Amanda Seyfried IS Elizabeth Holmes in...

Is this to be the official viewing thread?

I think they faked all the China scenes, I noticed right away when they were in the park and we’re dancing in front of the building that it was at The Huntington Library and Museum in there Chinese Garden. Also, I think that was UCLA’s campus and not Stanford, UCLA is very open to filming, but I think Stanford, like Harvard, isn’t.

I can’t get over how well she’s passing for a teenager, I’m not sure if they are using that deaging software or not, but she looks fabulous. I could not imagine Kate MacKinnon pulling looking that young off.

A young Cynthia Watros would have knocked this one out of the park. But it looks like Amanda Seyfried is rocking the role so far.

It feels like Elizabeth Holmes herself wrote this show.

It doesn't look very good. Particularly the acting. Maybe it's just a bad trailer.

This could be good if they stick to the source material by the wsj reporter. Seyfried seems like she could pull off Holmes type A intensity. I hope they refrain from giving into the overdone trend of making every marginally attractive woman involved in a scandal into a misunderstood victim scapegoated by a misogynist society. It's become just as tired and unrealistic as stereotyping women as conniving femme fatales.

I’m trying to nail down the accent she is using, and I finally recall that there was some character along the way played by Nicole Sullivan that spoke similarly. But does it come from her Texas background?

Something is going on with the music, but I’m not familiar with it so I think I’m missing something. Anybody caught on to it yet?

^ in what sense ? They are songs popular from that period. I’m 35 and I remember all those songs playing those years ( 2002 and on ). I listened to the podcast that is based on and I started watching the series now, I’m hooked. I think Amanda is doing a good job. The only criticism that I have, is that they are trying to humanize Elizabeth too much. She was a narc and a bully.

The acting is barely a step above that of Inventing Anna.

R11 I thought Ruth’s accent was a choice- capital C, but she couldn’t be funnier or more complex. I am a fan but really that Ozark accent is something rough as well. Accent work usually sucks by anyone. You just have to go subtle and make people not the PERSON, not the voice imo.

I didn't realize that her sentencing is Sept 26. That is a really long delay and unusual even for federal court. I doubt it has much to do with the pandemic either. I realize the defense wants as much time as possible to file for a new trial and do whatever it can before the conviction is recorded on the record -as well as deluge the court with testimonials on what a brilliant time traveling child she was - but damn that is a long time.

I think she should get around 7 years. IMO that takes into account everything including that she cynically and deliberately brought a child into the world to help her case with the very real chance it would lose its mother early on.

I’ll watch but only for Aunt Jackie.

R14 I don’t think that character has shown up yet, we’ve only met her parents, and though her brother seems to be part of the company we haven’t really met him.

R15 she’s been in a few scenes but doesn’t appear to have a big part.

She was speaking on stage at a seminar Elizabeth went to, then Elizabeth dropped by her office in a later scene.

This series has been waaaaaayyyyy too sympathetic to her. This cunt is a text book malignant narcissist. I don’t think she was nearly as full of self doubt as depicted.

A lot of TV and movie college campus scenes are shot at ucla. Ucla allows filming on campus but the name can never be used. So it's usually a stand in for other schools or something fictional like California Pacific U. Harvard does not allow filming on campus but don't care if their name is used. Hence so many movies set at Harvard.

R16 That’s not her aunt, she based on a real professor who saw through Elizabeth Holmes from the beginning..

Give Laurie Metcalf that Emmy already.

The writing can be on-the-nose, ie referring to pre-streaming Netflix, but she handles it beautifully.

Professor Phyllis Gardner to Elizabeth Holmes: “I got your number, hussy.”

R19 that is the character I'm referring to. She is played by Laurie Metcalf aka Aunt Jackie as R14 refers to her as.

I have no idea what Aunt Jackie is a reference to?

I love love love Professor Phyllis. Of course, she could see right through her. She's a woman.

It was mostly those idiot men who bought her act.

[quote] This series has been waaaaaayyyyy too sympathetic to her. This cunt is a text book malignant narcissist. I don’t think she was nearly as full of self doubt as depicted.

