conversation

Elizabeth Holmes is the convicted fraudster at the center of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s hit documentary “You Can See Everything,” but for many viewers, it’s her longtime partner, Billy Evans, who has emerged as the film’s marquee villain.

Evans, 34, comes from a wealthy San Diego hotel family and stood by Holmes as her blood-testing startup Theranos collapsed and she was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors. The couple has two children, 5-year-old son William and 3-year-old daughter Invicta. With Holmes serving an 11-year federal prison sentence in Texas, Evans is raising their children while pursuing a new biotech venture of his own.

In the film — warning: spoilers ahead — Evans comes across as controlling and increasingly volatile, taking over from Holmes as she whisks eggs, interrupting an interview to demand that the cameras be turned off and at one point casually brushing his teeth while standing stark naked in the shower, with Fielder awkwardly looking on. He speaks of Holmes dedicating her life to building “monuments of love” to him, and in one heated confrontation threatens to ruin the lives of people he believes have wronged her. “I’ve got vengeance in my heart,” he declares.

So who is Evans, how did he end up with one of Silicon Valley’s most infamous figures and what is he up to now?

What do we know about Evans’ upbringing?

Evans grew up in a wealthy, prominent San Diego family. His grandparents, William and Anne Evans, founded Evans Hotels in 1953, opening what became the Bahia Resort Hotel on Mission Bay. The family business later expanded to include the Catamaran Resort Hotel and Spa and the Lodge at Torrey Pines in La Jolla.

Evans attended Francis Parker School, an exclusive private school in San Diego, before graduating from MIT with a degree in economics in 2015. Despite his family’s wealth, Evans is neither an employee nor a shareholder of Evans Hotels, according to a statement the company issued Oct. 1.

His family reportedly had reservations about his relationship with Holmes at first. But his father, also named William, became a supporter — and even went undercover of sorts at her 2021 fraud trial. According to NPR, the elder Evans showed up for jury selection under the name “Hanson,” introducing himself to reporters as a concerned citizen who fixed up old cars for a living. His expensive loafers and a Starbucks cup bearing a different name eventually raised suspicions.

How did Evans meet Holmes?

The two met Oct. 7, 2017, at a Fleet Week party hosted by a venture capitalist in San Francisco, according to Evans. Theranos was already engulfed in scandal, though Holmes had yet to be criminally charged.

In the documentary, Evans recalls that he initially didn’t recognize Holmes because she was wearing a floppy hat, dark sunglasses and a Band-Aid on her face from a scratch by her husky. He says he fell in love with her almost immediately. When Fielder points out that he could barely see her face, Evans replies, “I guess that wasn’t what mattered to me.”

Nathan Fielder observes Elizabeth Holmes with her family in “You Can See Everything.”

(A24)

Holmes says the attraction was mutual. The two became friends and started dating about six months later, just weeks before she was indicted on federal fraud charges.

Fielder asks Evans whether he worried early on that Holmes might be conning him. “100%,” Evans replies, before asking what she would have had to gain from him. “Well, isn’t your family rich?” Fielder asks.

Pressed about the family’s money, Evans grows visibly uncomfortable and cuts the conversation short, saying he needs to get to a cousin’s event.

How is Evans managing life with Holmes in prison?

Since Holmes entered federal prison in May 2023, Evans has been raising their two children in Austin, Texas, bringing them to visit her at the federal prison camp in Bryan. Holmes is expected to transfer to a halfway house outside Austin in August.

In an appearance last week on the tech podcast “All-In,” Evans described the difficulty of the experience. “It’s hard because I’m building a business and I’m trying to free my wife from federal prison and I’m raising two kids,” he said.

Though Evans routinely refers to Holmes as his wife, Holmes said in a 2025 interview from prison with People that they had not legally married: “Maybe we’ll get married someday, but our bond is more than a piece of paper.” The two got engaged in 2018, reportedly at a Taylor Swift concert.

Is Evans trying to revive Theranos?

After graduating from MIT, Evans reportedly attempted to launch a medical concierge service before working at companies including LinkedIn and Luminar Technologies, which developed lidar systems for autonomous vehicles.

In 2022, he founded Haemanthus, a biotech startup developing technology to analyze biological samples using lasers. The company hopes to make diagnostic testing cheaper and more accessible — a mission that may sound awfully familiar to anyone who followed the rise and fall of Theranos.

Haemanthus has reportedly raised millions of dollars but has yet to release a commercial product. Eric Potma, a UC Irvine chemistry professor who consults for the company, told Wired this week that its technology is worth exploring despite significant technical challenges. “The engineers at Haemanthus are legit,” he said.

