm interested to know everything about a character. I want to know, what his favourite colour is, I want to know what his breath smells like,...there's no detail too small and it's all informative, and all important.”

'They're not criminals but there are still plenty of moral and ethical questions'

Unlike other “fall from grace” shows and movies in a similar vein, what makes this series particularly unique is that there isn’t a massive crime in the centre of the story.

“What interested us about WeWork, it's not a case where you can kind of wag your finger and say, these are bad people,” co-writer, co-executive producer Drew Crevello said. “They did many things that I would have done in the same situation, they also did many things I would not have done in that same situation.”

“There's this WeWork story, this legend, how in 12 minutes he gave a tour to [SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son] and got $4.4 billion. Well, the flip side of that is somebody went on a tour and after 12 minutes, they gave someone $4.4 billion. So it's not just a story about one man's salesmanship, or him being some kind of fraud, it's why would you ever give that much money to someone, and in such fantastic amounts? So that's why, no, they're not criminals but there are still plenty of moral and ethical questions about Adam and Rebekah, and about where we are in terms of our culture, venture capitalism, and all the rest.”

Another aspect of WeCrashed that makes that series standout from the pack is that it’s actually quite fun to watch, which you may expect with co-writer and co-executive producer Lee Eisenberg involved, who held the same roles on The Office, working alongside Crevello in WeCrashed.

“We really kind of tried to play it fairly straight, both the moments that were humorous, and the moments that are a little more emotional, we felt that by doing that, it would make the funny stuff funnier, and the emotional stuff more emotional,” Crevello said. “To us, the best version of that is when they exist side-by-side and so, we're kind of whipsawing you from one emotion to another.”

An example that Crevello highlighted, and is truly a perfect example of bridging comedy and more serious aspects of the story together, is when Rebekah uses a floor of the first WeWork location for a performance of Anton Chekhov’s play “The Three Sisters.” Unexpectedly, Rebekah decides to perform with a quite an extreme Russian accent, embarrassing herself, which leads to her breakdown following the show.

“It's humorous and we think that Anne’s performances laugh out loud funny, but it's really not to just mock Rebekah, right, or take an easy shot at her, the point of that scene is to set up the next scene, where she's sobbing in the stairwell,” Crevello explained.

“That scene needed to be a gut punch and [show] why she starts this gradual transformation over the course of the series. So it was less a matter of saying, ‘Oh, we just had a drama scene now we need a humorous, comedic scene,’ it was more, how can we make them work together.”