The True Story Behind ‘The Altruists’ & What’s Added for Netflix Series

Call them the Millennial version of Bonnie and Clyde. The Altruists, an eight-part drama premiering on November 19 on Netflix, tells the true story of dazzling math brains Sam Bankman-Fried (Anthony Boyle, House of Guinness) and Caroline Ellison (Julia Garner, Ozark). They began as an idealistic couple in their twenties who wanted to save the world by reshaping the financial system. Instead, they lost billions in investors’ and customers’ fortunes. In 2022, the grads of MIT and Stanford, respectively, were caught misappropriating funds that caused the collapse of their FTX crypto-currency exchange. Both ended up in jail.

“I genuinely believe that when Sam and Caroline first met, they were committed, earnest altruists. They’d gone into finance to give away as much money as possible to charity. They were both vegans. They’d both really committed themselves to spending their lives trying to make the world a better place,” says executive producer Graham Moore. “By the end of their relationship, they turned each other into people who did the opposite. That’s the story we tell, and that’s the one that utterly breaks my heart.”

Moore worked on the saga of the couple’s fall for four years. “I’ve basically given myself a master’s degree in Sam and Caroline,” Moore says. “In addition to poring over 3000 pages of court transcripts, plus every book and article and interview and TikTok ever made about them, I did extensive interviews with many people in the FTX inner circle, including many of the real people depicted on our show. But to preserve the sanctity of my creative process, I need to keep the identities of the folks I spoke with to myself.”

Moore says he was moved by “the fact that Sam is in jail right now because at his trial, the government’s first three witnesses against him were his ex-girlfriend, Caroline, plus his two childhood best friends. Imagine having [those three people] testify that you’re guilty. It felt like a grand, Shakespearean tragedy — which is why our entire ensemble had to be so fleshed out and fully realized.”

That ensemble includes Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing) as Caroline’s mother and Hudson Williams (Heated Rivalry) as Duncan Rheingans-Yoo, whose hedge fund received $400 million from FTX. Moore previews, “He helps really turn our story into its second half, where everyone’s moral calculus gets much trickier.”

The Altruists, Series Premiere, Thursday, November 19, Netflix