She was not insecure at all. No woman who is insecure does what she did and started doing it while still a teenager. I always suspected her next door neighbor in Cailfornia, Tim Draper, was more involved with her than was admitted - maybe not actually an affair but something was going on there - maybe she teased him. She was his babysitter. He and his daughter (a trust fund IG "influencer") worship her and defend her.

Maybe the Jennifer Lawrence film will be tougher on her. Maybe they should have cast Margot. LOL!

[quote] I have no idea what Aunt Jackie is a reference to

Laurie Metcalf won an Emmy for playing the rôle of Aunt Jackie on a popular TV show which aired thirty years ago called ROSEANNE.

[bold]What Hulu's 'The Dropout' got wrong about Elizabeth Holmes' Houston childhood[/bold]

The opening 10 minutes of Hulu’s “The Dropout” – the eight-episode miniseries chronicling the rise and crash of Elizabeth Holmes and her brief billion-dollar company Theranos – focuses on Holmes’ time growing up in Houston.

The show-runners got most of that small portion of Holmes’ life right. She indeed did attend St. John’s School in River Oaks – the episode sadly features her doing poorly at a junior high track meet, but never quitting – and her father lost his job during the Enron scandal months before Holmes graduated high school and left for Stanford, where she eventually dropped out to start Theranos.

more at link

Of course her father worked for Enron.

Way too sympathetic portrayal IMO. If Elizabeth Holmes were a male, I doubt this would be the case.

^yep. The writer is Elizabeth Meriweather who said in interviews she related to being a girlboss in her 20s and not having a clue what to do when she made The New Girl.

I think Amanda is excellent as Elizabeth. I like this much better than The Social Network which i found boring and dull.

R30 I could never understand the critical fuss over The Social Network. Dreary with unpleasant and unappealing characters. I understand that protagonists don't have to be likeable to make a movie good but I found the subject matter to be so uninteresting.

Emma Stone couldn’t have brought anything that Amanda Seyfried hasn’t.

Stephen Fry is too sweet and vulnerable from the off.

Emma Stones is not authoritative. Seyfried brings the right level of focus and gormlessness.

The evil music when Sunny appears is pure cheese.

Ana Arriola in the podcast was a straight talking trans woman.

Ana Arriola in the show is an Asian “yaas kween!” who greets Elizabeth with “Hey, Bridget Jones”.

I can't stand AGP male.

R34 Eww. I hate when they do the sassy friend trope.

I don't know the actress but I don't think she makes a good Elizabeth Holmes. She couldn't imitate her voice. Also, the way she delivers the dialogue seems forced. I will not be watching it.

R25 No shit, right? She won 3.

R31, I found it really mediocre. And I like some of Fincher's other stuff but I think his antiseptic style works against the movie. It doesn't draw you in.

Ep 4 covers the con with Walgreens. Fantastic episode!

First three episodes are too sympathetic to this bitch. Whoever is writing this needs to reference the material it's based on: the Carreyrou reporting in the WSJ titled Bad Blood which then became a documentary and a podcast. Carreyrou is getting a 'based on' credit but this script is taking great liberties to make Elizabeth sympathetic. She was / is a manipulative cunt. And the poster upthread who commented that it took a female scientist to finally call Elizabeth a fake was right on the money. The men kept trying to please her.

Is that Taylor Swift song about her?

R38 ...and a Tony.

Love the title of the latest episode. Old White Men. Cause that's who mostly bought her bullshit.

I wonder that Elizabeth didn’t use the “She’s Just Jealous Because I’m Hot” line on Phyllis Gardner.

One look at that Yoda quote decal and I would have been out of there.

R41 John Carreyrou sold his book Bad Blood to Adam McKay for the (now stalled?) Jennifer Lawrence Project, so although he apparently appears in The Dropout as a character (and he was a guest in the podcast) I don’t think all that much can be done with his original research, even though no doubt the writers are well versed in it.

The issue I see is that Elizabeth Meriwether the sitcom writer empathises with Holmes as a fellow Elizabeth girlboss in her 20s in over her head as she was when showrunning The New Girl.

