Elizabeth Holmes

Now that the Hulu series has wrapped its eight-episode run, Seyfried's complex, sometimes wickedly funny performance as Elizabeth Holmes stands out even in ...

Seyfried will have to fend off Maid’s Margaret Qualley, already a SAG nominee for her heartbreaking turn, as well as newly minted Oscar winner Jessica Chastain (Scenes From a Marriage). And we’ve yet to gauge the chances of the starry trio of The First Lady, or Claire Foy in A Very British Scandal (yes, more scandal!), or Julia Roberts in Gaslit, or Jessica Biel in Candy, all of whom will get a push. It’s the sort of ending, to be very simplistic about these things, that wins you an Emmy. Seyfried presents a complete embodiment of a well-known public figure, striking a tricky balance with the confidence of a star in her prime. But if we can call this a true race, we can also call Seyfried our early front-runner. This comes to a head in the finale, now streaming on Hulu, as Elizabeth effectively meets her fate and Theranos’s house of cards tumbles. If last year’s thrilling race for best actress in a limited series was defined, largely, by characters facing down their pain—winner Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown, Anya Taylor-Joy in The Queen’s Gambit, Michaela Coel in I May Destroy You, Elizabeth Olsen in WandaVision—then this season’s cycle is sure to turn that on its head with glee. She keyed into a certain unknowability too, playing harrowing scenes with layers ranging from ambivalence to guilt to a cruel sort of thrill.

Liz Meriwether's Hulu adaptation of the Theranos story found a way to deliver fresh insight into Holmes, something that other tech shows like WeCrashed and ...

I was putting it off and putting it off for so long, and I think Hulu was giving me the benefit of the doubt. One of the amazing things about Amanda is that she has the sense of play that a comedy actor has and isn’t afraid of trying something completely different." There was something that needed to happen that wasn’t necessarily written, or it was written, and I didn’t necessarily know how to portray it, because there’s so many possibilities. I kind of liked that it wasn’t in some big, dramatic way — that it was just an Uber driver. "When I walked onto the set, I felt like I was in a real lab," she says. Doing it that way, for me, gave it sort of this intimacy, that it almost it was like what’s going on in her head is almost more present than what’s actually happening in the room.” The Dropout showed that Elizabeth Holmes is an extreme product of "Millennial Exceptionalism": "Out of the halcyon days of the 1990s economic boom and Clinton era came a generation told we could do anything," says Allison Keene. "Hack comedians still mine this 'everyone’s a winner' mentality, but it was a cultural force at the time. The decision to try and dramatize the personal feelings and relationships and intentions of Elizabeth Holmes was weird: "I’m not a huge fan of this current ripped-from-the-headlines trend of TV shows; they’re just shinier, more star-studded versions of the Movie of the Week flicks that used to populate basic cable," says Randall Colburn. "Those movies, often based on the year’s sensational headlines, tended to get major facts wrong about the crimes and the people involved. The Dropout finale editor Steve Welch on crafting the final scene: “There was initial discussion about making it dreamier, making it feel more in her head, more echoey dialogue, or making it a little bit hazy. (Theranos) was a lot of the blind leading the blind, and all their musical choices were helpful, aspirational tunes. But it doesn't frame that progression as absolution, only as an insight about one of the things, perhaps the many things, that went wrong to allow her to become the person she became. As Linda Holmes points out, "there was something particular in the way (Holmes) processed her past that paved the way for the person she became.

Amanda Seyfried has recently explained that she had to disconnect from reality in order to portray Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout.

While sitting down with Variety to discuss episode 8 of The Dropout, Seyfried shared that she had to distance and detach herself from reality as she knew it in order to play Holmes. She explained that due to the crippling realities of Holmes' actions being so intense, it made it very difficult to enjoy portraying her. The Dropout series is based on the popular podcast of the same name that follows Holmes' rise to success and her eventual downfall. She purposefully misled and lied to investors and the general public when she was trying to sell her ‘revolutionary’ technology that would become the foundation of her entire company, Theranos.

Just as Elizabeth Holmes showed her true callous self in The Dropout's finale, there were people who were willing to stand up to her.

The Theranos founder had a baby with her husband less than two months before her initial criminal trial last year.

The Theranos founder welcomed a baby boy with partner William Evans on July 10, 2021 — less than two months before her criminal trial. Their festival rendezvous happened “a mere few days” days before Theranos employees learnt of the company’s dissolution. Not long after, Evans, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economic graduate, proposed to Holmes with his collegiate signet ring. Holmes has denied all charges, and is currently out on a $500,000 bail while she awaits sentencing, which is due to take place this September, according to The Wall Street Journal. She may not be a billionaire anymore, but Elizabeth Holmes is still living large even as she awaits September’s sentencing. “He could snap his fingers and have a triple-A diamond engagement ring instantly if he wanted to. Therefore, she could be spending up to 80 years in prison all up. She chose to be dishonest with investors and patients. It was falsely advertised as a faster, less-intrusive and more affordable blood testing option — one which people could self-administer — than standard pathology clinics. Perhaps, due to its real life title character, that being Elizabeth Holmes’, continuing trial — which could see the 38-year-old face up 80 years (yes, really) in prison. Spoiler alert: at the height of her power — Holmes achieved it, before everything came crashing down. From Inventing Anna to WeCrashed, audiences have been binging the wildly true stories of those who swindled their way to the top of America’s hierarchy with absolute pleasure.

'The Dropout' introduced Elizabeth Holmes' new boyfriend Billy Evans. The pair are now married in real life. What is their age difference?

In The Dropout finale, Holmes appears to consider using this uncomfortable age difference to her advantage. The final moments of The Dropout reveal that Holmes and Evans did in fact attend Burning Man together in 2018. According to Movie Maker, 18-year-old Holmes met Balwani on a trip to Beijing. Balwani was 37 years old at the time. This was the same year Theranos settled with CMS. The pair got engaged in 2019 and married in the summer of that same year. Holmes hurries out of the building as Tanner tries to tell her that Theranos hurt real people. He’s in his 20s.” Tanner remarks that Holmes is acting like nothing is wrong and she isn’t facing the possibility of 20 years in prison.

Amanda Seyfried has voiced her desire to reprise the Elizabeth Holmes role in a second season of Hulu's hit series "The Dropout."

But who knows, the Emmys are in the fall, as we’ve seen by hit mini-series like “Mare Of Easttown” or “Big Little Lies,” what is initially intended as a mini-series can soon turn into a series if the awards match the already-sky-high ratings and popularity. Seyfried believes there is just so much more material to explore, and it doesn’t hurt that she believes it’s one of the best roles she’s ever had. The mini-series covers the unbelievable true story of Elizabeth Holmes, the infamous health care revolutionary/silicon valley “visionary” that was behind the rise and fall of Theranos. Theranos raised billions of dollars for a venture that would promise huge advancements in medical testing technology and never delivered.

Prosecutors urged a federal judge to brush aside Elizabeth Holmes's argument that she should be acquitted after a jury convicted her of fraud earlier this ...