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Elizabeth Holmes Says She Was “Silenced for a Long Time” in Rare Message Ahead of Documentary
Nathan Fielder isn't exactly known for taking a straightforward approach.
To be sure, the Canadian comedian gets where he needs to go. But when he sets out to unmask, shed light, probe or otherwise get to the crux of a matter, he does so in the most tortuous way possible, wielding awkwardness like a blade as he craftily peels the onion.
So, perhaps Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes were just meant to be.
But as you can see in You Can See Everything, Fielder and co-director Lance Oppenheim's top-secret documentary about the Theranos founder—which they shot in 2023 before she started serving an 11-year prison sentence after being convicted of fraud charges—even the Dumb Starbucks visionary wasn't sure that he was for her.
And yet Holmes, sounding confident that she had nothing to hide—"Why would I deceive you?" she asks Fielder in one especially memeable exchange—invited him to move right in.
So, The Rehearsal creator did, staying in the guest house for a month at the San Diego, Calif., rental home Holmes shared with her partner Billy Evans and their two children.
A24
After 34 days of filming, Holmes—who pleaded not guilty at trial and maintains she's innocent of defrauding investors—reported for prison on May 30, 2023.
More than three years later, Fielder and Oppenheim's documentary caused quite the splash with a surprise Sept. 6 screening at the Telluride Film Festival.
And it wasn't a surprise just because the doc hadn't been trumpeted as one of the festival's must-see offerings. Rather, it shocked and awed because hardly anyone knew such a thing had been in the works at all.
Which, suffice it to say, isn't an easy trick to pull off in this day and age. But the small circle of frequent collaborators Fielder and Oppenheim entrusted to join them on what A24 has called "a mind-bending three-year journey into the abyss" helped them keep a tight lid on the project.
"Keeping it under wraps was very important because we never wanted to get in front of what we were capturing," Oppenheim told Variety ahead of the documentary's Oct. 16 release. "It was always about letting life unfold. Part of how we pulled it off was working with a very small crew, about seven or eight people."
And then they needed time and space to figure out what the heck had just happened.
JC Olivera/Getty Images
“I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced,” Fielder said during a Q&A following the Telluride screening, according to Vanity Fair. “And one of the things I’m genuinely excited about is for this movie to come out and for people to help me understand what I experienced."
As Oppenheim noted at a Sept. 30 Q&A during the New York Film Festival, "I feel like our brains were scrambled. We were also unsure for so long if we even had anything that was worthwhile to make and put together."
Fielder had read about Holmes' downfall in journalist John Carreyrou's 2018 book Bad Blood when the Primetime director told him that the disgraced entrepreneur had reached out to A24 about collaborating on a documentary.
Cindy Ord/Getty Images for FLC
When Fielder met Holmes, he recalled, "I remember having this weird experience where she seems so genuine at times. But then I'm like, 'No,' and clocking and tracking my thoughts and being like, 'Okay, I know she's a liar.' It was a weird mental thing."
A24 gave them the option to "pull the plug," Fielder added, in case there ended up being no story for them to tell.
A24
But when he and Oppenheim kept having different takes on what they were witnessing, they knew they had something.
"Every person that worked on this movie was going through a similar feeling of cognitive dissonance,” Oppenheim added. And if he and Fielder could somehow bring people "as close to that experience of being there as possible," then there was "an interesting project to be made out of this."
And they really did want to be able to see everything, with cinematographer David Bolen setting up a wide lens to capture entire rooms at a time, while two other cameras were at the ready to zoom in.
"It was down to this whole dance we had," Fielder shared, "and it was just amazing and one of the best experiences I think we’ve had making something because of that exploratory freedom and being able to let our curiosity drive us.”
A24
Once they were done filming, they had a lot to chew on, but Fielder was also busy hiding in plain sight.
The Curse with Emma Stone, which he'd already shot before his stay in San Diego, premiered in November 2023. Then production began on the second season of The Rehearsal, which landed in April 2025 and won a Peabody Award for its inimitable contribution to the discourse on aviation safety.
Fielder accepted the honor on May 31, almost two years to the day since Holmes went to prison.
Reflecting on the experience once the cat was out of the bag, Fielder said, "I cannot tell you how weird it was that we were there."
And he still doesn't know "why you would want to spend your last month of freedom in a decade with this guy," he noted after an Oct. 6 screening in Los Angeles. "Even with no cameras—I like to see myself as like a nice person overall, but still, I wouldn’t choose me."
Read on to find out where Holmes and the rest of the main characters caught up in the Theranos scandal are now:
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Elizabeth Holmes
Theranos officially dissolved in September 2018, three months after founder Elizabeth Holmes and company president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani were indicted on federal wire fraud charges for luring investors with the promise of a blood-testing technology that was not ready to bring to the masses.
While awaiting trial, Holmes and partner Billy Evans welcomed son William in July 2021.
She pleaded not guilty to all charges, but was convicted in January 2022 of one count of conspiracy to defraud investors, plus three wire fraud counts tied to specific investors, and subsequently sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Holmes gave birth to daughter Invicta in February 2023. In her first prison interview, she told People in 2025, "I always wanted to be a mother. I truly did not think I would ever be convicted or found guilty.”
A month before she was due to begin serving her time, Holmes and Evans opened up their San Diego, Calif., rental to Nathan Fielder and a small documentary crew. The result, You Can See Everything, is in theaters Oct. 16, 2026.
Holmes reported to minimum-security Federal Prison Camp, Bryan in Texas on May 30, 2023. She's scheduled to be transferred to a halfway house in August 2027.
