WeCrashed, the latest Apple TV+ series, chronicles the rise and fall of WeWork, one of the world’s most valuable startups that once had a valuation of $47 billion. Adapted from the Wondery podcast of the same name, the series centers around the power couple behind WeWork, Adam (Jared Leto) and Rebekah Neumann (Anne Hathaway).
Over the course of eight episodes, Adam and Rebekah build their empire together. Between Adam’s charisma and Rebekah’s spiritual interests, the two went about trying to raise the world’s consciousness through their shared work space company. With each climb in valuation, despite the risky financial gambles, Adam was seen as a messianic unicorn, bringing the party wherever he went. He was someone worth investing in despite the math not adding up in his favor, bleeding money more often than making a profit. Meanwhile, Rebekah, growing more frustrated with her husband’s success and her lack of branding, makes her own Machiavellian moves, removing her best friend Elishia (America Ferrera) from WeWork so that Rebekah can be the chief branding officer. She later founded WeGrow, a new holistic approach to school. Tensions rise between Adam and Rebekah as they put their focus on building their personal empires, all while WeWork is about to move from a private company to a public one. Even when Adam and Rebekah reconcile while working together on the S-1 paperwork, the WeWork sandcastle gets knocked down.
Adam Neumann vs. The World
After his S-1 form makes the rounds in the financial world, Adam Neumann’s board starts to lose faith in his abilities to lead WeWork just weeks before the company goes public; there’s even real footage of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sharing her doubts of the company’s finances on the Congress floor. A few top employees try to convince Adam and Rebekah to rework their S-1 without pictures, which the Neumanns dismiss. The Wall Street Journal begins working on a story and Rebekah charges Damian (Troy Iwata) to kill the story, like his New York Times story that was killed during the WeWork summer camp years ago. In the end, The Wall Street Journal publishes their story and the WeWork board moves to remove Adam as CEO, as seen from Episode 1, “This Is Where It Begins.” Legally they can’t fire him because Adam owns the majority voting shares in the company, and he’s declared that he will never not be the CEO of WeWork. Adam suggests firing his entire board and filling it with employees or high profile celebrities, like Elon Musk or Barack Obama. The lawyers advise him and Rebekah against this and convince them that they have an image problem more than a legal problem.
Not only is Adam fighting with his board, he’s also at odds with the outside crisis PR team that comes in to help put out the fires caused by The Wall Street Journal article. Adam wants the team to respond to the comments and take the journalists out for drinks, the same way he used to win people over and make his deals go through. Staying in the foxhole has never been his style, so instead he meets with Bruce Dunlevie (Anthony Edwards) at Benchmark Capital but discovers two of his employees already there. Adam insults them and tries to convince Bruce to stay in his corner; instead, Bruce calls Adam “toxic” and threatens to break his arm if he doesn’t resign. Within minutes of this meeting, the exchange has already been leaked to the press. The leaks don’t stop there: Adam calls Masayoshi “Masa” Son (Eui-Sung Kim), while walking the streets of New York barefoot, in order to make a deal with him; Masa also shoots down Adam, vowing never to allow Adam to move forward as CEO and block the IPO. A neighbor snaps a picture of the heated exchange and becomes a viral meme. It’s not just his business partners against him – the public turns their back on Adam, too.
Unicorns Don’t Exist
Back in the WeWork offices, employees are freaking out over the changing tides. Miguel McKelvey (Kyle Marvin) attempts to calm everyone down by singing Bob Marley before Adam comes in and gives a rousing speech. Miguel is still reeling from when Adam shot down the idea of Miguel running WeWork without him. Miguel’s name was only featured a handful of times in the WeWork S-1 form; remember, he was the one who pulled an all-nighter making the original Greendesk deck while Adam went home and slept. Later, when Adam returns to the offices and finds Miguel alone looking over the blueprints for a new WeWork location, Miguel confesses how much Adam has frustrated him over the years, yet he loves him and hates everything the board is putting Adam through. Adam doesn’t show it much, but after this exchange, it’s clear that he does respect Miguel. These men have had their own journey building Greendesk and WeWork from the ground up. Adam tells Miguel he’s going to do the right thing; the next day, Adam votes himself out as CEO.
With Adam out of the picture, Cameron Lautner (O-T Fagbenle) is announced as the new CEO of WeWork. His primary focus is getting a handle of their financial situation. He addresses his new employees with a much-needed reality check. The promise of Adam’s dream was a nice thing to aspire to, but a shared work space company was never going to raise the world’s consciousness. Cameron tells the WeWork employees that they’ve been duped and deluded by a magician who has officially run out of tricks. He promises that they will receive fair wages (for once) and that from their hard work, WeWork’s best days are ahead. Though Cameron is considerably colder than Adam’s exuberant personality, the employees seem to be on board with having him as their new boss, even though it means getting rid of the party supplies, tequila, and the infamous WeWork gong.