R47 I agree and how sad. Carreyrou did true research but this miniseries is veering into wishful thinking.

We have two threads about this -- hope I linked the other one.

Who is the 4th guy from Walgreens? Rich Sommer, Alan Ruck, Josh Pais and? He looks very familiar not I don't see him listed on the episode in IMBD

Were the Walgreens guys really that stupid? If so, it’s a miracle they’re still open.

Palo Alto! Surf’s up baby!

The one guy from Walgreens, the physician listening to Katy Perry, seemed particularly dumb or just too eager for the potential scientific breakthrough.

R52 The Alan Ruck character? He was pitifully lacking in self-esteem. Whoever he was in 'real life', in the series he is presented as a person whose main goal is to be liked.

This is an interesting conversation about the series.

Stephen Fry is playing Stephen Fry. Which makes him charming and intelligent and needy and pitiable but he isn’t a good enough actor to not play Stephen Fry.

Someone like Roger Allam should have played Ian Gibbons.

SPOILER ALERT: Now that Ian is gone, it will be up to Phyllis Gardner to help Richard Fuisz. This series is getting better and better. It's just hard to believe that George Schultz was so infatuated with Elizabeth and her crazy eyes. If Sam Waterston's performance is based on fact, Schultz was starry-eyed over the cunt.

Is the real life George Schultz’s grandson who becomes ensnared in Theranos and then calls out Holmes Gay in real life, he seemed so from the HBO doc?

No, it’s Dylan Minnette.

Seyfried seems like she's speaking Mandarin quite adeptly. Is that just smoke and mirrors?

Her Indian dancing to try to win Sunny's approval was quite sexy. Amanda must have done a lot of preparation for this part. There's a lot more to her characterization of Elizabeth than her make-up and voice.

I was hoping that this episode was going to give us insight into if the real Tyler Schultz was Gay or not, but I guess if we’re not even seeing Elizabeth get nookie, neither are any other characters. Dylan was so cute undercutting his actual singing ability to do the song, and he pulled off the humiliation so well, and then she demands to hear it again, the bitch rubbing salt into the wounds.

Not sure why anyone would watch a dramatization when there is a documentary but ok.

He is not gay, R61.

[QUOTE] Not sure why anyone would watch a dramatization when there is a documentary but ok.

Are you the same person who was saying this in the “Eyes of Tammy Faye” threads? It’s a boring, dumb question not worth answering.

No idea who Tammy Fay is, so no R64. Sorry if you prefer a whacko and ridic drama over a doc that reflects the reality of the scammer.

Dramatizations are usually popular. Even good documentaries(which like in general) can be dry.

I guess to some, R66, that is fair enough.

R67 I like many documentaries but many dont and find them more boring than the dramatization of it.

R68, that is true. I prefer a documentary, I find the dramas to be cringey most times. BUT...I think that you are absolutely correct upon reflection!

I’m really enjoying this series. I have a lot of admiration for the Schultz grandson and the other lab worker who stood up to this.

And the music is perfectly chosen.

^ oh and Aunt Jackie’s monologue about the Yoda quote was brilliant

R70 Please check out the documentary. The real Tyler is GORGEOUS!

So true R72. Better looking than the guy they got to play him actually.

If this link works, here's a pic of Tyler and an article about his podcast from 2020.

R62, a dramatization can make connection and suggest relationships, motives, and insights that would not be acceptable in a documentary.

The failure of The Dropout is that it does not. The creators of the series seem to not have made any decisions about the process of how Holmes went from believing in her plan to becoming a conscious fraud--which is the crux of the whole story. They present no insight into Holmes or her relationship with Sunny. So you might as well be reading a news story.

How were so many people duped by this moron? After watching this and Inventing Anna, I'm even more convinced this country is circling the toilet bowl.

Can someone explain the whole green juice thing? Did she just not eat and just drank everything? Wouldn’t she spend half her day in the shitter?

And did she get a real stylist at some point because she looked really put together in her photo shoots? Or would the media outlet do it based on each piece?

[quote]So you might as well be reading a news story.

