Elizabeth Holmes

Was Elizabeth Holmes' voice fake? What did the Theranos CEO's real voice sound like? Here's how it compares to Amanda Seyfried's on Hulu.

But at the end of the day, I’m an actor and I’m not her and I did my best to try to capture the oddness of it.” Research has shown that women who speak with deeper voices are typically taken more seriously, viewed as more competent and trustworthy overall—so it’s no surprise that someone like Holmes might mask her true voice in an attempt to make connections in the medical industry. Still, Seyfried says she did her best to “try to capture the oddness” of Holmes’ voice—even if she didn’t nail it completely. So even though she was deepening her voice more and more to what we all understand is for power’s sake, to make an impact, I still couldn’t get all the way there.” And just not fun.” She added, “I was so worried that getting the voice 100 percent right would distract from the actual story, that it would become the focus.” Holmes was known for her surprisingly deep voice in interviews, panels and discussions.

The trial of Theranos leader Elizabeth Holmes on 20/20, with a look at the new Hulu series Dropout. On Dateline, the murder of snake breeder Ben Renick in ...

It also looks ahead to the upcoming trial of her former boyfriend and business partner Sunny Balwani, whom Holmes accused of abuse, all of which he denies. As the frantic hunt for a missing snake begins, the investigation soon reveals a tragic family saga and a sinister betrayal. 20/20 (9 p.m., ABC) - In this special, correspondent Rebecca Jarvis reports on the latest chapter in the downfall of Elizabeth Holmes and her blood-testing company Theranos, once valued at $9 billion.

The Dropout — Money. Romance. Tragedy. Deception. Hulu's limited series “The Dropout,” the story of Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried) and Theranos is an ...

“The Dropout” isn’t the definitive portrait of a beleaguered tech figure. The series is framed often around Holmes’ own testimony, and ventures into how she confronted a bro culture that was eager to dismiss her during Theranos’ investment phase. It’s the smaller moments that give us more insight into Holmes’ psyche, along with the exchanges she has with her investors, co-workers and even family members. Hulu’s addictive dramatized series “The Dropout” has just debuted, focusing on Holmes and the doomed startup “Theranos,” a California-based health tech company she founded on an unproven concept. Seyfried excels at conveying Holmes’ awkwardness and later her icy cutthroat workplace demeanor, black turtlenecks and all. Seyfried’s transformation into Holmes is eerie.

Holmes' meteoric rise and mortifying collapse has been turned into “The Dropout,” a highly entertaining Hulu TV series based on the podcast and other ...

“I never expected to feel such a camaraderie right from the jump,” she said. The series also cast Oracle founder and Silicon Valley icon Larry Ellison as playing a pivotal part in Holmes’ saga that went beyond his role as an early Theranos investor. In an interview, Seyfried traced her performance to the kinship she felt as she studied Holmes and realized they shared common interests growing up, including a love of dance. Another character whose name came up during the trial but whose full story wasn’t allowed to be fully told was Ian Gibbons, a chemist who joined Theranos not long after Holmes founded the company in 2003. Balwani’s specter loomed large throughout the trial, including the afternoon when Holmes spelled out her abuse allegations during two hours of occasionally tearful testimony. The series also illuminates the roles of people we heard about during the trial but didn’t take the stand.

Amanda Seyfried plays an ever-evolving version of Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes in the Hulu miniseries The Dropout.

To make this same move with Elizabeth Holmes feels intended as some twisted compliment, adding her to the pantheon of men she always aspired to join. “I don’t feel things the way other people feel things,” she tells Sunny early in their relationship, “but I love you.” Even the twinned scenes in the Apple store and the boardroom hint that Holmes succeeds by borrowing wholesale the shtick of a normal girl, presumably alien to her. In college, she has to practice being normal in the mirror so as not to freak anyone out during simple interactions.

Based on the hit podcast of the same name, "The Dropout" is a new miniseries starting March 3 on Hulu.

I hope that people who have read everything under the sun and listened to the podcast and watched all of the documentaries, I hope that they watch this and I hope that they enjoy it, and I hope that they feel like maybe they learn something new because Liz Meriwether and her team did so much individual in new research and I hope that they see Amanda Seyfried and see what I saw when I walked into the very first shoot with her, which was just a complete awe-inspiring moment of her really inhabiting this human being. What are you hoping that people get out of the retailing of the story on the screen in this format. For me, it's looking at everything in, again, back to that idea of being skeptical and looking at the world and trying to see the world without just completely seeing it through the eyes of groupthink and really saying if something doesn't make sense, then maybe it doesn't make sense even though everyone else might be telling you it does and it should. The idea of faking the future, there's a big difference between saying we're going to the moon, and I feel confident that we can get there versus we've been to the moon, and to say that your technology was deployed on the battle field when your technology never was deployed on the battle field, or to say that you can run hundreds of tests when in actuality, at the very most you can run a dozen test, 12 tests. I do think it's an important question for people to think about, and something that I'm sure a lot of founders are contemplating as they look at her story. But just for the average investor, what are one or two things that you think normal people can do to avoid investing in the next Theranos? Even if we're not tossing VC money at Theranos like Elizabeth Holmes was enjoying. You have this picture of a giant ambitious goal that so many people supported along the way and in the early days, the Avie Tevanian's of the world supported at the right-hand man to Steve Jobs at Apple. Even in those early years as Avie Tevanian told us when I interviewed him, he didn't feel that he was getting the full picture and he didn't feel that Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes were taking the steps that if they were truly serious and committed to having this product be ready for market that they would be taking. Rebecca Jarvis: I've asked a lot of people in Silicon Valley what they make of this and if they think so, and answers are divided. That the idea of getting to the other side of this innovation was a very complicated journey. She told the story as we saw over and over again about her uncle and his cancer and that being part of the genesis of her story. I think those three things together were something that certainly drew me to this story and something that I think make a lot of people give a pause and a beat and want to understand more because they recognize. I think that's something that every parent, I'm a parent and became a parent through the process at the time that I was creating this podcast a few days later gave birth to my first child.