Yet another shape-shifting convicted felon is starring in a new documentary, but unlike Elizabeth Holmes in “You Can See Everything,” Russell Brand did not invite director Olivia Isaacs into his home to engage in a cinematic staring contest.
Not that he wouldn’t have done it if given the opportunity (and a very different filmmaker). As Isaacs’ traditional and deeply layered documentary “Russell Brand: Open Secret” makes clear, Brand is, in addition to being a sexual predator, a canny media manipulator who openly reinvented himself to exploit an ever-evolving zeitgeist and provide cover for his crimes. A navel-gazing doc would be right up his alley.
Urwin and Wace (who joined the four-year reporting process about midway through), provide the narrative spine of “Open Secret,” chronicling the decades of rumors (which, as with Bill Cosby, gained attention when stand-ups began directly calling Brand a rapist) and the difficulty of finding women who would speak of their experiences on the record.
Several did and do here. None of them were part of the recent trial, though at least one is part of the new investigation, and all women were, at various times, in a relationship with Brand. Only two do not describe being sexually assaulted, including Amanda Alguero Alejos, who recounts meeting Brand when he was her English teacher in a foreign language school and watching as he changed dramatically when his career took off, abusing drugs and becoming so openly sexual with other women that she left him.
But this is not a story of how success, complete with rock-star-type female adoration, somehow corrupted an ordinary guy who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances. Neither, aside from a brief segment scanning his troubled relationship with his father, is it much interested in why Brand did what he did.
Instead, both the reporters and the filmmakers examine how Brand has brazenly leveraged cultural trends, beginning with the sexually free and outrageous mood of the late 1990s and early 2000s (or “noughties”) that celebrated his “bad boy” persona, to provide cover for his predatory habits.
Deftly using clips from Brand’s stage shows and interviews as well as passages from his books, “Open Secret” proves its titular point over and over again. On multiple occasions, Brand admitted to terrible behavior and even called himself a rapist, before brushing it off as a satirical joke aimed at those too prudish to understand unbridled sexuality.
It worked spectacularly well, earning him TV jobs, film roles and A-list status (including a friendship with fellow convicted felon Sean “Diddy” Combs) and the inevitable phalanx of managers, lawyers and powerful allies.
This combination of celebrity and power is one reason many of the women Urwin and Wace interviewed over the course of four years were reluctant to speak publicly; two of those who allege rape in “Open Secret” did so anonymously.
Even so, rumors of Brand’s behavior began early and continued to grow. Particularly after 2011, when he moved to U.S. during the apex of his film career and his brief marriage to Katy Perry. (Perry is mentioned briefly in the film, which highlights a portion of her 2013 interview with Vogue in which she discussed their divorce, saying: “Then I found out the real truth, which I can’t necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day.”)
After Brand returned to the U.K., the film implies, he realized that his grinning-satyr reputation wasn’t playing so well anymore. In 2014, he made a huge career adjustment, leaping from unapologetic sexual player to politically progressive firebrand. Energetic and superficially erudite, his “working-class,” antiestablishment stance was immediately embraced by the progressive left. “Brand was wild,” journalist and political activist George Monbiot says in the film. “Exactly what left-wing politics was lacking at the time.”
That too worked, for a while. But during and after the #MeToo movement, many people were attempting to “out” Brand and his career began to suffer. Soon he reinvented himself again. Modeling himself on Tucker Carlson, he became a right-wing conspiracy theorist, railing against the usual suspects of science, liberals and legacy media.
By 2023, Urwin and Wace had found multiple women willing to speak on the record. When, in the final phase of reporting, they reached out to Brand, his lawyer responded that his client believed the piece to be “a concerted campaign” with “a deeply concerning agenda to all this, namely the fact that he is an alternative media broadcaster competing with mainstream media.” Brand then took to YouTube to denounce the article, claiming that “all of his relationships were consensual” and that the Sunday Times had a political agenda.
That did not work. Additional allegations poured into the journalists and Scotland Yard, and an investigation was opened. Brand once again shape-shifted, publicly embracing Christianity (down to being baptized in the River Thames in 2024 by Bear Grylls) and proselytizing about the powerful love of Christ.
Whether or not his newly found religious beliefs were sincere, they did not prevent him from being arrested, charged and convicted.
The film ends on an earnest rather than victorious note, with various participants voicing their hope that women will be more empowered to speak up about rape and sexual assault, and that the culture will stop celebrating and shielding the men who perpetrate it.