R75 OR watching the documentary which is much better than this miniseries (as has been mentioned many times upthread).

[quote] Can someone explain the whole green juice thing? Did she just not eat and just drank everything? Wouldn’t she spend half her day in the shitter?

The TV series is based on the podcast of the same name. Two seasons of it were dedicated to Holmes, with reporting from depositions and from her trial.

A big part of her defense became a claim that she had been emotionally abused and manipulated by Sunny, that he took over her life and programmed her, including making her drink green juice every day. I find it interesting that the TV show is showing her doing that and not commenting on the claim that it was part of how he controlled her, but suggesting it.

For the record, it seemed the jury didn't buy the defense claim, or else they may have believed some of it but didn't let it distract them from her fraud.

The podcast said that the defense put all its eggs in the 'she was naive and she was abused' basket, and a legal commentator on the podcast said that was a terrible mistake because whether or not the jury believed she was in an abusive relationship, that has nothing to do with the fact she knowingly committed fraud and the jury would be able to understand that even if they believed the victim claim.

A very important part of the trial evidence, according to the podcast, was that Holmes personally put the Pfizer logo on documents for investors to imply that Pfizer had invested in and was partnering with Theranos. The company never did and she just boldly put the logo on her materials, and her only attempted defense was to say that she didn't explicitly state that the logo was there to suggest a partnership and no one bothered to ask whether it was or not.

Why weren’t Tyler and the Asian young woman protected under the Whistle Blower Act?

R80 They are the whistleblowers who ultimately blew it up.

This is all already out there because it was in the trial and reported, but if you're watching the show and don't want to know what will happen, this could be a spoiler....

I think all we have seen so far is the John Carreyrou WSJ investigation. Carreyrou's story is what initially brought public scrutiny to Theranos. Until that story came out, Holmes was becoming a media darling and getting better and better press.

The WSJ story was the tipping point. If I am remembering correctly, Erica Cheung (the Asian American junior emoloyee) blew the whistle several times in several ways. First, she reported internally that the lab was not following proper procedures—she was concerned, as depicted, about the well being of the patients being tested. Sunny Balwani blew her off. She the went to George Schultz. He rejected her. She quit. Months later, she spoke to Carreyrou. She told him she was being threatened by Theranos's lawyers, along with telling him about violations and how they ignored her. And then after that, she blew the whistle again by reporting Theranos to a national board that oversees laboratory testing quality. I remember this last level of reporting being discussed a lot during the podcast and I think it was important to Theranos finally being found out. The one bad story, no matter how high profile, probably would not have taken the company down because so many powerful people were invested.

During the trial, Holmes testified that everything Cheung alleged was true and she said she wishes she had listened to her and taken her claims seriously. (Remember, as I mentioned above, her legal team made a poor decision of trying to protect her by depicting her as a victim of a controlling Sunny Balwani and not denying the incontrovertible evidence the jury had been presented. But her being a victim has nothing to do with whether she committed fraud, which is what she was tried for.)

So Erica Cheung really is the ultimate hero of the story, at least as reported in the podcast. She blew the whistle first. She quit because of her personal ethics. She blew the whistle several more times, and she encouraged Tyler to blow the whistle.

I watched the first episode and thought meh.

Is it worth continuing or should I just watch the documentary?

R82 I wasn't sure if it was going to be any food at the beginning but I've really enjoyed it a lot, mainly because Amanda's portrayal is convincing while also being bizarre, enigmatic and comically tragic. It's also well directed. The show cuts to brief, jarring vignettes of her dancing or running awkwardly but with a look of serious determination, and it's really funny but also a bit alarming. I think they're doing a good job of dramatizing what is effectively all material that was delivered via courtroom testimony, and Holmes is given a convincing and unnerving personality by Seyfried.

R81 Thanks, maybe I don’t understand the Whistle Blowers protections that come into place when one does that, wouldn’t Thranos need to desist legal actions against them and they be placed in an almost witness protection like environment? How could they continue to physically and psychologically harass them after they blow the whistle? I guess I’m imagining it something like walking into a church and declaring that you’re seeking sanctuary and all these protections come down to keep you safe?

