“There’s a fine line between being a genius and an insane person,” the CEO of a tech startup told me in the fall of 2016, just a month or so before Donald Trump was re-elected. As he spoke, his eyes glinted with an energetic sort of mania; it felt somehow both deranged and propulsive. I nodded, a 23-year-old, hoping I was working for the former and not the latter.
A few months later, this CEO’s tech startup—where I was employed—ran out of cash. He had lied about how much investment he had received, claiming he had hundreds of millions of dollars more than he did. And he was spending recklessly, all while telling everyone that a bridge loan was coming in to keep things afloat.
Two years later, after the dust settled, I confronted him about the actual amount that was raised. He said that the journalist who had reported the incorrect fundraising number had simply misheard him, and that he’d forgotten to correct it. He said it with such confidence that I almost wanted to believe him.
All of this came back to me after I watched Nathan Fielder’s incredible film You Can See Everything, which examines the question of who Elizabeth Holmes—the ex-CEO of blood-testing startup Theranos, which defrauded investors and patients—actually is.
The premise of the film involves experimental comic and performance artist Nathan Fielder staying at Elizabeth Holmes’ rented beach house before Holmes serves an eleven-year prison sentence for fraud. During the three hour film—which felt closer to maybe an hour—viewers are whisked through an emotional rollercoaster, one that frequently challenges the perspectives you believe to be true, even within the duration of the film.
At the beginning, we see Holmes is a new mother, almost in trad wife form. She is breastfeeding, going on beach walks and swims with her fiancé Billy Evans, and attempting to whisk eggs. At several points, preparing for her impending prison stay away from her children and partner, she is in tears. You feel a bit bad for her.
In one scene, Holmes—called “Liz” by both her fiancé Evans, and Fielder—is shown the famous Abbott and Costello skit “Who’s On First?”
Fielder shows her the scene after Holmes insists that she didn’t understand why the words “this product can work,” in relation to her failed blood-testing kit, could have been misleading as to whether her product actually works. Fieler is showing her “Who’s On First?” as an absurd demonstration of how the sequence of words and the intonation of language matter in how people interpret them.
Liz watches and laughs a bit at the skit. But when asked by Fielder whether she understood why it was funny—and what the baseball players’ names are—she said she didn’t know (that “Who’s” on first, “What’s” on second, and so on). Fielder is skeptical that Liz is not aware, as are we. But we remain astounded and bemused, I think, by her doe-eyed commitment to her own bit.
At another point during Fielder’s stay, he has Liz watch actress Amanda Seyfried’s performance of Holmes in The Dropout—the fictionalized television show about Theranos. Liz watches, but then snuggles up to her fiancé in tears. Eventually she implores Fielder to turn it off.
Now, while Fielder and the viewers remain skeptical of Liz’s feelings—especially given Liz’s declaration to Fielder, at one point, that she has never lied—the first part of the film elicits a bit of sympathy for a weeping Liz. And while she’s in prison, our sympathy intensifies.
We begin to believe that the true villain in the story is Liz’s fiancé, Evans. In the second part of the film, Evans becomes almost belligerent compared to his prior self. We learn that he has power of attorney over Liz, and that he is a Charlie Kirk fan. We discover that he is posting on X.com as “Elizabeth Holmes,” unbeknownst to her—as well as negotiating monetary deals on Liz’s behalf related to the Fielder’s documentary. All of this matches the narrative that Holmes, during her Theranos years, was a victim of Sonny Balwani—the much-older man who serves as Holmes’ COO at Theranos.
In the second part of the film—because Fielder cannot access Holmes by video in prison—he actually enlists actress Amanda Seyfried to play Holmes again, in various scenes that are scripted based on real life. Seyfried the person eventually becomes the voice of reason in the film. She challenges Fielder when he claims that Liz is truly in love after seeing her embrace Evans in the prison visiting room, reminding him that he may be biased in his endearment. The film then cuts to a scene of Nathan Fielder frolicking in the ocean with Liz before she goes to prison (reminding us that he could be a biased narrator, or that he is intentionally becoming a biased narrator to remind us of that potential.)
Psychologically, the film is brilliant. It breaks our boundaries of what we think is reality—over and over and over. If Holmes is manipulating Fielder, is she knowingly doing so? Or is she so coded and predisposed to manipulate as a form of survival that it genuinely feels authentic to her? Is she crying real tears? Does she actually miss her children—or is it a bit to get a pardon?
The documentary, perhaps for artistic reasons, doesn’t get into the history of Holmes’ fraud at Theranos. That was intentional, I think—because it parachutes us into a world where we can see ourselves being defrauded by a context-less Holmes, even if only for a moment.
It also appeals to the very human sensibility we have to want to see the best in people—especially manipulative people who know how to push us to see the best in them. And because fiancé Evans serves as a villainous foil to Liz’s seemingly pure motherhood, we have a new “villain” —making it very easy to look past the fact that Holmes may even be manipulating Evans, knowing that she will let him believe he is manipulating her.
In an abusive or manipulative relationship, one may only be able to see things with clarity after separation. And I must admit that it actually took me a day or two to remember that Holmes does in fact know what the word “can” means in the context of a tech product’s potential. It took me a few conversations with others who have seen the film to remember how absurd it is to think Holmes has no idea what is going on around her.
As Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz reminds us in an op-ed for STAT News: “The device [Holmes] showed Fielder on the kitchen table was not the reason she went to prison. Elizabeth showed him a future version of the Theranos product that was never completed and never used in order to lead Fielder down this BS semantic rabbit hole and to trick him into litigating the entirely wrong thing.”
Right after my encounter with the fraudulent tech CEO in 2016, Donald Trump was elected. At that time, it made me wonder—with fear and some sadness—whether it was indeed true that manipulation is just something that weaves the fabric of reality.
I think a part of Nathan Fielder’s takeaway is that we are, sadly, used to expert manipulation—especially in a post-truth world, and particularly when it comes to the people in extreme power. Because don’t we want to believe that our leaders are benevolently creating investment accounts to benefit children—or graciously giving shares of their trillion-dollar company to children? Isn’t it human to believe it’d be nice to rely on someone’s “genius” or altruism? Isn’t it natural to want to feel like someone is genuinely sad about going to prison, or that an endeavor to scan for disease via blood test was all a misunderstanding?
The whole film may be manipulative for everyone involved. But it does give us a glimpse into the psycho-pathology of Holmes, and those like her. While you can’t see everything yet in this film about the minds of the tech oligarch elite, it’s a start.