(Spoilers for Netflix’s Bad Vegan will be found below.)
Bad Vegan subject Sarma Melngailis recently set the record straight about Netflix making an exception regarding payment for her appearance (and she insists that she used this money to pay back her jilted employees), but she’s not thrilled about one key way that the streaming service is marketing the limited series. This has to do with one of the several hard-to-believe happenings (or rather, non-happenings) that purportedly lured Sarma into the cult-mentality clutches of Anthony Strangis (who operated under the “Shane Fox” pseudonym). That’s before they became casino-bound fugitives and eventually got busted because of a pizza order.
The pizza stuff was odd (because that’s a really bad vegan who orders cheese), but the strangest thing that Sarma admits to believing is that Shane was a black-ops guy and a superpowered being that could make her pit bull, Leon, immortal. The former celebrity restauranteur (who massively fell from grace, and that includes a Rikers Island sentence) admitted that she fully bought into this claim, and Netflix has apparently set up an Instagram profile (with the PerpetualPup handle) that spreads this caption: “Do you want your dog to live forever? You’re not the only one. Click the link in bio to learn more.”
Here’s a commercial to go along with the theme.
Sarma’s not thrilled (she’s “sick”) over how she believes that Netflix is “mocking” her:
“I’m sick. On behalf of dogs and the humans who love them. And on behalf of anyone psychologically abused. Please see my Twitter to hear the audio on this clip, for which the word disturbing is far too mild. The audio is… making a joke out of me. This is how @netflix markets #badvegan? By mocking me, and worse… by luring people to click via… pet immortality? How is this ok?? @netflix you made this. I wish I could ask all those who signed off on this to explain it to me so I understand. Was there a room full people laughing while the audio was scripted? And everyone was just cool with this?”
One can understand why Sarma’s not exactly excited about the dog immortality stuff being dragged. That’s gotta sting, and it’s wild that she ever believed it could happen in the first place, but that’s one of the only reasons that Bad Vegan might be the most unbelievable of all the current scammer series out there. (It’s currently streaming in full.)