These sentiments have, regrettably, become a bit boilerplate, words many people say even as attempts to shame and silence sexual assault victims continue. The unsettling power of “Russell Brand: Open Secret” has little to do with Brand himself. Instead, this painstaking chronicle of how two dogged reporters and a few very brave women finally helped bring him to justice is an indictment of us. The people who heard the rumors and continued to support him, through ticket sales, clicks, likes and applause. The people who continued to find him audacious, funny and “authentic,” even as he was telling us exactly who he was and what he was doing.
An open secret is not a secret; it is a fact we have chosen not to confront. Brand got away with smirking about his life as a sexual predator under a thin disguise of mischievous comedy because we let him. And that’s what needs to stop.
NETFLIX is refusing to remove a Russell Brand documentary in which the convicted rapist makes a sick joke about his wife giving birth.
The streaming giants will not remove the disgraced comedian’s show, titled Re-Birth, which features a vile comment about his daughter’s birth.
Netflix is refusing to remove a Russell Brand doc in which the convicted rapist makes a sick joke about his wife Laura giving birthSource: GettyThe disgraced comedian arriving at Southwark Crown Court with LauraSource: Reuters
MATTHEW Perry’s five surviving Friends co-stars will not appear in a new Netflix documentary about the late actor, with the filmmaker behind the series confirming they were approached.
Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer are all absent from The One About Matthew Perry, which arrives on Netflix on October 27.
Robertson also told Page Six there were no hard feelings towards the stars, or Perry’s family members who declined to participate.
“I think everyone grieves in their own way. And I understand why someone might feel that this isn’t the moment to talk,” Robertson told the outlet.
A source also previously told Page Six that the stars did not want to publicly revisit their grief over Perry’s death, with Aniston said to have found the prospect particularly difficult.
“She isn’t going to sit down and start crying on camera. She doesn’t want to relive it and have it be so public,” the insider said.
Further reports suggested that feeling extended across the group rather than there being any objection to the documentary itself.
“It’s still too raw,” an insider told New Idea, which reported that Aniston and Kudrow were still struggling to discuss Perry without becoming emotional.
The source claimed LeBlanc and Schwimmer were also uncomfortable with appearing and said the stars wanted to honor Perry privately, on their own terms and in their own time.
However, the stars have all paid tribute to Matthew since his death and some have spoken about him in interviews.
Aniston told Vanity Fair of losing Perry, “As hard as it was for all of us and for the fans, there’s a part of me that thinks this is better. I’m glad he’s out of that pain.”
Cox also wrote in an Instagram tribute after his death, “I am so grateful for every moment I had with you Matty and I miss you every day,” adding, “He was funny and he was kind.”
While none of Perry’s five main co-stars appear in the documentary, his younger sister Mia Perry Bowick does take part and speaks about her brother on camera for the first time.
Bowick offers several intimate insights into Perry’s relationships, his addiction troubles and his time on Friends, including how much the storyline between his character Chandler Bing and Courteney Cox’s Monica Geller meant to him.
She says her brother had sometimes felt that Schwimmer and Aniston’s Ross and Rachel received more of the spotlight on the beloved show.
Bowick says Perry was therefore thrilled when Chandler’s relationship with Monica developed, giving his character a major emotional storyline of his own to get his teeth into.
“He was not just silly Chandler anymore,” Bowick says in the documentary.
She explains that the romance allowed Perry to move beyond Chandler’s familiar comedy and demonstrate a more tender, romantic and vulnerable side of his acting.
Bowick says the family also understood how much Perry himself longed for the kind of love and family life that Chandler eventually found with Monica.
But her most poignant recollection of the Friends cast comes as she describes seeing them together at Perry’s private funeral.
Bowick says in the documentary that it was a small affair attended by family and close friends and that the five Friends stars entered together.
“I hadn’t seen them in easily 20 years,” Bowick recalls.
She says Aniston was the first of the group to approach her, giving her a huge hug, before the other cast members embraced her.
Bowick then watched as they all walked towards Perry’s casket holding hands and stood around their former co-star crying together.
Bowick also recalls an unexpected moment of laughter during the funeral as Perry was being moved into a mausoleum.
She says she suddenly felt as though her brother was standing behind her shoulder and could imagine him making a joke.
The thought caused her to start laughing during one of the most painful moments of the service, and she says it was the first time since his death that she had strongly felt her brother’s presence.
