WeCrashed is a tricky show to like. On one hand, lead actors Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway do well as obnoxious entrepreneurs high on their own supply, but at the same time, the show is also tonally disjointed and it relies too often on the ability of the leads to keep you watching. For better or worse, the show doesn’t truly step away from the lives of Adam Neumann and Rebekah Paltrow, and their cult of personality- as well as their detestably smarmy confidence in their surface-level wisdom- can leave you feeling suffocated, or worse, bored.
Although the show opens in media res where Adam Neumann (Jared Leto), CEO of WeWork is seemingly ousted by his board of directors, we quickly jump back to the beginning several years earlier. Adam is a shrewd serial entrepreneur with good salesmanship who’s always looking for a leg-up. He tries to pitch his business idea for a communal living space to an actual investor who is judging his presentation for a business class. Although he fails, one of his classmates, Miguel McKelvey (Kyle Marvin) is impressed by his conviction, and the two quickly start up a co-working space company. Once Adam charms Rebekah (Anne Hathaway) by standing up to her yoga teacher and demanding equal pay for her, she adds the missing piece to the company’s vision, which is ‘to elevate the world’s consciousness.’
As the company grows rapidly over the years, we see a company culture that’s all about partying and fun on the surface, but in reality, undermines women. Adam aggressively expands the company as more investors come on, losing millions of dollars every dayuntil he can’t ask for more money from the investors anymore. He is eventually persuaded to go for an IPO to raise money for the company, which jumpstarts his fall from grace.
Jared Leto doesn’t completely mimic Neumann, but he channels enough of his bravado, ego, and ability to go on a relentless charm offensive. Hathaway also does well as Rebekah, affecting a deeper voice and striking a delicate balance between passionate, hokey, and insecure. The directors and writers have successfully crafted an addictive show.
As for the plot, the focus often shifts in too many different directions. There’s some interesting material here, such as the episode where a weekend camp where Rebekah finds out how grossly women are treated at WeWork- and she’s only enraged that the women dumped all their complaints on her- but the show largely glosses over how WeWork actually works and what the experience was like for actual members who used their offices. Instead, we get some glimpses into the faux-enthusiastic work culture, such as two instances where the offices erupts into a Harlem Shake celebration with two very different reactions from Adam.
One way or another, the most common emotion you are likely to come away with after finishing WeCrashed is frustration.
Adam and Rebekah maneuvered their way out of WeWork’s sinking ship and came away a billion dollars richer, although that money is tied up in litigation. The real losers were the investors and the WeWork employees who toiled away for years with minimal wages in the hopes of making it big with the eventual IPO. When the IPO finally happened, WeWork had a valuation of $9 billion, a far cry from its peak of $47 billion.
WeWork still exists as a company, and maybe one day it will climb back to its lofty heights, but in the end, it’s just a co-working company that was puffed up with new-age platitudes, and counter-intuitive decisions such as an attempt to pivot as a tech company.
As for WeCrashed, it’s equally seductive as the power couple it portrays (and skewers).
Thankfully, you’ll come away mostly entertained, as well as a little vexed that the Neumanns, while humiliated, are still far richer than us lowly plebs will ever be despite contributing almost nothing other than snake oil salesmanship and vapid new-age branding.