Hulu’s limited series The Dropout delves into Elizabeth Holmes’ transformation from Stanford University dropout to a self-made billionaire whose biotech company, Theranos, was based on a web of lies. The timely drama, set to premiere on Hulu on March 3, 2022, stars Oscar nominee Amanda Seyfried (Mank) as the Silicon Valley hotshot who claimed to have revolutionized blood testing. Emmy nominee Naveen Andrews (Lost) co-stars as Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Holmes’ former boyfriend and president/chief operating officer of Theranos.
The real Elizabeth Holmes was recently convicted of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, with sentencing set for later this year. Discussing Holmes and the series she inspired during the 2022 Television Critics Association’s winter panel, executive producer/showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether said it wasn’t her intention to pass judgment on Elizabeth Holmes with The Dropout. Instead, Meriwether wanted to use the series to examine the mystery of why Elizabeth Holmes made certain choices and what was going on in her head.
“I wanted to look at that full picture and that was always my intention,” explained Meriwether. “And also, the trial was happening…it started while we were finishing shooting in terms of the timeline. So, we were also incorporating all the new information that came out as much as we could.”
Meriwether hopes the series will help demonstrate the importance of science and facts. She believes now’s the perfect time for its release. Seyfried agreed, but also thought it was a little crazy they were shooting it while the trial was beginning.
New information was coming out as production was underway, causing them to wonder if they were on the right track. “The timing for me was just…it made it a lot more real. Like sometimes you’re on set and you forget that the things that you’re saying actually were said by people, and the things that are being done were actually being done by people and that someone is actually being prosecuted for these things,” explained Seyfried.
Naveen Andrews added, “This was different in that things were happening in real-time as we were filming, which is almost like a play within a play. You can’t help but be affected by that.”
The question of whether Elizabeth Holmes genuinely believed her own lies remains a mystery. Meriwether could only take what was known and dramatize it, leaving the audience to decide for themselves.
“I think she went into it with good intentions. And so, I think watching the series will sort of take us through that journey where those good intentions fell apart,” said Meriwether.
Amanda Seyfried thinks that because Elizabeth so unflinchingly believed in herself, she was able to convince market and medical savvy people to invest in Theranos.
“From a psychology point of view, if you want to believe something badly enough, and you work so hard to make it true, physically and emotionally, then at some point you’re just going to have to choose whether or not it’s true,” said Seyfried. “I think we’re capable of such crazy things. Our brains are miraculous and we can forget things, we can bury things, and we can create things. And she was incredible at creating things.
She was also incredible at creating the story of Theranos and her invention. I mean, she could sell me sand, if I ever met her. It was one of the reasons I didn’t want to meet her because I knew that she had a way about her.
I think even if you question things – people must have questioned things, especially engineers and people in healthcare and science and medicine, I’m sure that they questioned it – but she would always kind of deflect anything she didn’t really know with something she did know. So, she’d double down. And how could you not feel like she sold you something, even if it’s just an idea? She’s an incredible actor, and she did a lot of good in that way. She could have done a lot of good, used her powers for good, which she did for a while until it wasn’t working.”
One episode of the eight-episode limited series is dedicated to the evolution of Elizabeth Holmes’ bizarre speaking voice. Seyfried committed herself to capturing the deeper voice Holmes adopted as she became a public figure.
“I’ll say that the most important thing to me, just as an actor in general, is to create a version of somebody – I mean if they really are a real person…I’ve only done it a few times in my life – but to create my own version, to marry myself and what I know and my experiences with that person. It’s not 50/50 but they’re still part of me and so I need to use what I have, right? The shape of my mouth isn’t the same as hers but I can make sounds somewhat or pretty close to what she did. And that’s my job as an actor, mimicking and stuff like that,” said Seyfried.