Robertson told Page Six that Bowick’s account of the funeral was both “wrenching and harrowing”, but said the unexpected laughter was also true to Perry’s personality.
The documentary also features Perry’s close friends and former NBC executive Warren Littlefield who recalled being in the room when Perry auditioned for Chandler.
Perry was found unresponsive in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home on October 28, 2023. He was 54.
His death was ruled accidental, with the acute effects of ketamine listed as the primary cause and drowning among the contributing factors.
The One About Matthew Perry is a new documentary exploring the life of the late Friends star, who played Chandler Bing on the beloved sitcom, three years on from his tragic death
For many years Matthew was able to hide his issues from fans.
Famously the Friends theme tune features the lyric “I’ll be there for you”.
And in real life actor Matthew Perry had both family and friends looking out for him along the way for most of his 54 years. Best known as Chandler Bing, he was regularly the stand out comic actor in the sitcom, both with physical gags and his comic timing of lines.
But often away from the cameras and the fame, there were problems in his life and we see and hear about those in abundance in the new Netflix series. I didn’t expect to react strongly to The One About Matthew Perry, but his sister Mia Perry Bowick is a captivating and unflinching interviewee.
Ahead of watching the documentary, I couldn’t really understand why she had agreed to take part and what good could come from it. But she does an incredible job by balancing her words to pay tribute to a brother she loved dearly, at the same time as also explaining the difficulties and pain of him struggling and battling with addiction.
I felt I understood the issues around addiction and Matthew Perry much more after watching and had huge sympathy for him and Mia. Here was an incredibly intelligent and talented man trying to manage a career as an A-list star as he fights desperately to not drink or turn to drugs when he feels depressed.
Those that worked with him point to his comic timing, his willingness to help with script tweaks or tiny scene changes to make projects even better. But for all his successes he never seemed to be able to be completely happy.
Despite having lots of friends and women falling at his feet, he would sometimes feel alone, perhaps thinking back to a time he would be put on planes on his own as a child flying between him mum in Canada and his dad in Los Angeles after they had separated
In one archive interview he says: “The beliefs that I had were I was too needy, I wasn’t enough, and I didn’t matter. And my whole life was about trying to have those three things not be true.”
Mia elaborates and says: “He would talk about that feeling of kind of a sense of emptiness or loneliness that he couldn’t quite fill.”
His closest friends and girlfriends discuss a recurring theme of poor Matthew losing the battle over and over again with relapses, and then his death. At one stage Mia says tearfully: “I know that a lot of parts of him did not think it was possible for him to live a sober life.” Going back further Mia recalls the good times, when Matthew first landed the Friends job, and when she was being cuddled on set by his cast mates like Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox as a young girl.
Her brother could be ridiculously generous and bought her a Corvette car when she was 15 and regularly treated friends and girlfriends to expensive gifts too. He also wasn’t against putting his hand in his pocket to try to help solve his own problems as Mia highlights he spent $7million on rehab to try to get clean and stay sober.
But another scene that lives long in the memory is when Mia describes visiting him in rehab in 2001 and being unable to control her despair at the situation, running and hiding in a cupboard in tears until her brother came to get her.
“This was my big brother, my idolised big brother. He was the most special person on the planet. Just seeing him suffering, I was really scared for him.”
As she grew older she matured and found she was having to help him even more, rushing to hospital to his aid in 2018 just six weeks after she had given birth. He came out of a coma that time and was released from hospital against the odds after three months, but the hopes that this would be rock bottom only lasted a few years.
At times this series if a tough watch because it does not sugarcoat what happened and the issues around addiction. But this decision should be applauded. It is a million miles away from so many of the other “celebrity documentaries” released these days which gloss over the difficult moments over simplify what really happened.
Explaining her reasoning for taking part, Mia said: As his sister, he shaped who I am today, the person I strive to be, and the work to which I’ve devoted my life. Matthew had a beautiful heart and a generous spirit, and even in his darkest moments, he could still make you laugh and feel loved. I hope this series gives everyone who loved him, whether personally or from afar, a deeper appreciation for who he truly was, and the legacy he leaves behind.”
Mia, you were there for him, and along with director Mary Robertson you have done Matthew proud with this documentary.
VERDICT: A challenging and heartbreaking series *****
* The One About Matthew Perry premieres globally on Netflix on October 27.
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Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s experimental Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything” is not only one of the most buzzed-about films of the year; it has proved the hype at the box office, already making $15 million during its opening weekend.