“I was silenced for a long time," Holmes wrote in a Sept. 27 X post. “And then imprisoned. I am fighting to prove my innocence and come home to my babies and the love of my life."
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Sunny Balwani
Balwani, who was in a romantic relationship with Holmes while he was a Theranos executive, also pleaded not guilty on all counts.
"He did not defraud Theranos investors, who were among the most sophisticated in the world,"his lawyer told Vanity Fair in 2018. "He did not defraud consumers, but instead worked tirelessly to empower them with access to their own health information."
Balwani was convicted of 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in July 2022 and sentenced to 12 years and 11 months in federal prison, with U.S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds stating he "valued business success and personal wealth far more than patient safety."
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his conviction and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in October 2026.
Balwani is incarcerated at Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc II, a low-security facility in California.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO
Tyler Shultz
A grandson of former Secretary of State George Shultz, one of Theranos' most prominent board members, Tyler Shultz interned at the company in 2013 and then was hired full-time as a research engineer.
He has since become a sought-after public speaker on corporate ethics and his experience blowing the whistle on Theranos' mismanagement and internal malpractice.
Shultz founded the health diagnostics company Flux Biosciences in 2017 and is now a venture partner at Verge HealthlTech Fund, according to Linked In.
When Holmes was convicted of fraud, he told NPR in 2022, "All of a sudden, it was just a weight was lifted. It's over. I can't believe it's over."
He was staying with his parents when his wife texted him the verdict. And then, Shultz shared, "My family said, 'Come on down we're popping champagne. We're celebrating.'"
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Unfinished Live
Erika Cheung
Lab associate Erika Cheung was also key in exposing wrongdoing at Theranos following her resignation after seven months at the company.
"It wasn't that we were trying to be alarmist or sabotage [Holmes] or that, as she thought, we were trying to come after her and had some vendetta against her," Cheung told the Los Angeles Times in 2019. "I think we were all motivated by the fact that you can't endanger the life of patients. This is healthcare."
By then, the UC Berkeley grad had moved to Hong Kong and was a program director at Betatron, a technology accelerator for founders and start-ups.
She has since returned to the U.S., where she runs Ethics in Entrepreneurship, a nonprofit she founded in 2019 that also counts Shultz as an advisor.
Calling herself and Shultz "lucky in a certain way," Cheung told the Times, "It was a big relief once the company went under that we did come out of this OK and it didn’t damage our careers."
Ana Arriola
Holmes poached Ana Arriola, who helped conceive the original iPhone, from Apple to be her chief design architect—part of her vision to help give her blood-testing device, the Edison, a sleek look.
Far more culturally impactful: Arriola told Holmes all about Steve Jobs' Issey Miyaki black turtlenecks.
As Arriola put it on ABC News' The Dropout podcast, "And the rest is couture history."
She joined Theranos in 2007 and left after four months, concerned that the Edison's as-yet unreliable results could affect the treatment for cancer patients who had submitted blood samples.
Holmes "gave me an ultimatum," Arriola said, "suppress it and continue on business as usual or I said I was resigning."
After Theranos, Arriola worked for companies including Sony, Samsung and Microsoft. She has since married, become a mom and moved to Japan, where, according to LinkedIn, she is an executive advisor for venture studio OrionsWave in Tokyo, as well as strategic advisor and director at architecture and design firm OEO Studio.
Avie Tevanian
As chief software technology officer at Apple, Avie Tevanian led the team that developed Mac OS before leaving in 2006 and subsequently joining Theranos' board of directors after—like everyone else—being impressed by Holmes.
"I think what she didn't expect was that I would actually ask a lot of questions," Tevanian said in The Dropout, "and that if things weren't going as they should be going that I would ask tough questions." When he told the board he would only stay on if Holmes was replaced as CEO by someone more qualified, a fellow member suggested he help them help Holmes, or resign.
So, he left.
"I was done with Theranos," Tevanian told ABC News' Rebecca Jarvis. "I had seen so many things that were bad go on. I would never expect anyone would behave the way that she behaved as a CEO. And believe me, I worked for Steve Jobs. I saw some crazy things. But Elizabeth took it to a new level."
Tevanian is a co-founder of NextEquity Partners.
Dr. Phyllis Gardner
There was at least one person who told Holmes that what she was trying to do with the Edison was impossible: Stanford professor of medicine Dr. Phyllis Gardner.
Holmes first shared her blood test idea when she was a freshman. And when the clinical pharmacologist told her it would never work, Holmes "just kind of blinked her eyes and nodded, and left," Gardner said on The Dropout. "It was just a 19-year-old talking who'd taken one course in microfluidics, and she thought she was gonna make something of it."
Also a former senior associate dean at Stanford University School of Medicine, Gardner died Sept. 10, 2025, at the age of 75.
“Integrity ran through everything she did,” her husband, Dr. Andrew Perlman, told the Stanford Medicine News Center. “She couldn’t abide dishonesty in science or in people.”
Channing Robertson
The former Senior Associate Dean for Faculty & Academic Affairs at Stanford's School of Engineering was a mentor to Holmes and Theranos' first board member. He compared the company's founder to the "Mozarts and the Beethovens and the Newtons, the Lavoisiers and the Einsteins and the da Vincis."
As he explained to Bloomberg Businessweek, per ABC News, "These people who become scientists and artists and musicians, I think, possess a very special capability. It was becoming more and more clear to me that she had it. I was in the presence of somebody who was unlike anything that I had seen before."
Some of that was, indeed, very true.
Robertson remains a professor emeritus of chemical engineering at Stanford.
English (US) ·