Key Notes
- Former FTX COO Constance Wang says Netflix’s The Altruists trailer misrepresents the workplace and Caroline Ellison’s personality.
- Wang describes long working days and personal financial losses, while making clear she is not defending those responsible for the collapse.
- The eight-episode drama premieres November 19, with Julia Garner and Anthony Boyle playing Ellison and Sam Bankman-Fried.
Former FTX chief operating officer Constance Wang has criticized Netflix’s trailer for The Altruists, saying its portrayal of employees and Caroline Ellison bears little resemblance to the workplace she remembers. Her objection centers on turning a collapse that devastated customers and staff into a story dominated by romance and personal drama.
In an October 9 post, Wang recalled exhausting working days, her own financial losses and a markedly different impression of Ellison. She also made clear that criticizing the adaptation did not mean defending those responsible for FTX’s failure.
The response follows Netflix’s trailer release for the eight-episode limited series, which premieres on November 19. Anthony Boyle plays Sam Bankman-Fried and Julia Garner portrays Ellison, the former chief executive of Alameda Research.
Constance Wang criticizes the portrayal of FTX employees in Netflix’s The Altruists trailer.
— Constance W (@ConstanceWaing) October 9, 2026
Wang Challenges the Bahamas Party Narrative
Wang described a lean core company with fewer than 200 employees, excluding subsidiaries, where many people worked 16 to 18 hours a day for more than three years. She said that left little time for sleep, challenging the impression that life at the exchange revolved around partying in the Bahamas.
She also disputed the trailer’s characterization of Ellison, whom she remembered as “quiet and mild.” Most colleagues, Wang said, only learned about Ellison’s relationship with Bankman-Fried after the bankruptcy.
The personal cost was another central part of her criticism. Wang said she lost everything she held on FTX and needed a long time to recover. Her account puts employees among those harmed by the exchange’s failure, rather than treating the workforce as a single group sharing the founders’ experiences.
“Netflix decided to make it a love story. Shame on you,” she wrote.
Those statements describe Wang’s own experience and assessment of the promotional footage. They do not establish what every employee knew, or amount to a review of the complete series, which has yet to be released.
Netflix Places the Relationship at the Center
The focus Wang objects to is explicit in Netflix’s own promotion. The company’s October 8 trailer announcement presents Bankman-Fried and Ellison’s relationship as a central thread connecting the rise of their business with its collapse.
Creator and co-showrunner Graham Moore describes his interpretation as a gradual process in which the pair justified increasingly serious wrongdoing. Co-showrunner Jacqueline Hoyt similarly emphasizes how their relationship encouraged greater ambition and ultimately destructive decisions. These are the creators’ explanations of their drama, rather than findings about the defendants’ motives.
Netflix’s earlier cast guide makes the production’s approach clearer: Moore says the series imagines private moments that were not captured on camera. Madison Hu plays Wang, placing the executive now criticizing the trailer among the people depicted on screen.
That approach gives a scripted adaptation room to construct dialogue and intimate scenes. It also makes the choice of emphasis consequential: a relationship can explain the drama’s structure without accounting for all the operational decisions, customer losses and individual experiences surrounding FTX.
The Fraud Case Goes Beyond the Onscreen Romance
The criminal record provides a separate account of what happened to customer money. In March 2024, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison following his conviction on seven fraud and conspiracy counts.
The Justice Department said he stole more than $8 billion from FTX customers. Funds were diverted to investments, political contributions, real estate and repayments of loans owed by Alameda, despite assurances that customer deposits were protected and that the trading firm received no special treatment.
Ellison pleaded guilty in December 2022 to seven charges, including wire fraud and conspiracies to commit fraud and money laundering. She agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, giving her a different role in the legal proceedings from Bankman-Fried.
These proceedings concerned the misuse of deposits and deception of customers, lenders and investors. A disagreement about how a trailer portrays personalities does not alter those findings, while a dramatized scene cannot independently establish what happened inside the companies.
For now, the dispute is about the framing of a story before audiences can see it in full. Wang wants the damage to employees and customers to remain central; Netflix’s published material highlights the two lead characters’ relationship. Whether the complete series gives sufficient space to those wider consequences will become clearer when all eight episodes arrive in November.
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