One last warning before we proceed: Spoilers ahead.
Before “You Can See Everything” put Holmes back in the spotlight, Amanda Seyfried portrayed the Theranos CEO in the Hulu limited series “The Dropout,” winning a lead actress Emmy for the role.
In the documentary, Holmes tells Fielder she has never watched the series. After his prodding, they watch it together — along with Holmes’ partner Billy Evans — in a Del Mar beach cottage days before she is set to leave her family, including two young children, to report to a Texas prison to serve an 11-year sentence after being convicted of fraud.
In an interview with The Times in 2022, Seyfried recounted telling filmmaker David Fincher about the role, who made a suggestion about how to play Holmes: “He turned to me, and he said, ‘This Theranos girl, she’s not listening.’ And I was like, ‘You’re right!’ Watch her listen. She’s playing listening. … Everything is like, ‘Do you see me listen? Make sure you see that I’m listening to you.’ It’s one of the things that helped her succeed. So much of it was an act, and her bubble was bound to burst. It must have been so tiring.”
During “You Can See Everything,” we observe Holmes watching Seyfried dance in a scene from “The Dropout,” a much-memed moment in the series.
“My favorite thing was getting to express Elizabeth Holmes’ frustration through dance. A character working her s— out. A lot of it was based on the fact that she was a dance student,” Seyfried said.
Holmes cringes at seeing it portrayed onscreen (if you’ve ever had your own dancing or karaoke sessions broadcast, you know the feeling).
In the documentary, Holmes and Evans also claim research wasn’t done before creating the series. Seyfried told us she spent months listening to the 10 hours of deposition tapes in preparation, something she also mentions in “You Can See Everything.” The actor, in a separate interview with The Times published in March 2022, also spoke about how she learned to mimic Holmes’ baritone voice.
Meanwhile, for the dialogue in “The Dropout,” Meriwether discussed getting access to texts sent between Holmes and her former romantic partner, Theranos COO Sunny Balwani, in an essay she wrote for The Envelope in August 2022.
“I had been on conference calls with lawyers for hours discussing every detail, every word, every action line in every script,” she wrote. “The writers had to justify our choices based on the facts we had, so we had scoured the source material, trying to piece together the mystery of what had happened between Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani behind closed doors at Theranos. And here I was about to open an attachment with the actual text messages that Elizabeth and Sunny had written to each other. It was thrilling and infuriating.”
In the mindbending documentary “You Can See Everything,” comedian Nathan Fielder and professed inventor Elizabeth Holmes sit in her beach house staring at each other like gunslingers. Fielder is the creator of the TV series “The Rehearsal” and “Nathan for You” who constructs discombobulating sham realities that include bogus businesses such as Dumb Starbucks. Holmes is the former billionaire CEO of Theranos who pretended she’d built a revolutionary blood testing machine to squeeze investors for a few dollars more.
Each is an expert in the con. But Fielder is deadpan and cold where Holmes is earnest and warm — and he’s been nominated for Emmys while, in May of 2023 when the film begins, she’s about to serve an 11-year sentence in federal prison. As the camera cuts between close-ups of his narrowed eyes and her big, blue ones, Fielder tries to suss whether he can trust the famous fibber to be honest with him. The showdown is riveting.
“You’re being real right now?” Fielder asks, dubious.
Holmes beams. “I’m always being real,” she swears with a smile.
Her charm hits Fielder in the gut. His face stays neutral yet you can see his own confidence bleed out across the screen.
Co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim (“Primetime”), “You Can See Everything” is the closest Fielder has come to making a traditional documentary. A thrillingly cringe-tastic interviewer, he blurts out blunt questions like a bungee jumper leaping off a bridge, including asking Holmes’ romantic and business partner Billy Evans, the heir to a San Diego boutique hotel chain, whether it’s possible a woman convicted of fraud might be with him for his money.
At nearly three hours long, “You Can See Everything” won’t bore you for a minute. The hook is right there in the title, Fielder’s challenge to the audience: Here’s how Holmes held up to his scrutiny — do we think she’s telling the truth? But be alert. Fielder remains a trickster. One shot in particular proves you can see everything while being blind to what you’re actually watching.