Holmes’ name does not appear in Haemanthus’ incorporation documents, according to Wired. But in the documentary, the couple is shown discussing plans for a new diagnostic venture, with Evans speaking openly about his desire to revive her original ambitions.

“The idea is to put the band back together and do it all again,” Evans tells Fielder.

How has Evans responded to ‘You Can See Everything’?

Evans and Holmes agreed to participate in the documentary in hopes of changing the public perception of her. Early in the film, Evans explains that they wanted to give the filmmakers extraordinary access to their daily lives, embracing what he calls “radical transparency.”

But Evans’ commitment to transparency had its limits. In the film, he repeatedly tries to shut down uncomfortable conversations and, in a meeting reenacted for the cameras, demands a share of the documentary’s profits — an arrangement Fielder fears could compromise the project’s integrity. Evans ultimately agreed to forgo payment.

At the documentary’s surprise premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in September, Fielder acknowledged that his relationship with Evans had deteriorated as the project unfolded.

“We felt Billy was trying to exert a lot of control over the process, and it sort of caused our communication to break down a little bit,” Fielder said during a Q&A after the screening. “The challenging thing is he’s sort of a conduit to her.”

Speaking on the “All-In” podcast before seeing the finished movie, Evans acknowledged that participating might turn out to be a mistake. “I haven’t seen it yet,” he said. “I might think this is like the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

Evans attended a private screening of the documentary on Oct. 16, followed by an off-the-record conversation with Bryan Johnson, the tech entrepreneur known for his elaborate efforts to reverse aging.

In a post on X the following day, Johnson called the film “a masterpiece” and described Evans as “magnanimous in conversation.” Though Johnson said he gave Evans every opportunity to defend himself and “strike back because Fielder roughed him up,” Evans declined.

Evans replied publicly, thanking Johnson for treating their conversation with care. “When the world is against you and the pain is so real,” Evans wrote, “it means so much to have people like you show such kindness.”

In case it wasn’t already clear: Debora Cahn, the creator of “The Diplomat,” likes to leave viewers in suspense.

The Netflix political thriller has followed Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), the highly competent, intensely impulsive, deeply flawed and incredibly relatable career diplomat, as she’s cleaned up backroom deals, navigated volatile international crises and unstable government leadership — all while managing a topsy-turvy marriage tangled up in it. And the stakes escalate with each season’s finale, forcing Kate to test her limits. But the fourth season has brought her breaking point.

Alarmed by the questionable decision-making by President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) — as the bullying tactics used against the U.K. to ensure their cooperation against Russia become untenable — Kate resigns in unplanned, but grand fashion at the G7 summit in front of world leaders. She’s eventually joined by other members of Penn’s administration: chief of staff Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah), Secretary of State Miguel Ganon (Miguel Sandoval) and, most notably, her husband, Vice President Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewell).

“We like a good cliffhanger,” Cahn says during a recent video call.

Cahn’s thought about how “The Diplomat” will ultimately conclude. But like the show’s savvy titular character, she perfectly executes the art of the charming evasion when pressed for answers — namely, how close are we to getting there?

Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, left, Rufus Sewell as Hal Wyler, Allison Janney as Grace Penn in Season 4 of “The Diplomat.”

(Netflix)

“I don’t know — maybe it just did,” she teases. Cahn then turns more serious: “I’ve always had an idea of what the end is. As with everything on the show, I’m always delighted to have that idea blown out of the water by a better idea, but so far it hasn’t happened.”

Cahn began her television writing career on Aaron Sorkin’s acclaimed political drama, “The West Wing,” spanning seasons 4 through 7. After working on shows such as “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Vinyl” and “Homeland,” she took the helm as creator and showrunner for the first time with “The Diplomat.” And writing a political drama today meant grappling with a creative responsibility she hadn’t faced before.

“I didn’t have to figure out what ‘The West Wing’s’ political position was going to be or what ‘The West Wing’ thought about the world,” she says. “I want to make a show that is compelling for a lot of different people. And there are certain things that are happening in the world that, as much as I try or would like to be even-handed, … [are] really difficult to ignore when you’re living at a time when you feel like democracy is crumbling.”

On a recent afternoon from her home in New York, Cahn spoke more about the new season of “The Diplomat.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation, which includes spoilers.

The marriage between Kate (Keri Russell) and Hal (Rufus Sewell) is tangled with their work.

(Netflix)

So much of the show, but particularly this season, is about lines that are drawn and the crossing of them. How did you and the writers decide what would be the line for Kate?

