‘Everything is shades of grey’: inside the bizarre world of Netflix hit Bad Vegan

Even by Netflix true crime standards, Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives stands out as bizarre and disconcerting. The four-part series from Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened director Chris Smith, released last week, details the confounding downfall of vegan chef Sarma Melngailis and her restaurant Pure Food and Wine, a buzzy Manhattan hotspot that was once on the forefront of the “raw food” movement and a celebrity magnet. Blonde and sylphic, Melngailis was the enviable face of a sleek, clean lifestyle; her two cookbooks from 2005 and 2009, which advertised raw-food recipes to “get the glow,” featured a picture of her on the cover looking coy and satisfied, the embodiment of the energy, clarity, and health that was the vegan way.

But in 2011, Melngailis met a man online who, as the series outlines, cast a svengali-like spell over her and