You Can See Everything

In 2023, thirty-four days before Elizabeth Holmes is scheduled to begin an eleven-year prison sentence for defrauding investors in Theranos, she and her partner, Billy Evans, invite filmmakers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim to document their lives at a rented beach house in Del Mar, California. Despite being granted extensive access to their personal lives, Fielder grows suspicious that the couple is withholding information. Holmes denies intentionally misleading anyone about Theranos’ purported blood-testing device, claiming she has never lied in her life. She and Evans continue contacting prospective investors about a second phase of Theranos. Throughout filming, Evans frequently speaks on Holmes’s behalf, interrupts interviews, and exhibits controlling behavior toward both her and the filmmakers.

Fielder shows the couple scenes from The Dropout, a miniseries starring Amanda Seyfried as Holmes, but Holmes becomes distressed and asks to stop watching. Shortly before her imprisonment, Holmes has her body 3D-scanned, expressing concern that her likeness could be misused. The initial footage concludes with Holmes reporting to Federal Prison Camp, Bryan, where she says goodbye to Fielder before beginning her sentence. Evans and their two children subsequently relocate to Texas to be closer to her.

The documentary then shifts forward two years, as Fielder enlists Seyfried to reprise her role as Holmes in dramatic reconstructions of encounters he was unable to film, with Christopher Abbott portraying Evans. Reviewing the original footage with Seyfried, Fielder recounts a meeting he, Oppenheim and two executives from A24 had with Holmes and Evans before filming began. According to Fielder, Evans requested payment for the documentary after Holmes left the room. Despite concerns about a conflict of interest, the filmmakers negotiated a profit-sharing agreement with him. Holmes subsequently told Fielder that she would receive no money from the documentary, raising suspicions that Evans was exploiting her. Fielder nevertheless remains uncertain about Holmes’s own honesty.

As Fielder and Seyfried revisit the footage and investigate Evans’s conduct following Holmes’s imprisonment, they uncover further examples of his control over her public image. Evans has erected billboards featuring Holmes, impersonated her on X using vulgarities, and authorized the public release of an AI model resembling her. Fielder and Seyfried confront Evans, during which Seyfried briefly speaks with Holmes by telephone. Evans reveals that he holds power of attorney for Holmes and claims that his social media posts reflect emails she sends him from prison. He also acknowledges that Holmes knows "some" details of his financial agreement with the filmmakers. Seyfried accuses him of exploiting Holmes, which Evans denies, insisting that she trusts him completely. He also confronts Seyfried over comments she made following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whom he admires.

Fielder arranges to meet her in prison amid growing frustration of the difficulty of communicating with Holmes and Evans’s continued interference. Because the encounter cannot be filmed, he subsequently recounts it to Seyfried, and the two reconstruct their conversation. In the reenactment, Holmes expresses anger over Seyfried’s portrayal of her in The Dropout, explaining that people within who watched the miniseries have accused her of actions she maintains she never committed. She acknowledges being aware of Evans’s activities since her imprisonment but remains unclear about her knowledge of his agreement with the filmmakers or his conduct outside of the documentary. She explains that she leaves financial decisions to Evans because she owes hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution. Becoming tearful, Holmes professes her love for Evans, whom she later greets with what Fielder interprets as genuine affection during a prison visit. Seyfried suggests that Fielder may have developed a somewhat protective attachment to Holmes through his efforts to reconstruct their meeting, but both remain uncertain about Holmes’s sincerity and intentions.

At the documentary’s conclusion, on-screen text reveals that Evans relinquished his profit-sharing agreement before its release. It also states that Amy Chozick, a reporter for The New York Times, stands by her recollection of a remark Holmes allegedly made about The Dropout, despite providing no evidence to substantiate it: “They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created.”