Meriwether uses such moments of tenderness all along to humanise her controversial protagonist, successfully adding layers to the disquieting reality of her persona. something that mankind didn’t know was possible to do,” goes the gist of the letter that her father sentimentally frames and keeps on his table.
“Dear Dad, what I really want out of life is to invent something new. The story brings this aspect out poignantly in a scene where Holmes and her father (Michel Gill) discuss a letter she wrote to him as a little girl. It is a trait that is perhaps born out of a young girl’s persistence to prove a point to a world that won’t take her seriously, at the same time driving her to a space where she becomes obstinate about winning any which way. Seyfried uses that trait impressively, to switch between different modes of her character - from a public celebrity who oozes confidence while addressing investors, statesmen, mediapersons and gathered audiences with gravitas to the young girl who is more casual while speaking to her partner Sunny Balwani (Naveen Andrews), her parents or her core team at Theranos.įor Seyfried, the challenge lay in breathing life into a character whose biggest flaw was her innate obsession to win (in an interview, asked to describe herself in a word, Holmes replies: “mission-oriented”). If you have heard Holmes on videos, you would be aware about the popular contention that she deliberately deepened her voice while speaking in public. Where the actress hits bullseye is in the way she imbibes the markedly awkward body language. Seyfried’s physical likeness with Holmes is all too uncanny. The young entrepreneur is surely one of the most intriguing protagonists to have been created for American streaming space lately, and Meriwether couldn’t have taken a better casting call than Amanda Seyfried for the role.
The Dropout imagines Elizabeth Holmes as nothing short of a bizarre mire of complexities. Importantly, she taps into the obvious asset at hand to craft a USP for her show - her protagonist.
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Series creator Meriwether circumvents the hitch by going beyond what straight documentation of events have depicted so far in various media, and adding the hue and tone of fiction to real life. Plus, there have been information sources as Carreyrou’s book, Bad Blood: Secrets And Lies In A Silicon Valley Startup, and the ABC News podcast of the same name on which The Dropout is based.Īmanda Seyfried, Naveen Andrews in a still from The Dropout Meriwether gets down to narrate the story of Holmes with the disadvantage that it had been abundantly reported in the global press at the time of its occurrence, which is not very long ago. That bit is a well-documented slice of current affairs. Holmes was 34 when her career as a billionaire entrepreneur ended just as meteorically as it had taken off. Holmes’ net worth started sliding till it plunged to near-zero and, following a slew of sanctions and lawsuits, Theranos was dissolved in September 2018. Palpable damage was also done by a series of articles two-time Pulitzer Prize winner journalist John Carreyrou wrote in The Wall Street Journal questioning Holmes and Theranos.
The downward spiral began in 2015, after medical researchers and professors raised concern over how authentic the Theranos technology actually was. As an introductory line gushes early on in the first episode of the series, Holmes was “America’s youngest self-made billionaire”. Theranos managed to scale a valuation of around $10 billion within a decade, with the media hailing it as “a revolutionary company that threatens to change healthcare the same way Amazon changed retail or Apple changed the cellphone”. As CEO of the company, she fooled investors, patients, the media as well as a significant portion of the American medical community into believing her company had successfully invented a technology that could revolutionise blood testing. She is also impeccable when it comes to conning people and living a life of lies till luck runs out, besides manipulating millions into trusting her claim that she’s out to change the world.įor those who came in late, Elizabeth Holmes was 19 when she founded the multibillion startup Theranos in 2003. Over eight episodes, the last of which dropped this weekend, Holmes is by turns brilliantly bright, charming and smart. Elizabeth Meriwether’s true crime series outlining the life of disgraced young entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes portrays its subject as nothing short of brilliant.
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