Sarma Melngailis, the former celebrity restaurateur at the heart of Netflix’s The wildly popular true-crime series Bad VeganThe streamer’s marketing of its latest hit property is not what she is happy about.
In fact, she’s gone on record insisting she’s “sick”Over how Netflix (as she perceives it) appears to be using her credulity in order to spread awareness about the docuseries online. The bigger point is that we will be talking more about this in a minute. Netflix’s efforts certainly seem to have paid off. Given that, in less than a week, this series has already made its debut on one of the streamer’s four global Top 10 lists.
To wit: Across Netflix’s entire subscriber base, Bad VeganCurrently, is the #5 English-language program.
Sarma paid her employees?
This series explores Melngailis (the titular) and how it works. Bad VeganFrom running the New York restaurant Pure Food and Wine to becoming a fugitive, ) did it all. On Twitter, she met Shane Fox and started siphoning money out of her restaurant to pay Fox. Fox assured her that he could fulfill her dreams. Melngailis confirmed that she used the money from Netflix to reimburse her employees years later.
“In exchange for the source materials and images I contributed to the documentary,” Her website explains her reasoning, “the producers paid an attorney on my behalf who then, on the same day (which happened to be the day NYC restaurants were first shut down due to the pandemic in 2020) wired full payment directly to the attorney representing the employees.”
Her larger point was that, beyond getting former employees repaid, she didn’t otherwise profit from Bad Vegan. It was more important to own the story and tell the truth than to extract any kind of payment.
One of the things she didn’t bargain for, however, is the marketing treatment. Below is an example of how she believes Netflix created a fake Twitter account (which merely markets the documentary) in mocking one of the most bizarre things she fell for. Bad Vegan. The latter being the conman’s claim that he could make her dog live forever.
Bad Vegan — a Netflix Top 10 series
As stated, Bad Vegan is one of the biggest shows at the moment globally — across Netflix’s entire worldwide subscriber base.
As for the entirety of Netflix’s Top 10 English-language TV series globally for the week, the full list is below. Also included are links to each show’s Netflix landing pages. You can also see how many hours were viewed worldwide during the seven-day period ending on March 20.
- The Last Kingdom, Season 5 — 48.9 million hours viewed
- Herb pieces, Season 1 — 40 million hours viewed
- Invention of Anna — 39 million hours viewed
- Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Season 4 — 29 million hours viewed
- Bad Vegan — 26.9 million hours viewed
- Taboo, Season 1 — 24.1 million hours viewed
- Top Boy, Season 2 — 21.7 million hours viewed
- Vikings: Valhalla, Season 1 — 19.8 million hours viewed
- Tyler Henry: The Life After Death, Season 1 — 19.5 million hours viewed
- Good Girls, Season 4 — 17.4 million hours viewed
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