How Elizabeth Holmes Really Feels About Nathan Fielder's You Can See Everything

A24

Elizabeth Holmes is a near-mythic figure in the business world and for true crime obsessives. As the founder of Theranos and a convicted fraudster currently serving time in federal prison (one whose life is still a mystery in many ways), there's much to explore. That's what the new documentary "You Can See Everything" exposes. But how does the film's subject feel about it?

The movie is less about what happened at Holmes' company Theranos and more about, well, her. It takes place 34 days before Holmes is sent to prison as she invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move. But what begins as an intimate portrait of a famed felon becomes a three-year journey into the abyss.

Directed by Nathan Fielder ("The Rehearsal") and Lance Oppenheim ("Primetime"), A24's "You Can See Everything" defied expectations at the box office on its opening weekend. It's also a major Oscar front runner. So, now that it's out in the world, Holmes is very much back in the conversation, and one imagines she would have certain feelings about that.

In an interview with Wired, Fielder revealed that he recently spoke to Holmes after completing work on the movie. During a phone call from prison, Holmes shared a fairly surprising reaction to the doc and the conversation surrounding it:

"I answered the phone, and I said, 'Hey, how's it going?' She asked how I was doing. I asked her if she had seen any stuff about the film coming out and how she felt about it all. She told me that she had seen some stuff, but most things she just isn't seeing, so she's heard things, but she hasn't really read anything. And then, at the end, she said to me: 'I trust you.' ... I said, 'OK, thanks.'"

A24

Speaking further in the interview, Nathan Fielder explained that he and Elizabeth Holmes kept talking about "other stuff." That includes her kids and then some updates that he declined to share. But after that, just for emphasis, at the end of the call, Holmes once again said, "I trust you." To which, Fielder admitted, "I don't know what she meant by that."

There's a lot to unpack here. Anyone who has watched "You Can See Everything" can tell you that Holmes has, shall we say, an interesting way of processing the world around her. For whatever it may be worth, the documentary has been met with near-universal praise up to this point. /Film's Ethan Anderton called "You Can See Everything" a "mystifying masterwork of mind-melting manipulation" in his review, which was a perfect 10/10.

But Holmes and her life partner Billy Evans clearly wanted to use this documentary to help with Holmes' public image. To whatever degree that was or was not accomplished is really up to the viewer to decide. "You Can See Everything" raises more questions than it answers (for better or worse), and most of those questions surround Holmes.

Whatever this documentary does for Holmes and her public image, good or bad, she evidently trusts Fielder and Lance Oppenheim to tell this story as they see fit. So, even though she almost certainly has seen the movie in its entirety, her feeling is, it seems, that it was Fielder's story to tell, despite it being about her life.

"You Can See Everything" is in theaters now.