Body language expert Susan Constantine is dissecting Elizabeth Holmes’ unsettling on-camera presence in a new Netflix documentary trailer, labeling the convicted Theranos fraudster’s behavior “psychopathic” and “almost not human.”
Constantine, 55, who has analyzed Holmes since 2013 and will feature her as the primary case study in her forthcoming book “How to Spot a Liar in 7 Seconds,” told The Post that the minute-long clip reveals “massive clusters of deception.” The trailer for “You Can See Everything,” which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival over the weekend, captures an awkward close-up exchange between Holmes and Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder filmed just one month before she entered federal prison in 2023.
“She’s got laser-focused eye contact, wide-eyed, no blinking – not even a little blinking…It’s like a stalker stare, which is what everybody is talking about,” Constantine said.
The expert identified what she termed “dooping delight” in Holmes’ frozen facial expressions. “That smile a person gets if they are pulling over a big whopper and they feel like they’re being successful with it,” she explained. “Natural expressions don’t freeze on the face – they are on and off…which is how I know it’s performative.”
Holmes’ repeated insistence that she’s “not deceiving” Fielder has fueled online commentary since the trailer dropped. In the clip, she tells him: “I’m not that person. I can promise you that. I don’t have anything to deceive you on.”
“Of course, I’m not deceiving you. I’m engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you? There’s no – there’s no reason for me to do that,” she continues in the footage.
Constantine found Holmes’ use of present-tense phrasing particularly telling. “It’s like saying, ‘I don’t have anything in my pocket to deceive you on – right now’…instead of just, ‘No, I’m not deceiving you,'” the expert said. “She’s answering the logic behind the accusation before giving the denial.”
The expert also flagged Holmes’ deployment of “of course” as calculated to make her claims seem obvious, while her “I promise” represented another grasp at persuasiveness. At one point, Holmes slightly softens her voice and tilts her head sideways—a maneuver Constantine read as manufactured vulnerability.
Fielder’s own subtle mouth movements, however, signaled he wasn’t convinced, Constantine noted.
The Holmes captured in this documentary footage stands in marked contrast to the commanding figure Constantine first studied during Theranos investor meetings a decade prior. “Here, she’s not as commanding,” Constantine said about the trailer. She pointed to the lower-octave voice Holmes adopted in Theranos’s early years to project authority in business settings. Today, “Her voice has softened in volume…it seems a little exhausted.”
Yet some constants remain. Constantine described Holmes as perpetually “performative” and “highly aware of how [she’s] being perceived.” “So it’s almost as if she is always acting and she’s not even in touch with her real self,” she said.
Holmes, now 40, founded the blood-testing startup Theranos and was convicted in 2022 on four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy for defrauding investors. Prosecutors established that from 2010 to 2015, she lied to backers by claiming Theranos technology could run numerous medical tests on a single drop of blood from a finger prick. She was ordered to pay $452 million in restitution and sentenced in November 2022 to 11 years and three months in federal prison.
She is currently housed at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, the same facility holding Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted accomplice. Holmes maintains her innocence, saying last year: “I refused to plead guilty to crimes I did not commit.”
Constantine, whose book releases in February, said she identified Holmes as deceptive based solely on behavioral cues back in 2013—well before Theranos collapsed. Her final assessment of the new footage pulled no punches: “She’s a psychopath.”
The documentary’s title, “You Can See Everything,” takes on additional resonance given Constantine’s analysis of Holmes’ allegedly transparent attempts at manipulation. The expert’s eerie eye contact and slight head nods throughout the clip suggest “she’s trying to persuade” Fielder and could even function as intimidation tactics, Constantine added.
Holmes is eligible for release on Dec. 30, 2031, after receiving a one-year sentence reduction.