The Reporter Who Exposed Elizabeth Holmes on Nathan Fielder’s Documentary
New York Times · LC · trust 40/100
Ms. Holmes handed the makers of “You Can See Everything” — and the rest of the world — a microscope with which to observe and dissect her lies.
Listen · 12:19 min Share full article Nathan Fielder, left, and Elizabeth Holmes, center, in a scene from “You Can See Everything.” Credit... A24 By John Carreyrou
John Carreyrou broke the Theranos scandal, for which Elizabeth Holmes is serving an 11-year prison sentence, in 2015.
As I watched “You Can See Everything,” the new documentary about convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, at an advance screening in New York earlier this week, I couldn’t help but feel envy. Ms. Holmes had granted the film’s directors, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the access she denied me a decade ago.
I was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal then, looking into Ms. Holmes’s claims about her medical technology. In media interviews and meetings with investors, she had stated that her company, Theranos, could perform hundreds of tests on a drop of blood pricked from a fingertip — a game-changing medical breakthrough that would have revolutionized the field of diagnostics. After months of reporting, I had concluded this wasn’t true and wanted to meet with Ms. Holmes to ask her about my findings. But she denied my repeated requests for an interview and instead dispatched David Boies, one of the country’s most feared litigators, to try to intimidate me and silence the whistle-blowers I had spoken to.
Ms. Holmes has wanted to tell her side of the story for a long time. In the summer of 2016 she had discussions with Errol Morris, the Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker she had hired to make sleek Theranos commercials at the height of her pre-scandal fame. Mr. Morris entertained the notion of doing a film about Ms. Holmes seriously enough that he called me to ask me to participate.
“I see it as a ‘he said, she said,’” he told me.
“That’s not how I see it,” I responded. “There are basic facts and those facts show that Elizabeth Holmes committed fraud.”
When it became clear that Mr. Morris remained wedded to his dueling-narratives approach, I put a polite end to the conversation and hung up.
(Reached by phone Thursday, Mr. Morris said he did not dispute Ms. Holmes’s guilt but, at the time, he wanted to explore the theme of self-deception.)
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