In the first half of the movie, Holmes and Evans, the father of her two young children, give the small crew complete access to their lives during her last weeks of freedom, including inviting Fielder to sleep in their guest bedroom. It’s an act of “radical transparency,” Evans says. As evidence, there’s a fully nude shot of Evans in the shower, testifying to the intimacy the subjects claim they’re granting the team and the confidence they have that the documentary will make them look great. (Evans also boasts that he’s “excellent” in the sack.)
Holmes maintains both her innocence and her eerie smile, a rictus of empathy. She constantly nods, subliminally snake-charming the listener into a sense of agreement. That assessment might be fair or it might be her reputation making you over-analyze her tics. Doubling down, she even insists she’s never told a lie in her life — a claim that momentarily leaves Fielder at a loss for words.
Yet at times, Holmes really does appear to be sincere. Once she surrenders herself to the Bryan Federal Prison Camp in Texas (where, in an unmentioned coincidence, Epstein collaborator Ghislane Maxwell is also incarcerated), the tone shifts into film noir as Fielder struggles to reconcile Elizabeth Holmes’ dual identities. Is she the sweet-natured scientist, the only version of her he’s ever met, or a femme fatale who may still be running a scam?
“It’s personal,” Fielder says of his fixation. How frustrating that he of all people — the dark prince of pranks — may be Holmes’ latest patsy. Composer Ari Balouzian borrows bits of Bernard Herrmann’s violin score from “Vertigo” while cinematographer David Bolen makes the audience hold its breath by framing an image of Fielder and Holmes like they might kiss.
When the movie’s style gets weird, that’s when Fielder is most in his wheelhouse. Stop reading now if you want to preserve the surprise. Micro-analyzing his encounters with Holmes, he reenacts them with an actor, Amanda Seyfried, whose emotional intensity blows into the film like a gust of fresh air. Seyfried, of course, won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for playing Holmes in the 2022 miniseries “The Dropout.” The twists to come, however, feel as much like last year’s naughty hit “The Housemaid,” the domestic thriller in which Seyfried played a shady wife with a marriage made of lies.
Evans initially seems to think they’re participating in a project closer to Netflix’s glossy portrait of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. The couple doesn’t know much about humor, pop culture or Fielder himself. Fumbling to figure out what makes him tick, Evans attempts to neg the provocateur as someone who lacks the passion to think differently. (Evans may also be the person who used Holmes’ social media account to write a flattering post calling JD Vance “Lisan al-Gaib,” revealing he’s entirely missed the point of “Dune.”)
But thinking differently is Fielder’s awkward superpower. Sooner or later, all of his projects circle around to his concern that he’s simply wired to be unpleasant. His interactions with Holmes are pure cringe comedy, like when she starts to cry perhaps a bit on cue and he stiffly sputters, “Do you want, like, a tissue?” For the record, he brings her one.
As a viewer, the biggest strike against Holmes is this documentary’s very existence. Whether or not you think she’s guilty of fraud, she is about to be separated from her infant and toddler until they’re in grade school. Who on Earth would genuinely want Fielder, the human equivalent of a skunk, to crash their last moments with their loved ones as he does his darnedest to stink up the place?
Fielder is most comfortable as the film’s villain, shooting himself lurking in the couple’s house like “Halloween’s” Michael Myers. At times, his presence does feel monstrous. In one scene, he needles Evans about whether he thinks his soulmate has ever lied to him while Holmes is on the phone in the next room, tearing up as she asks how often she’ll be able to bathe in prison.
The film doesn’t drill into the technical details of Theranos beyond one dizzying scene where Fielder tries to pin Holmes down on exactly what she meant when she said her machine can run hundreds of different tests. She means it just as I would if I bragged I can benchpress a beer keg — that is, once I strength-train beyond my piddly 5 lb dumbbells.
Instead, it tilts into becoming a caper flick as Seyfried’s commitment to understanding her character’s motivation inspires the actor to invite herself along. The drama they uncover is psychological, as befits an era where Silicon Valley CEOs are closer to cult leaders than engineers, making their cash from being televangelists for their IPOs. And both are attuned to the moments when Evans lets his aggravation slip. One scene is a doozy.
Ultimately, suspicion reigns. “You Can See Everything” is an absorbing study of public presentation and private doubts, a documentary that asks more questions than it answers. I hope Fielder will smile and nod approvingly at me if I say I left the film distrusting him, too, especially Seyfried’s re-staging of a long monologue Holmes delivered in prison where recording devices aren’t allowed. Can we believe that Holmes really did say, “I’m tired of having other people speak for me,” or was that laugh line written by the master manipulator himself? I’m now as paranoid as he is — and what a pleasure.