It took months and months and months to decide because we wanted to treat the question as realistically as possible. A lot of good people don’t quit. And so, why? What’s the reasoning? The whole season is examining that question for Kate and, in a way, for all of them. I didn’t want to be like, “Well, she doesn’t like the president, so she walked on out.”

What did you want out of that final moment of the season?

The moment when she stands up, she has come to a clarifying realization that her line has just been crossed. It happens in that room. And we argued about that a lot. We ended up feeling really strongly that it be what was happening right there. That this was a question she had wrestled with, but when you see that you are off the cliff, it will become clear what you have to do. So for her, Grace’s speech was that moment. She then walks out of the room and thinks: “What the mother f— did I just do? I’ve just ended my career. Have I ended my husband’s career?” That’s how she feels until she hears the door open and sees Billie walk out, and both of them go through a similar moment when they hear the door open, and Ganon walks out; then obviously the last one [is Hal] that really nobody was expecting. But for Kate, there is a big difference between having realized that you can’t go forward because your own line has been crossed, to realizing that you have started a movement, and that there is a contagion in that action.

How much did the real world, particularly international relations, inform or shape the season?

I don’t ever like to do a ripped-from-the-headlines show, particularly because we write it and then a year or two passes before it gets on air. But it did feel like, at a time when this administration was coming back into power again, and their first move was to fire people and really obliterate the institution that we were writing about, it didn’t seem like a story that we could walk around and ignore.

Bradley Whitford as Todd Penn and Allison Janney as Grace Penn in Season 4 of “The Diplomat.”

(Nick Wall/Netflix)

We haven’t had a woman president. We know the sexism around this topic: Women are too weak, women can’t make tough decisions. What was the lay of the conversation in the writers’ room about who Grace Penn would be as president?

The situation that we wanted to sustain throughout the season was she’s not doing these things because she got shot, her stomach hurts and she’s mad. She’s doing things because she became president, and she thinks this is how the country needs to be run. Is there an overcompensation around her making sure that people don’t think that she’s too weak and afraid to be a foreign policy hawk? I think in plenty of circumstances, women in positions like that are more likely to take a strong decisive military action because there is this looming concern of, “Well is she tough enough? Is she gonna try and have everybody hold hands and make up?” There is an instinct to make sure that people realize that that isn’t your plan. Every one of the decisions that she made, we made sure that there was a smart, strategic, security mandated argument for doing what she was doing.

What Grace says at the top of that summit regarding the U.K. and Russia, if you didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes, it would seem reasonable and strategic.

I’m happy to hear you say that because that was very deliberate. We went round and round with different versions of what she said in that speech because some people would listen to it and say, “Oh, my God, she can’t say that. It’s just overwhelmingly reprehensible.” Then we would show our Washington people, and they were like, “It’s not so bad.” Democrats who were like, “This isn’t crazy. This is kind of middle of the road these days.” We realized that we couldn’t have her saying things that have become accepted in Washington because the public would view it as monstrous, and we didn’t want to be portraying a villain.

Is that the most difficult thing for you as the showrunner of a political show today — a president as a villain?

It’s trickier than I hoped it would be. I’m not really interested in the presidency as much as I’m interested in the thousands of people who interact with the president and perhaps don’t, as individuals, wield as much power in their hands as that office holder does. But real power, particularly in numbers, can make things happen or stop really disastrous things from happening. Whether or not we think that there’s a villain in the White House, what does everybody else do to try to manage it?

Rory Kinnear, who plays Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge, sings opera in a scene where his character is having a hallucination.

(Clifton Prescod / Netflix)

There’s a surreal interlude with Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) and his hallucinations — he’s singing opera, at one point. How did you arrive at that turn for him?

I would be lying if I didn’t say one of the big reasons I wanted to do that was because I found out Rory Kinnear sings opera. When we knew we were going to have this situation where he was going to through something even more stressful than everything that he’s been through up until now, it felt like it would be really great to see what’s going on in there [his mind]. I called him up and I said, “I’d like to have you singing ‘Pagliacci’ — is that OK?” And he was like, “Well, let’s start warming up now.”

For a brief moment, with Grace shot, Hal is acting president. I’m curious how you arrived at the length of time he’d fill in for Grace. It’s a few hours. And it reveals so much.

There’s a gravitational pull that we’ve been resisting ever since we made the president a big role, and then placed one of our leads in the role of vice president. There’s this pull toward the White House. But I’ve never wanted to be like, “Oh, well, then Hal’s president. Then, Hal dies, and Kate’s president! Everybody gets a chance.” Once he was VP, it started to seem equally absurd to not have a taste of that because it is, in fact, the reality in that job.

