‘The Dropout’s Amanda Seyfried and Elizabeth Meriwether Didn’t Want Holmes’ Voice to Feel Like Satire

When you think of Elizabeth Holmes, it’s hard not to think about the voice. As the cracks in Theranos started to emerge, multiple sources claimed that one day Holmes started speaking in a deeper tone than her regular speaking voice, a drastic change that was never addressed. It’s a detail so seemingly silly, so out there it’s a screenwriter’s dream. Yet it represents exactly the kind of temptation for parody The Dropout consistently avoids. “Green Juice” isn’t a mockery of Holmes’ most notable quirk. Instead, the episode contextualizes it in this fictional world in a way that both makes Holmes more sympathetic and this story more infuriating.

“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,” Amanda Seyfried, the actor behind Holmes, said during the Television Critics Association’s 2022 winter tour. “I think I did what I needed to do for the audience to come with us, and that was really my only concern. 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.”

“I just didn’t want it to be at all a sketch or a satire,” series showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether added. “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.”

In part, the story surrounding the voice is what drew Meriwether to this series. “I think that’s one of the things that drew me into the project was this young woman in a position of power and sort of not knowing what to do with that. I connected to it,” Meriwether said. “The first week of New Girl, I lost my voice, and I had to go to a doctor, and 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. 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 have to change your body to fit this role. So 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.”

The real Holmes, for her part, has always maintained that she never altered her voice despite numerous testimonies that have said otherwise. But instead of letting this odd detail live in mystery, The Dropout creates a backstory for it. That story is “Green Juice.”

The episode depicts one of the most harrowing moments in the Theranos case: the company’s Pfizer study that used cancer patients. At this point in the company’s history — as in all points — Theranos’ blood-testing machine doesn’t work. Soon after the medical trial starts, engineer Edmond (James Hiroyuki Liao) becomes overwhelmed with the moral burden of testing faulty technology on such a vulnerable population. He goes outside to try and compose himself, and Elizabeth (Amanda Seyfried) joins him. That’s when things take a turn. In a heated exchange, Edmond tells Elizabeth that this isn’t like her. It takes a battle of wills before he finally obeys her and goes back to his work.

The next scene features Elizabeth alone in her hotel room. As she stares at herself in the mirror, she repeats certain phrases from her conversation with Edmond before landing on one: “Go back in there, Edmond.” With every utterance, the phrase gets a little deeper. For the rest of the limited series, save for Episode 8 which has not been made available to critics, that’s the deepened tone Elizabeth maintains.

In this episode, what Elizabeth is doing is objectively wrong. She knows Theranos’ technology doesn’t work, and yet she’s still using it to consult with cancer patients about medical information. But in these early episodes, Theranos’ failures fell less like dead ends and more the same stumbling blocks every startup faces on its way to greatness. Even though history has proven her wrong, you want to believe in Elizabeth’s hope that her tech will work. So when she deepens her voice to sound more authoritative, it makes a strange amount of sense. This is a moment where Elizabeth is learning she can’t be buddies with her employees while also being the boss. She needs to command respect, and that’s a bar that’s harder for women to clear.

Through her deepened voice, you can feel Elizabeth’s desperation to be respected. You can see her playing Silicon Valley dress up, trying on the utopian language and quirks that have come to define the Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerburgs of the world. You can even see her intelligence. Pinpointing an undeniably feminine aspect of herself — her voice — and making it more masculine requires a distinct understanding of the sexism present in the world. If Theranos’ technology worked, that manipulation would be praised as savvy and labeled as another reason why STEM fields are so unwelcoming for women. But the technology never worked. Because of that Holmes’ voice became just another lie in a story built on them.

“There’s so many whys. She’s still such a mystery, and I think this is the only project that actually gives insight. I mean it’s a lot of guesswork, but guesswork based on a lot of facts,” Seyfried said.

Watch The Dropout on Hulu