Nathan Fielder would rather you not read this article. At least not until you’ve seen his new movie.
He has a point.
Now in theaters, “You Can See Everything,” the nearly three-hour documentary Fielder co-directed with filmmaker Lance Oppenheim about convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, is full of head-spinning twists and turns best left unspoiled, and the filmmakers have gone to extreme lengths to keep them that way. At its secret premiere at the Telluride Film Festival last month, audience members were required to lock their phones in pouches and warned that security guards with night-vision goggles would be watching for anyone trying to record the screening. Afterward, Fielder pleaded with the crowd to keep the film’s biggest surprises to themselves.
Holmes was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors in her failed blood-testing company and sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison. Fielder and Oppenheim began filming her and longtime partner Billy Evans, an MIT graduate and heir to a family-owned San Diego hotel business, shortly before she reported to prison in 2023, gaining extraordinary access to the couple and their two young children.
Holmes and Evans welcomed the cameras, hoping they would help vindicate her. But the closer Fielder and Oppenheim got to the couple, the harder it became to distinguish candor from calculated performance. Fielder, whose series “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal” put real people through elaborate, often uncomfortable experiments, began to wonder whether the tables had been turned.
“I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced in this,” Fielder admitted during a post-screening Q&A at Telluride. “I don’t quite know what I went through.” He said he hoped audiences might help him make sense of the “glitchy feeling” it left in his head.
Having seen the film twice, we’re not entirely sure we can help him.
In deference to Fielder’s wishes, this is your last chance to turn back: Major spoilers follow. For those still with us, here are 10 of the film’s strangest moments — by no means the only ones — along with a few clues from Fielder himself about how they came to be.
Evans takes ’radical transparency’ too far
Evans has a theory about why the world sees his partner as a monster: Nobody really knows her. “In the absence of knowing somebody, it’s really easy to make them feel other and scary,” he tells the filmmakers. His proposed solution is “radical transparency” — a familiar Silicon Valley mantra with an ironic resonance given Theranos’ notorious culture of secrecy. The filmmakers are allowed virtually unlimited access to the family’s life, with Fielder even invited to move into their rented house in Del Mar, near San Diego. In one scene, Evans stands completely naked in the shower, brushing his teeth with the bathroom door wide open and the cameras rolling, as Fielder stands awkwardly nearby. At Telluride, Fielder, who had initially planned to stay behind the scenes, admitted he was still perplexed by the couple’s openness. “I’m a weird guy — why do they want me there?” he said. “That messed with my head a little bit.”
Fielder observes Holmes and her family in a scene from the documentary “You Can See Everything”
(A24)
Theranos, the sequel
A federal fraud conviction apparently hasn’t ended Holmes’ ambitions to revolutionize medical testing. Before heading to prison, she and Evans begin laying plans for a new venture involving lasers and artificial intelligence that Evans describes as “2.0” — a chance, he says, “to put the band back together and do it all again.” Holmes declares, “From wherever I am, I’m going to continue to work inventing, even if it’s inventing from a cage.”
Holmes claims she’s never told a lie
For someone convicted of defrauding investors, Holmes has a remarkably uncomplicated view of her own honesty. Asked by Fielder whether she’s ever told a lie in her life, she replies, “I don’t think so.” Pressed — surely she’s pretended to be sick to get out of a party? — she concedes she has, explaining that she thought he meant the criminal case against her. In a scene that became the centerpiece of the film’s teaser trailer, Holmes fixes Fielder with an unwavering stare. “Why would I deceive you?” she asks. “There’s no reason for me to do that.” When Fielder asks whether she’s being real with him, she doesn’t miss a beat: “I’m always being real.”
The Theranos device gets a second look
Holmes hauls out of storage the infamous Theranos device, the machine that helped bring down her company. “So this is the famous scam device,” Fielder says. “It is not a scam device,” Holmes replies. When she insists the machine can perform any medical test, Fielder finds himself drawn into an absurd debate over the meaning of the word “can.” Did she mean it could actually perform those tests, or that it theoretically would once the necessary chemistry had been developed? The man who has made a career out of baffling other people seems genuinely baffled himself, reduced to explaining the word “can” to the founder of Theranos.
Holmes and Evans enter federal court in 2022.