Making Hal a president for a long period of time wasn’t all that interesting to me, but I did want a little bit of a window into it. We think we really know what Hal Wyler is going to do in that role — and by we, I mean Kate, really —and it just isn’t true at all. It also turns out she really had no idea who he was as a vice president, and he’s a much different person than she thought. She thought he was going to continue to be a bull in a china shop, big swings and big ideas and asking for forgiveness, not permission. That’s not who he’s been in that job.

Billie (Nana Mensah), left, Kate (Russell), Hal (Sewell), Grace (Janney), Fitzwilliam (Neil Pearson) and Todd (Whitford) in “The Diplomat.”

(Nick Wall/Netflix)

Both couples faced questions like: Who is this person I married or how am I responding to who they are at this moment? What were you interested in exploring in both these dynamics?

The conversation that we were just having is in a way relevant for all four of them. Not only is Hal different than Kate thought he would be, Hal’s different than Hal thought he would be. I haven’t run a show before. This is this is my first time in that position, and I am absolutely different than I thought I would be. I was 100% sure I knew exactly how I would handle things, and it didn’t happen. That’s an idea that we wanted to keep alive for Hal and definitely for Grace. You can prepare for it all you want and still not know.

You can’t help but feel for Todd as he tries to figure out Grace. But then he nearly dismantles NATO and you’re like, Todd!

Todd goes through two phases. He has this terrible feeling of helplessness that is eventually supplanted by this terrible feeling of power that he’s unable to manage. In a lot of ways, the Todd story is the most realistic one we’re telling because a lot of people who’ve never done this before are making the most consequential decisions, literally in the world. And Todd’s not a dumb guy, and I don’t think the people that we’re watching do this are dumb people, but, boy, are they in over their head really fast.

I want to talk about Grace and Todd and the use of “babe.” There’s something so intriguing to me about what they’ve done with that pet name across the season.

You’re thinking about all my favorite things. I don’t know what to say other than I’m glad it’s reading. You take a term of affection, and, at a certain point, it just becomes a name. The affection that it carries with it is just a horrible memory of a moment that is clearly gone.

What is pornography? We tend to think of it monolithically, as something created by and for hetero men, reinforcing sexist stereotypes and machismo behavioral codes. For over 20 years, Erika Lust has been fighting against those preconceptions, creating adult content that expands the parameters of pornography while approaching it as something akin to mainstream independent cinema. Her subscription-only website features content that leaps over gender boundaries, and has pulled in fans around the globe.

In her new book “Lust,” the filmmaker makes a convincing case for an ethical, intelligent porn that can expand our ideas about sex and intimacy. I recently chatted with Lust about sex, power and the internet.

✍️ Author Chat

Are we calling it pornography? Adult content? What do you call it?

For me, it is pornography. What I do is pornography because I work with explicit images, but I also work with cinema, and I strive for cinematic vision and craft. I don’t just pick up a camera, film people having sex and put it online. It is a whole creative process. So when I talk about my work, I see myself first as a filmmaker whose subject matter happens to be pornography.

What compelled you to create adult content?

I was born in Sweden, and I became a feminist quite young. I studied political science in college. When I was exploring my sexuality in my late teens and early twenties, I became more and more interested in finding out about our desires and who we are and what we are attracted to. And then I started to watch porn [and] felt horrible watching it. I felt a little bit troubled by the images. Why are all these female characters just there to please the man? It wasn’t about the women, it wasn’t their stories, and that made me feel a bit angry. When I talked to other women about this, they felt the same way. I felt there was something to explore there. Of course at the time, I had no idea I would be doing this for a living.

There are a lot of tired tropes about adult content that you debunk in your book. That the performers come from broken homes and are forced to do things on camera without their consent and so on.

It’s so easy for people to think that in the sex industry there’s going to be exploitation. But my experience is the opposite. Because people I work with dare to talk about sex. The conversation is over the table, not under the table. The people I have met and worked with in this business are intelligent and smart, with a very clear plan of their future. They take care of themselves, their bodies and their sexuality.

In “Lust,” Erika Lust debunks tropes and stereotypes surrounding the production of pornography.

(Jahel Guerra)

How has technology affected how we think about sex?

There’s a lot of sex anxiety going on in our society, and I think that also has a lot to do with technology and how it has taken over our lives. And I’m reading more articles about the intimacy crisis, and the fear that people have of connecting with other people, and young people who are not having sex. Technology has gone wild. It has taken over our lives. People are afraid of other people, of friction, of negotiating boundaries. They don’t know how to explain their own desires so they would rather talk to robots. I think we need to disconnect from technology, and think more deeply and talk to each other — not just about sex, but about everything.

