Hulu's 'The Dropout' chronicles the rise and fall of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes
It was a device that was supposed to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of illness. But instead, the Edison was a resounding failure, squandering the money of a lot of VIPs and placing its inventor, Elizabeth Holmes, up on federal charges.
How Holmes and the company she founded, Theranos, went from industry leader to infamy is told in the limited series "The Dropout," which begins streaming Thursday, March 3, on Hulu. It's based on the podcast of the same title by Rebecca Jarvis (who is an executive producer here) and stars Amanda Seyfried ("Mank," "Les Miserables") as Holmes, a Stanford dropout who became the world's first self-made female billionaire with a vision that she truly believed in.
The device she envisioned, the Edison, was supposed to be able to test blood for numerous diseases using only a few drops and produce the results in minutes compared to the days it took from a lab. And, best of all, it was small and affordable, so anyone could own one.
The trouble was it rarely worked, a fact Holmes kept from the high-profile investors she was recruiting, which included presidents and government officials. Eventually, the truth came out, Holmes was arrested, brought to trial, and in January was convicted of defrauding investors. Her meteoric rise and fall was complete.
In addition to Seyfried, the series also stars Naveen Andrews as Holmes' lover Sunny Balwani, along with William H. Macy, Laurie Metcalf, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Kate Burton, Michel Gill, LisaGay Hamilton and Sam Waterston, among others.
Michael Showalter ("The Eyes of Tammy Faye," "The Baxter"), who served as executive producer and director here, digested everything he could about the case, including the podcast, a book, several articles and a documentary. He considers Holmes' story a case of good intentions that failed to hit the mark.
"I think that ... she wanted to create this technology ...," he says. "She just sort of skipped over the part where you have to do the work, and sort of her fatal flaw seems to be accepting failure. I think she couldn't accept that she wasn't succeeding at this and that the narrative that was being created around her, and by her, seemed to be bigger than her willingness to step away or take stock of the situation and ... realize this isn't working."
Creating the character of Holmes is Seyfried, who Showalter praises for being "an incredible actor and an incredible collaborator" as well as a trouper who endured severe seasickness to film one particularly humorous scene on a yacht.
"We would get her off the floor to quickly shoot a take and then she would immediately go back to lying down because she was in so much agony," he recalls. "But (she persevered because) it was really important."