Elizabeth Holmes insisted she was “always being real” in tense footage filmed just weeks before she entered federal prison.
The disgraced Theranos founder, 42, made the claim during a confrontation with Nathan Fielder, 42, captured for the new A24 documentary “You Can See Everything.” The project had its surprise world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on Sunday, with the trailer dropping the same day.
“I’m not that person. I can promise you that,” Holmes told Fielder in the one-minute trailer. “I don’t have anything to deceive you on; of course, I’m not deceiving you.”
Holmes continued pressing her case directly to the filmmaker. “I’m engaging with you as a human being,” she said. “Why would I deceive you? There’s no reason for me to do that.”
Fielder appeared skeptical throughout the exchange. “OK. Alright. OK, good chat… You’re being real right now?” he asked.
“I’m always being real,” Holmes responded.
The trailer also revealed intimate domestic details, with the camera panning back to show Holmes rocking her baby in a bouncer with her leg. The footage was shot during a narrow window: Holmes had given birth to daughter Invicta in February 2023, just three months before reporting to prison in May of that year. She also has son William, 5, with husband Billy Evans.
The documentary’s official logline establishes the stakes plainly: “Thirty-four days before she’s sent to prison, notorious Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move.” The description promises that “what begins as an intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon becomes a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss.”
Fielder, who directed alongside Lance Oppenheim, spent three years on the project. During a post-screening Q&A moderated by Emma Stone on Sunday, he described the crew’s collective confusion while filming in Holmes’s home.
“Lance and I would talk with the rest of the crew about what we thought happened or what we thought these moments meant, and no one could reach a consensus,” Fielder told the audience. “And that’s when we really realized, ‘Oh, this is really interesting to follow this. We’re all smart and we’re really working at the top of our intelligence—why can’t we make sense of what’s happening in this house?'”
The filmmaker admitted his bewilderment has persisted. “I’m struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced,” Fielder said. “And one of the things I’m genuinely excited about is for this movie to come out and for people to help me understand what I experienced. Truly, to this day, I don’t quite know what I went through.”
Holmes’s legal downfall came in 2022, when she was found guilty on four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy following a lengthy trial tied to her failed blood-testing startup, Theranos. She is currently serving nine years and six months of her 11-year, three-month sentence at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas, with a release date of Dec. 30, 2031.
Her case has already been dramatized extensively. The 2019 HBO documentary “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” and the 2022 Hulu miniseries “The Dropout” starring Amanda Seyfried both chronicled her rise and fall.
“You Can See Everything” is set for theatrical release in October.