Given the ubiquity of free adult content on the web, how do you compel customers to subscribe to your site?

I think people that subscribe are looking for something completely different, something more elevated, and they understand that that kind of film costs money. I can’t shoot without paying my crew and my staff. Shooting with an Alexa camera is not the same thing as picking up my mobile phone. And then I need crew members who can work with that technology, I need gaffers and electricians, I need to pre-light the set the day before, and so on. The budgets that I’m working with are really budgets for independent films. We have a staff of 45 working with me and my husband.

It’s the last artistic underground, really. I did notice that Bruce LaBruce, a filmmaker whom you mention in your book, has a collection of his films presently being shown on Criterion Channel.

I never think it’s going to become mainstream. My true hope is that we can at least be known as an independent porn culture making quality films that aren’t exploitative. That people understand that it exists, and that it’s an option apart from the mainstream porn websites.

This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Chuck Lorre has written a memoir, “Sitcom,” about his career

(Christopher Patey / For The Times)

How does Bonnie Garmus follow her blockbuster 2022 novel “Lessons in Chemistry”? With “Peck & Peck,” a “whimsical and winning ode to the written word, and send-up of the pretensions of its gatekeepers,” writes Leigh Haber.

Chuck Lorre, one of the most successful and prolific writers and producers in TV history, has written “Sitcom,” a memoir in which he reveals, among other things, his decade-long tenure as a card-carrying Scientologist. Writing the book “was cathartic,” he tells Mary McNamara. “There’s a little bit of therapy going on in this book. I got to say some things out loud that in the past I would have kept hidden because they were embarrassing.”

At a time when it seems like anger and hostility has become the fossil fuel of everyday life, author and conflict expert Priya Parker’s new book “The Art of Fighting” argues for civil and spirited debate as a balm for our troubled times. “As a conflict resolution facilitator for the last 25 years, I can say that healthy community needs healthy conflict,” Parker tells Margaret Wappler.

Finally, Maddie Connors talked to Michael Douglas about his new memoir, “One Helluva Ride,” a book about his life and career. “Your 80s may be a good time to share,” the 82-year-old actor tells Connors. “People interested in movies, we give them a certain insight into the process, and maybe they could learn something. For others, it’s just gossip.”

📖 Bookstore Faves

Formerly a pop-up bookstand, Reverie Bookstand is a brick-and-mortar bookstore on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park.

(Reverie Bookstand)

Located on a busy stretch of Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, Reverie Bookstand is doing its level best to buck the AI tsunami, selling used books created by humans in a variety of subjects. In an email exchange, owner Tim Horner tells us what’s selling in his store.

What prompted you to open the store?

I was driving by and I saw it was for lease. I had been selling books for some years as a scout for other bookstores, and also at flea markets where I would pop up with a ”bookstand.” So it wasn’t a brand new idea; I had always dreamt of it. The owner of the building was a part of a small team that ran a collective DIY venue and gallery called Echo Curio around 12 years ago. It has since shut down, but Echo Curio was a place I came to as a young person back in the day. So the landlord was sympathetic to the cause and the idea of having a bookstore here. So I went for it.

What genres does the store tend to emphasize?

I specialize in poetry, mysticism, occult and out-of-print secondhand books and paper goods. All the books here in the store are used books. So far it hasn’t been difficult to keep the shelves full, I know some spots.

Who are you customers?

The clientele here is diverse. Students, working-class people, artists, local neighborhood families, musicians and people from all walks of life who simply love books and reading. A thing I am grateful for is how kindhearted and empathetic (most) book people are. It gives me a lot of strength and motivation everyday to know that my book-buying addiction is not in vain but is actually going to some strange use in helping connect people with literature.

What’s selling right now?

The things that are selling the most are things California-related and writers from California especially — Joan Didion, John Steinbeck, Octavia Butler.

Why do we still need bookstores when AI can write books for us?

I think bookstores are relevant still because we all need some type of human connection for our well-being, and books encourage that behavior. Whether it’s connecting with a space and people or connecting with authors, a bookstore is a place where you can actually browse for something and be in the moment with other people that are possibly interesting. The gesture alone validates itself in that you’re telling the world. I am open to ideas, things, places, people, and along the way you find a book you didn’t know existed, a nicer copy of something you already have, or a book you’ve been meaning to read but had forgotten about. And until this point there is no tangible way to browse for these things I have online yet and hopefully ever.

Reverie Bookstand is located at 1519 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles.