If there’s one thing Sarah Paulson is going to do, it’s play the hell out of a terrifying white woman. The American Horror Story star’s latest muse is a particularly notorious figure: Gwen Shamblin Lara, a wellness guru who found fame with her patented Weigh Down Workshop, a Christian diet program supposedly “helping people turn away from the love of food and toward a love of God”. No, thank you!
Things came to a shocking end for the real Gwen in May 2021. She and her husband Joe Lara died under mysterious circumstances – along with a number of others including four other church leaders – when their plane crashed into Percy Priest Lake. Last year, HBO Max released a docuseries on the subject titled The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin – now, the streamer wants to give Gwen’s story the TV drama treatment. Here’s everything we know about it.
What’s the plot of the show?
The new adaptation will follow the life of Gwen Shamblin Lara. She began her career as a ‘weight control’ consultant in the 1980s, finding mainstream fame with her 1997 book The Weigh Down Diet – the text was (unfortunately) a huge success, selling over 1.2 million copies, and teaching its disciples that genetics, metabolism and behaviour modification had little to do with one’s body size. The solution, rather, was to ‘transfer’ one’s love of food to a love of God, cut food portions in half and eat only when hungry.
It was with these extremely questionable teachings that Gwen founded the Remnant Fellowship Church, an institution that saw two of its members found guilty of the murder of their 8-year-old son. The diet-coach-turned-cult-leader was a charismatic woman who managed her image meticulously; allegedly inflicting emotional, psychological and physical abuse on her followers, and enabling a culture of violence within the church. For example, according to a number of ex-members, parents were told to hit their misbehaving children with glue sticks and belts.
The show will likely cover the rise and fall of Gwen’s stardom in this way, perhaps even offering some fictional answers as to exactly what happened around her untimely death.
Who else is in the cast of the movie? And who’s behind the camera?
Not only will Sarah Paulson play the show’s huge-haired protagonist, but she’s also set to executive produce the series, backed by Ross Dinerstein’s Campfire Studios and Chrissy Teigen’s Huntley Productions, with Michelle Dean as showrunner. No other casting announcements have been made at this time.
When is the release date?
With the scripted series still in production, it’s anyone’s guess. More soon!
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