R84 I think whistleblower protections relate to blowing the whistle to government agencies but not to the press, although I could be wrong.

If someone signs an NDA, they are signing a binding legal contract and I think the only way out of being sued for doing so is if a court assigns the person immunity for revealing information as part of a government lawsuit.

But even federal whistleblower protections are pretty much bullshit. Whistleblowers almost always suffer for blowing the whistle. It's really an act of great moral courage.

R82 It’s worth continuing. The episodes really take off once Theranos gets up and running as a business. They spend more time in this show exploring the legal strategy/threats than I remember from the documentary, which I thought was interesting.

The guy who plays Carreyrou is really cute.

It was fun seeing the actress from The Practice pop up as the WSJ editor. Always liked her.

[QUOTE] The guy who plays Carreyrou is really cute.

Isn’t he the one who ate Allison Williams’s ASS on Girls?

I was absolutely rolling at the reports of the text messages in the Theranos trial:

Holmes:

"You are the breeze in desert for me."

"My water."

"And ocean."

"Meant to be only together tiger."

Balwani: "OK"

I am listening to the podcast. The series seems only concerned with conveying information from the podcast, but you do not get to hear the real people speaking their real words.

The podcast is a lot better than the documentary...or the series.

I liked the podcast a lot but the voice of the narrator and the way she speaks annoyed me a lot.

The series is kind of a B-/C+ overall, but I think Amanda Seyfried is remarkable in it. She's as good at Elizabeth Holmes as I can imagine anyone being, and she plays her with some critical input, showing her as earnest, dangerous, nutty and pathetically hilarious. To think she's the girl from Mean Girls, Big Love and Mama Mia is pretty interesting. She's very good.

Carreyrou’s book is even bette better the podcast in the suspenseful way he recounts his investigation.

[quote] The series is kind of a B-/C+ overall, but I think Amanda Seyfried is remarkable in it

Agreed.

The writing is verrrry on the nose. Elizabeth Meriwether has stated she relates to Holmes as a young woman out of her depth and it shows.

There’s a “bad people on both sides” element to her showing the motives of people opposed to Holmes and Theranos and why, perhaps, y’all jus’ jellus: Metcalf - old, not pretty! Fry - sickly, pathetic! Macy - egotistical, weak! Minnette - dilettante, stupid!

Seyfried is what saves it. And she plays it just right to show Holmes’ phoniness in plain sight, even if her Disney Princess beauty is downplayed to skinny, basic blonde.

R93 I think it's meant to be a satire.

SPOILER……….”it’s Dr Gardner to you” was my favourite line, you could see that hurt in her eyes.

How is that a spoiler? That scene already aired?

I agree with you though. I’ve loved Laurie Metcalf in this. In fact, the entire supporting cast (right down to Kate Burton has been excellent. Someone said that Stephen Fry was just doing his usual and I could not disagree more. He was a highlight for me.

William H. Macy has been a tad one-note throughout but he’s well cast in the role.

So many high profile grifter series on streaming right now there are overlap between actors. Kate Burton played an older socialite who got played in Inventing Anna and she pops here in The Dropout as well.

Seyfried was perfect 🙌. She’s a very good actress. She will have an Oscar one day down the road

The casting director did a great job on this mini-series.

I stopped watching after a few episodes and then skipped over some and watched the last one. Seyfried certainly dedicated herself to this role, but the mannerisms and that voice were getting a bit distracting. There didn't seem to be a lot of depth to the character, but, I suppose, that's not Seyfried's fault.

I hope Holmes fries.

I simply cannot abide Amanda's bug-eyes. I find her completely unwatchable as a result.

R100 / R101 Holmes had a very distracting wide-eyed stare and a totally false voice. Amanda did a great job of duplicating both. Also, those distractions are what makes the fact that so many old men were attacted to her!

You miss my point, r102. I don't care for Amanda Seyfried in any role (even though we are both from the same home area).

And I'm r101, but not r100.

R65 no idea who Tammy Faye is? You’re on the wrong forum dear.