(Nic Coury / Associated Press)
Elizabeth Holmes meets Abbott and Costello
Still trying to make his point, Fielder turns to Abbott and Costello. He plays Holmes the classic “Who’s on First?” comedy routine — two people hopelessly talking past each other. Holmes watches politely and says she finds it funny. But she seems to have missed the central joke: The first baseman’s name is actually Who. “I didn’t pick it up,” she admits. Fielder’s attempts to explain the joke and why he showed it to her get him nowhere. Evans, watching the exchange, regards his wife’s difficulty following the joke as further evidence that her mind simply works differently from everyone else’s.
Fielder gives Holmes an escape kit
On the morning Holmes is due to report to prison, Fielder arrives with a parting gag gift: hair dye and glasses, in case she’d prefer to disguise herself and flee the country. Fielder is famous for excruciatingly awkward deadpan comedy, but Holmes’ parents are there, the family is preparing for an emotional goodbye and he seems to realize almost immediately that he has misjudged the situation. “I didn’t know your parents would be here,” he says, assuring everyone that it’s “just kind of like a joke.” The more he tries to explain himself, the more uncomfortable things become. “Maybe not appropriate for the moment,” he concedes.
Amanda Seyfried becomes a surprise co-star
Seyfried won an Emmy for playing Holmes in Hulu’s “The Dropout,” which Holmes had avoided watching for fear it would be too emotionally disturbing. Fielder persuades Holmes to watch it for the first time, on a laptop in the couple’s bed. She soon breaks down in tears and asks him to turn it off. Later, Fielder visits Seyfried at her apartment and shows her footage of Holmes watching her performance. So we watch Seyfried watch Holmes watch Seyfried playing Holmes as Fielder watches her. And things only get weirder from there.
At Telluride, Fielder said the filmmakers initially doubted Seyfried would want to participate. But after a brief phone call, she invited them over and agreed to be filmed. Neither side knew where things would lead. “It just actually evolved in that organic way, which was really exciting,” Fielder said.
Seyfried as Holmes in a scene from Hulu’s “The Dropout.”
( Beth Dubber / Hulu)
Seyfried plays detective
Seyfried soon finds herself reenacting Holmes’ conversations with Fielder as he tries to make sense of their encounters. She becomes so invested that she joins Fielder on a visit to Evans’ home, hoping she might get him to open up in ways Fielder can’t. “I feel like an undercover cop right now,” she says, clearly getting a rush. There, after meeting the couple’s children, she unexpectedly winds up on a prison phone call with Holmes herself. With only two minutes for the family to talk, Seyfried suddenly seems mortified to be intruding. “I’m so sorry — I don’t want to ruin your two minutes with your beautiful family,” she says. Fielder, naturally, has a camera running.
Evans takes control of the narrative
With Holmes behind bars, Evans seems determined to manage her public image himself. Armed with power of attorney, he takes over her verified X account, posting messages in her name, some of which sound nothing like the carefully controlled Holmes, including one telling another user to “f— off.” “There’s just so much trust that most things I don’t really consult her on,” Evans says at one point. “I know what she’d want.”
Evans’ attempts to steer the documentary itself begin even before Holmes reports to prison. In a meeting later reenacted in the film, after Holmes leaves the room, he raises the subject of money with Fielder, Oppenheim and executives from A24, the studio behind the film, demanding a share of the profits. Fielder says A24 reluctantly agreed, leaving him worried that the integrity of the project may have been compromised. When Holmes later insists she has no financial interest in the film, Fielder is taken aback. Either she’s “fully sincere,” he tells Seyfried, or “she honestly might be the most manipulative person that’s ever lived.” (The film notes at the end that Evans later changed his mind and decided not to accept payment.)
On Oct. 5, Holmes’ X account promoted the documentary with a tantalizing warning: “I really don’t think you are ready for this doc.” Whether that was Holmes speaking or Evans speaking for her is anyone’s guess.
Seyfried confronts Evans
Things turn ugly during that same visit to Evans’ home. A conversation about conjugal visits and Evans’ sex life gives way to a heated argument over his use of Holmes’ X account. Evans brings up the social media backlash Seyfried faced for criticizing Charlie Kirk after his shooting death, then attacks her portrayal of his partner in “The Dropout.” Soon he’s threatening vengeance against people he believes have wronged Holmes. “I’m going to ruin their lives,” he declares. Asked whose lives he means, Evans replies, “F—ing everyone. I’ve got vengeance in my heart.”
Later, away from Evans, Seyfried offers her own assessment: “He is bat— crazy.”
