The judiciously-applied makeup. The cringeworthy dancing to Lil Wayne. And a stranger-than-fiction true story about the rise and fall of Theranos made Elizabeth Holmes a dream assignment for Amanda Seyfried. “It just seemed like this was the best opportunity I’d ever been given, to play such an enigmatic role,” Seyfried tells Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson during an interview that will be featured on both Little Gold Men and its sister podcast, Still Watching: The Downfall of the Startups. “And, obviously, it was really scary too.”
Hulu’s The Dropout, an eight-episode exploration of Holmes from series creator Elizabeth Meriwether, concludes this week with a ripped-from-the-headlines finale. When asked about the potential for a second season (which has not been announced, to be clear), Seyfried makes no promises, but tells V.F. she’d love to not be finished with her character. “Because when am I going to get the opportunity to play somebody that I felt like I could really nail?” the star says, adding, “It would be another thrill of my life if I got to continue it a little bit.”
During a wide-ranging conversation, Seyfried also talks about Holmes’s “heartbreaking” relationship with Sunny Balwani and her season finale “fuck you.” Give a listen to the episode above, and find Little Gold Men on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts. You can also sign up to text with us at Subtext—we’d love to hear from you.
And as a reminder, there will be twice-weekly episodes of Little Gold Men moving forward—presenting conversations with Hollywood’s most intriguing creators and stars on Tuesdays, before analysis of all of the awards races around them on Thursdays. This week’s installment features a preview of our 2023 Oscar predictions with guest Joe Reid.
Read a partial transcript of the Amanda Seyfried interview below.
In the process of making the show and embodying its central figure, did your opinion of [the real-life story] change? Did you learn things or get a different perspective on it than you started off with?
I did. I learned the more time you spend with somebody, whether you’re with them in a room, communicating with them, or you’re across the country, studying them, it’s still time spent with somebody. And I think that naturally breeds a need to get closer. And in getting closer, I was able to connect some dots, connect behaviors to choices. And everything that Liz Meriwether wrote felt like it could have been true.
We don't know if it’s true, but it made sense. And it gave a foundation that we had yet to find in these documentaries, this investigative journalism. It was always to try to get as many facts as possible. And our job here was to create an imagined reality between the facts. We had that goal post. We had so much information. I guess I just learned more about where she came from and why she might have made the decisions that she made. I felt like I had entered the world of a well-rounded human being as opposed to a two-dimensional villain.
Something we’ve been talking about on this podcast throughout the run of the series is the really shrewd way that you and Liz Meriwether court our fascination, our horrified awe at everything that was happening, but also there’s empathy in there. The show kind of stokes that in the viewer. Where do you think that source of empathy is? What part of Elizabeth Holmes is the part that we should see and care about as a person, even though she did all these harmful things?
That’s a good question. Her drive is...in the beginning, it’s admirable. She would really stop at nothing to get where she wanted to go. It seemed like a really good purpose and beautiful passion. And it was easy to connect with her reasons that she claimed were behind this company. Who doesn’t want to change the world for the better, change healthcare as we know it, change people’s lives and take away those incredibly scary moments and get information in such an easy way? It just seems more accessible for everybody around the world. It would’ve been amazing. How could you not connect to that messaging?
Also, her awkwardness. When you watch her speak, you feel connected to her. And I’m just saying this in my own experience and people I’ve spoken to—people who really invested in this company financially and emotionally. I think it’s just really hard not to be pulled to the way she speaks. She speaks with so much humility and it feels so honest, and yet it’s not. But I think when people laugh at themselves, that’s the thing that always drew me in and made me trust people. She was able to do that.
She does talk about wanting to help people and sort of change the world in, I think, a purely altruistic sense. She also says in the first episode, “I want to be a billionaire.”
That’s the thing that’s so confusing.
Do you think those things are mutually exclusive or can they exist together?
I think that both can be true. Yeah. I want to be a billionaire too.
Yeah, same. Fair.
That would be amazing, but if you’re just going to try to come up with ways to become a billionaire, then your intention doesn’t really matter. I think if your first goal is to become rich off of something, then you’d do anything, if your priority is not the wellbeing of others above that. I’m not saying that her priority was just to become a billionaire, but if it was…which at times in this series and in this story, it seems that’s the case. Both can be true, but it did seem like the billionaire goal came first in a lot of ways. And that seed was planted very early. So it’s easy to question her motives in starting Theranos.
On the map of Elizabeth Holmes that you’ve drawn in playing this character over eight hours, is there a point you see where she stops believing it herself? Because all the way up to the finale, she’s still saying, “We can do this. This is real.” But do you think that she was lying to herself and to others? Or how did you calibrate how much Elizabeth actually bought into what she was saying?
I think there was a point when the Walgreens guys were coming in, that she understood, from just my perspective of our version of it. I played it like she understood that she wasn’t where she needed to be, but it didn’t take away the power of believing that they were on the right track. It just was going to take longer. And I think it’s like, this is a stupid analogy, but it’s like when you’re under construction. And every month they’re like, “Ah, it’s probably going to the end of the next month.” Then you’re at the end of the next month. It’s just that belief that it’s going to get done. It’s just taking a long time, but it’s going to be worth it. And I think that’s what she always believed till the very, very end. I think she still believes that this is going to happen and it’s going to change the world.
Then we also have the closing scene of the whole series, so a spoiler alert if people haven’t watched. It’s this horrific, but cathartic, primal scream moment. First off, what do you think she’s screaming about, and also if you have any reflection on when you filmed that? Was it toward the end of the shoot? I’m just curious about what that felt like for you as an actor.
Terrifying, mainly because it’s the last...I mean, I love binging shows, and if the last scene of an eight-hour miniseries isn’t satisfying, it leaves just a bad taste in my mouth. So I knew how important it was. There was something that needed to happen that wasn’t necessarily written, or it was written, and I didn’t necessarily know how to portray it, because there’s so many possibilities. And I just needed to trust myself. Screaming also, it was incredibly hard on the body. It’s your whole body.
It was almost, and this is not a great word, but I think the scream came from a very petulant place, almost like she was not angry with herself at all. That seemed to me, like it could have been...It could have played like she’s so devastated that it didn't work out, and she’s so mad at herself, but that is not at all what I think that was about. I think it was like, “Fuck you, world. Fuck you, for not laying down for me. Fuck you, for not working out.”
It’s a tantrum.
It’s a tantrum, yeah. That’s when there should be a season two. No, I mean, I keep putting it out there because I didn’t know how much I was going to enjoy playing her until I was done. And then even after that, I was like, “I’ll never play her again.” That was just hard. That was a lot. And now I miss it, and I feel like there’s so much more to say, and there’s so much more that’s...I mean, life goes on. She’s my age. A lot’s happened. There is a season two of The Dropout [podcast].
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