“But in terms of the depth of it, I had to work really hard to get there because I speak at such a higher level than she does naturally. 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. There were some different breathing tricks, but I don’t think I nailed it 100%. But I think I did what I needed to do for the audience to come with us – and that was really my only concern,” explained Seyfried. “So, I am a little worried about what people are going to say about the voice but at the end of the day, I am an actor and I’m not her. I did my best to capture the oddness of it.”
Meriwether was truly amazed watching Seyfried transform into Elizabeth Holmes. “It was incredible because I was worried that I just didn’t want it to be at all a sketch or a satire. So what was incredible about what Amanda did was that she kept herself and she kept the emotional reality going while transforming into this character that I think just made it feel real. You never get taken out of the story, which I was sort of worried that there’s so much emphasis on her voice in the public imagination. I was worried that that was going to kind of take the audience out of the story. I was really blown away by Amanda,” said Meriwether.
Seyfried added: “People want to know motives and to have the voice come in slowly and evolve over time, which is what it did in real life. I mean when the public met Elizabeth Holmes, she was already speaking very deeply. And now we get to see when she’s a kid and she has a pretty average tenor. And then you see it develop because that’s the whole point of the show. You want to see where she came from and where she went; how she got there.”
Elizabeth Meriwether connected to Elizabeth Holmes being in a position of power and feeling the need to change something about herself to conform to an image.
“The first week of New Girl I lost my voice and I had to go to a doctor. The doctor said, ‘Have you been drinking a lot of coffee and/or trying to sound authoritative?’ I was like yes to both of those things,” said Meriwether. “So, I really related to the experience of feeling like something about your body doesn’t fit the role that you’re in and that you sort of have to change your body to fit this role. I think that is why I dedicated an episode to it, because I felt like that particular episode is about her trying to change herself to fit the role of CEO and not having a lot of models of female CEOs and going to Steve Jobs and trying to just change herself to be what she thinks somebody powerful is.”
Seyfried didn’t attempt to define Elizabeth Holmes’ personality by any specific labels. Instead, she approached playing her from just a very human standpoint.
“I mean the first thing I do as an actor playing somebody is that I try to relate to them as much as possible. And it was a little harder with Elizabeth Holmes, for sure. But as soon as I started to get to know her through the script, through Liz’s brain and her writing and through everything that I’ve seen and the way that she would react to things, like I just saw a lot of footage, I came from a very specific place in almost like compassion and kind of falling in love with her. And that is my job in the beginning,” explained Seyfried. “When you really want to get around somebody you kind of have to fall in love with them a little bit, regardless of what they’ve done or who they are. And that’s where my process begins and understanding that like a true devotion to something led her to this, whether it’s true devotion to becoming a billionaire, or really saving people’s lives, whatever it is. It’s like there was a lot going on for her, and she was devoted to her goals.”
Naveen Andrews’ approach was similar to Seyfried’s. Andrews didn’t make any judgments about Sunny as he was taking on the role.
“Your own private feelings or judgments that you might make have nothing to do with what you’re trying to create, hopefully, and I tried to go for what motivated him emotionally really, as opposed to anything exterior, which is that partly I feel he was besotted with her. He was desperately in love with her, and how far would he go for love, which is almost romantic, in a way,” said Andrews. “It is interesting. It’s like from the footage and what I read about him, and the fact that he was born in what is now Pakistan as a Hindu, what that does to somebody’s identity in terms of displacement, a kind of rootlessness, and I think he found everything with Elizabeth for himself, which put him in a very vulnerable position.
I mean, like I can look at his Twitter feed and make my own assumptions. I can think, ‘Well, if I had one-sixteenth of this man’s self-worth I might feel better about myself.’ But it’s like you can’t make judgments about a human being if you’re going to play them.”
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The Dropout premieres on Hulu on March 3, 2022.
Amanda Seyfried and Naveen Andrews lead a cast that includes Utkarsh Ambudkar, Kate Burton, Michel Gill, LisaGay Hamilton, William H. Macy, Elizabeth Marvel, Laurie Metcalf, Dylan Minnette, Alan Ruck, Sam Waterston, and Michaela Watkins.
