Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and comedian Nathan Fielder spent three years collaborating on the documentary You Can See Everything, which follows Holmes during her final weeks of freedom before entering federal prison in May 2023.
Fielder and Holmes Shoot in Del Mar
The project began 34 days before Elizabeth Holmes was scheduled to report to federal prison, following a federal jury conviction in January 2022 on four investor-related counts—one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three counts of wire fraud. Before its collapse, Theranos raised nearly US$700 million from investors, and its valuation reached about US$9 billion at its peak.
Holmes and her partner, William “Billy” Evans, whom she married in 2017, approached A24 about the possibility of documenting their lives leading up to her incarceration, leading co-directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim to embed themselves in the couple’s Southern California rental house in the San Diego neighborhood of Del Mar in the month leading up to her 11-year prison term.
Holmes had seen a YouTube clip from Nathan For You and Billy Evans had watched the first few minutes of Oppenheim’s 2020 film Some Kind of Heaven, telling him it was not a very compelling opening, as both showed little familiarity with the directors’ past work.
A multi-camera setup inside the home caught every twitch, flinch, and microexpression as Fielder repeatedly pressed Holmes on whether she was telling the truth about her role in the Theranos collapse.
The Second Half Shift Behind Bars
After Holmes entered federal prison on May 30, 2023—reporting to FPC Bryan, a minimum-security camp in Bryan, Texas, to serve a sentence of 135 months (11 years and 3 months)—the documentary took an unexpected turn.
Fielder sat in his car wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap watching her go. That moment marks only the halfway point of the 174-minute film distributed by A24.
The story picks up two years later after a time jump, leaving Fielder and Oppenheim to resume their sleuthing with methods honed on The Rehearsal to question what actually took place during that initial month and whether her husband sought to exert control over the process.
The project blends scripts, impersonations, and dramatic re-enactments until the genuine and the counterfeit are one, probing the gray area between fabulations made about Holmes and those made by her according to reviews from Slant Magazine. The production was produced by Blow Out Productions alongside producers Nathan Fielder, Lance Oppenheim, Tatiana Bears, Maggie Ambrose, and Jack Davis, with cinematography by David Bolen, production design by Alex DiGerlando, editing by Adam Locke-Norton, and music by Ari Balouzian.
Audiences Attend Festival Screenings
The film premiered in a surprise screening at Telluride before traveling to the New York Film Festival and the Academy Museum in Los Angeles for star-studded events featuring guests such as Zach Cregger, Steven Yeun, Elizabeth Olsen, Hannah Einbinder, Meg Stalter, Patrick Ball, Aziz Ansari, Hasan Piker, and Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker of Boygenius.
Outside Alice Tully Hall during the New York premiere, a car bearing Free Elizabeth Holmes branding was parked at the curb while a man named Ryan Elhosseiny, who runs a venture called Just Blood, handed out flyers and merchandise to people filing in.
Oppenheim and Fielder revealed during post-screening Q&A sessions moderated by Bill Hader that communication broke down as Evans started trying to exert a level of control over the process that made collaboration impossible and uncomfortable for everyone involved, including A24.
You Can See Everything opens in theaters nationwide on October 16 following its festival run.
Will Evans and Holmes ever watch the finished documentary, and how will audiences respond to its wide release?