The Soul of WeWork
As the new CEO, Cameron starts to remove the excess baggage to bring WeWork afloat. This includes shutting down Rebekah’s private school, WeGrow. Tearfully, Rebekah has to tell a room full of parents that the school that she's loved like another child is shutting down; this is after the tuition has already been paid for the next year and enrollment to other schools is closed. Rebekah assures the parents that their children have learned the meaning of resilience in order to go forth in the world, which the parents shut down as nonsense. Rebekah suggests that the parents open up their own school, which as tone-deaf as Marie Antoinette's famous misquote “let them eat cake.” She’s flustered by the parents’ outbursts, further showcasing her lack of awareness of the world around her.
Through the ups and the downs of WeWork, the love story of Adam and Rebekah has been the anchor of WeCrashed. After a tumultuous few episodes where their bonds were tested, they hold each other firm throughout the finale. For instance, Rebekah encourages Adam as he records a promotional video for the investors, as well as calming him down when he starts to lash out against the crisis PR team.
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Adam told Rebekah that he started WeWork for her, that she was the soul of the company. When it’s just the two of them, Rebekah asks Adam to give it all up for her. She assures him that all they’ve ever needed was each other and their family, not the money. Because of his love for her, he’s willing to step down as CEO, but not before hatching a plan with her that will ensure he walks away with a substantial buyout. When they do succeed, the maverick’s gift to his muse is taking his family out of the country and securing the copyrights for the WeGrow curriculum back for Rebekah to start another school. At the end of the series, Adam and Rebekah have weathered the storms of life together and have come out the other side stronger than ever.
The One With All the Money
So what did it take for Adam, the man who claimed that he would never not be the CEO of WeWork, to humbly step down? As Rebekah is asking Adam to walk away from raising the world’s consciousness through WeWork, he remains unconvinced that the money doesn’t matter. Adam realizes that the only person who understands that and could give him everything he wants is Masa. In anticipation of the IPO, Adam and Miguel had fast tracked expansion, signing leases in new locations. WeWork is very much in the red, so much so that they can’t afford to lay off employees because they can’t afford severance. Cameron suggests to the board that they should reach out to Softbank for cash; otherwise they will go bankrupt. If you recall, Masa told Adam he won’t let him proceed as CEO; however, with Adam now gone, he could buy out Adam’s majority voting stocks and save the company. The future of WeWork stands in the balance of two men playing phone tag until Masa offers a high enough price to Adam for his shares. After a few days of back and forth, Masa offers Adam a whopping $975 million for his shares, $500 million loan for WeWork to keep the lights on, and $185 million consulting fee; this results in Softbank owning 80% of WeWork. Adam and Rebekah walked away from their company with all the money (or so they thought).
When Masa met Adam for the first time, he asked him a simple question: “Who wins in a fight: the smart one or the crazy one?” Adam answered that the crazy one would win; from there, he made questionable decisions in order to prove to Masa he was the crazy one worth investing in. However, that question would come back to haunt him. After Adam and Rebekah relocate their family to Tel Aviv, Masa calls Adam, only this time Rebekah answers the call. Masa asks her the same question, to which she replies that the smart person would win in a fight; he admits that she is smarter than her husband. Masa reveals that his question is a trick question because it’s never about the smart person or the crazy person – when all is said and done, it’s the one with all the money who wins. When Adam sold his controlling shares to Softbank, it’s suggested from the series that Masa had no intention of paying Adam his buyout package. The series ends with Rebekah frantically telling Adam the news, getting salt water in both their eyes and a somber instrumental version of Katy Perry’s “Roar,” once Adam’s personal anthem, plays over the couple.
Of course, that’s not where the story ends since WeCrashed is based on real events. Adam Neumann and the WeWork board sued Softbank, finally settling their disputes in early 2021. WeWork finally went public in October 2021 at $9 million, which was $38 million less than at its peak. Miguel McKelvey left WeWork in June 2020, yet celebrated WeWork going public with Adam. After being promised to make millions in its heyday, many WeWork employees made nothing and sued Adam and Softbank. As for the pair of unicorns, Rebekah Neumann plans to start a new school from her former WeGrow curriculum, and Adam has invested in a new company that’s described as the “future of living.” He’s begun purchasing apartment buildings in Fort Lauderdale and Miami as recently as January 2022.
Today, Adam Neumann is still a billionaire. If there’s anything to learn from WeCrashed, it’s that you should never count out Adam Neumann, even when the odds and the finances are stacked against him. As he has said, he’s a serial entrepreneur, so it’s only a matter of time before Adam is back in the public eye once again. If he ever decides to take another company public, maybe he should just leave the pictures out of his S-1 form.
