'A very frustrating process.' Tara Brown shares exactly what it was like to interview Belle Gibson.

"Belle, are you prepared to tell the truth today? The whole truth?"

"Absolutely… I've been really transparent."

Ten years ago, Tara Brown sat down with fraudster Belle Gibson for what would become one of Australia's most damning television interviews.

The wellness influencer had built an empire claiming she cured her terminal brain cancer through clean eating and alternative therapies — but it was all a lie.

Her deception included a successful app, a cookbook, and thousands of devoted followers who believed her story of survival through natural healing. The scandal rocked Australia and left countless cancer sufferers feeling betrayed and devastated.

Five years after the infamous interview, Brown reflected on her extraordinary encounter with the woman who deceived a nation.

Watch: 60 Minutes 'The Whole Hoax' with Belle Gibson. Post continues after video.

"The difficulty in preparing to interview Belle Gibson or even knowing whether you should be interviewing Belle Gibson is to work out whether she's sick or whether she actually has an illness that makes her lie compulsively," Brown said on 60 Minutes in 2020.

As she explained, "There's always a level of compassion for whoever you're sitting opposite."

It was a tough gig, Brown said, having to constantly second-guess whether Belle was being honest.

"Every time she speaks there's every chance she's lying," Brown said.

But when the reporter pressed Belle to sign a statutory declaration confirming her truthfulness, she readily agreed.

"Absolutely, there's nothing left to lose, and if that requires a stat dec then I'm comfortable with that," Belle replied at the time.

What followed was a web of contradictions and evasions.

"Sitting opposite Belle Gibson was a very frustrating process because she continued to keep up the facade, and she was very good at doing that," Brown reflected.

Even basic facts proved elusive. When asked her age, Gibson gave a bizarrely convoluted response: "I've always been raised as being currently a 26-year-old... I live knowing, as I've always known, that I would be 26."

While Gibson admitted she never had brain cancer, her defence was that she believed she did, after being given the wrong diagnosis.

"When I sat down to interview her, her position was that she had done everything believing that she had been very sick," Brown said.

"And that it had come as a great shock to her to have been misdiagnosed. But, of course, that was not the truth."

Medical records would later prove definitively that Gibson had known all along she wasn't sick. Brown obtained the documentation after the interview.

"She did visit the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne and yes she did have a brain scan. But she didn't go because she thought she had brain cancer… she went because she was now convinced she had multiple sclerosis," said Brown.

"The scan revealed she didn't have MS, but most importantly, it also showed there was no sign of a brain tumour."

The public reaction to Brown's interview with Belle was one of overwhelming outrage.

"The outrage stemmed from the fact that she gave false hope to people with cancer," Brown explained.

"She was feeding into this sort of conspiracy that modern medicine will fail you, that there is another way for people who are really sick."

When confronted about the damage she had caused, Belle said: "I have lost everything, and I'm not here to regain it, but when you hit rock bottom there is only an opportunity to be honest and to heal and to apologise."

The interview raised serious questions about Belle's mental state, with Brown asking directly if she accepted suggestions that she might have Munchausen syndrome or a factitious disorder.

The one-time influencer denied this, just as she rejected being called a pathological liar.

"I just wonder, Belle, if — and I don't know if you're at a stage where you'll ever admit it — but whether you just didn't know what you were getting yourself into," Brown said to Belle during the original interview.

"You probably thought you weren't doing any harm but thought you could get away with it."

Belle responded, "There was nothing to get away with, Tara."

The reporter doubled down.

"Of course there was — there was adulation, there's sympathy, there's a community who loves you. There's huge amounts to get away with."

Belle's story continues to resonate, with Netflix's recent series Apple Cider Vinegar, inspired by the deception, ranking number one in Australia and five globally in the first week of its release.

But as her story is thrust back into the spotlight, we are reminded that we're all still searching for answers.

"I can't pretend to know Belle Gibson's inner thoughts," Brown said. "When she looks in the mirror, [I don't know] what she sees.

"But she doesn't act like somebody who has remorse, and she doesn't act like she feels she's done anything wrong."

Feature Image: Nine.

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