As Belle Gibson struggled through her interview with 60 Minutes – trying to justify why she faked cancer – one viewer thought she looked ‘weirdly familiar’.
The truth quickly set in for entertainer Jonathan Duffy, now 31, who quipped: ‘Oh my god, I’ve created a monster!’
In Brisbane in the mid-to-late 2000s, Mr Duffy had taught a young Gibson at acting camps.
And now she had been exposed for the biggest performance of her life – a years-long effort where she pretended she was dying from terminal brain tumours.
Belle Gibson (on far left) was a student at a camp where Jonathan Duffy was a teacher in the mid-to-late 2000s
Before her world came crashing down, Gibson won ‘Social Media Star of the Year’ at the Cosmopolitan Fun Fearless Female awards in November 2014
Ms Gibson, left in a televised interview with 60 Minutes and right in a promo photo, eventually confessed the fraud
‘Without cheapening the sentiment of the moment, it was like (a) moment in some kind of Hollywood film where you go, ‘oh my god, I’ve created a monster,’ he said.
‘The penny dropped. I know where I know her from.’
Mr Duffy was a coach at the Australian Acting Academy – a ‘beautiful institution’ which ran camps for teenagers in the holidays.
The camps taught different acting disciplines and subjects, including realism, character work and improvisation.
Those are skills that no doubt came in handy when Gibson concocted her fake terminal cancer which she fraudulently claimed to have cured with healthy eating.
She used the fantastic story to hawk her cookbook and app, named The Whole Pantry, before the entire story unravelled in the most public fashion.
‘None of it’s true,’ she told the Australian Women’s Weekly.
Her lies still gets under the skin of Mr Duffy, a comedian who lives and works in Iceland, to this day.
Anger to this day: Comedian and entertainer Jono Duffy taught Ms Gibson how to act
House of cards: Belle Gibson, pictured avoiding a media scrum after the truth of her app was exposed
‘Sometimes they (students) use these skills for evil’, Mr Duffy said
‘You think you’ve learned these skills as an actor and you’re imparting these skills on kids to work out what they want to be,’ he fumed.
‘And sometimes they use these skills to fool people on a mass level and use it for evil instead of good.
‘What she did sickens me. It’s disgusting.’
He said he had ‘very clear’ memories of Gibson.
‘She was an uninteresting girl who seemed to want to do anything to appear more interesting than she was.’
A new book about Gibson, The Woman Who Fooled the World, confirmed she attended the acting camps with another teacher, Brendan Glanville.
‘Gibson had a love of acting’, authors Nick Toscano and Beau Donnelly wrote, and also enrolled in classes at the local St Peter’s parish hall.
One drama teacher told the authors: ‘She was quite good actually’. (Mr Duffy didn’t agree).
‘Gibson had a love of acting’, authors Nick Toscano and Beau Donnelly wrote in a new book, The Woman Who Fooled the World
Gibson used her fantastical story to hawk her app and book, The Whole Pantry. The app was featured by Apple and the book published by Penguin
Gibson grew up in the suburb of Wynnum, east of Brisbane, and had a reputation for ‘spinning stories that were nothing but fairy tales’, the book said.
Mr Duffy said she appeared to come from a normal family and remembered her speaking about ‘some kind of health scare’.
‘I remember things I drummed into students when I taught them.
‘I still say this to young comedians: you are enough. Don’t try to make the story more interesting than it is because somebody’s already written it.
‘You’re the actor just tell the story and try to make it relate to you in some way.
‘(With Belle) I don’t know where that message got misconstrued.’
In September, Ms Gibson was fined $410,000 by the Federal court after being found guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct.
She did not appear but after being informed of the result told the court: ‘Thank you, much appreciated’.