Natalie Beach told her side of the Caroline Calloway story in the Cut essay published on Sept. 10, a deal, Calloway says her former friend pitched herself and was worth $5,000. Calloway told her side of the story in her own way: by going on the Red Scare, a self-described cultural commentary podcast, on Friday night and recapping the saga on Instagram afterward. It was during the live recording of the podcast that it was alleged Beach penned a $1 million deal with Ryan Murphy to create a film about their story, as told by Beach.
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“We are now, in fact, both trying to get the fattest art deals possible. Which is not the same as colluding for fame. But can include it. We show love to each other when we can, after our own creative and financial interests are met first,” Calloway wrote on Instagram Friday morning, right before jetting off to go give her “father’s fucking eulogy.” (Her father was found dead by suicide two days after Beach’s article was published.)
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Calloway and Beach have both said Beach got a cut for helping ghostwrite Calloway’s book–Beach received 35%, which Calloway says was $19,000, even though the deal fell through–and now Beach allegedly wanted to give Calloway a cut on a deal of her own.
“Natalie promised me that she would cut me in on all this money to be made in Hollywood and include me in her film deal. It was the first lie she’s ever told me,” Calloway wrote on Instagram.
Deadspin writer Luis Paez-Pumar, who got in trouble by Calloway for live-tweeting during the Red Scare show, tweeted that Calloway refused Beach’s offer to bring her in on the “Netflix deal,” different from what Calloway later alleged on Instagram.
She said Natalie offered to cut her into the Netflix deal she got for the story. But Caroline said no.
— Luis Paez-Pumar (@lppny) September 28, 2019
According to those who were at the show, Calloway allegedly rambled in circles so much so that it’s going to be difficult to make edit out of and release it in podcast form. “Everyone on stage looked like they regretted it by the end,” as both Paez-Pumar and a redditor who was said to be in attendance put it.
In her assumed more coherent recap, Calloway details all the ways she helped Beach and all the ways Beach returned the favor. “Natalie helped me in return by telling me that all the money was in movies,” she wrote in her nine-part Insta post, which is possibly why, Calloway announced, she’s headed to film meetings of her own on Monday.
Calloway became an influencer by chronicling her life at the University of Cambridge. She made headlines in January after being accused of scamming fans into paying for a series of “creativity” workshops she was hosting, which was supposed to consist of eggplant salads she personally made and flower crown-making. It was a month later, in February, Calloway alleges Beach pitched her essay to the Cut. The women, who were aspiring writers at the time, met as 20-year-old students at New York University–both now admitting they were jealous of one another, Calloway jealous of Beach’s writing opportunities because of her “well-connected” and “well-off” family, and Beach jealous of who she described as a “more beautiful and fun” Calloway.
“I respect Natalie for betraying the confidence of our friendship and selling my secrets to The Cut. She is hungry for money and fame and power and that ambition is what drew me to her in the first place. This is not a story about a beta and an alpha. This is a story about two alphas,” Calloway wrote on Instagram.
If confirmed, the Calloway-Beach film would be part of Murphy’s $300 million deal with Netflix (his first was The Politician, basically a dark and twisted version of Glee, released on Sept. 27).
“At the end of the day what Natalie and I want above all else is to be artists and tell our goddamn stories in the biggest, most high-budget ways possible so that the maximum amount of humans can find meaning in our creativity and we can be compensated for our artistic brains with the maximum amount of fame, money and power and so we can live comfortably,” Calloway wrote.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Netflix.
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