Spoilers for Nathan Fielder’s You Can See Everything can be seen throughout this story. Seriously, though, it’s worth the three-hour runtime, and is maybe the best movie to come out so far this year.
One of the main points of contention in You Can See Everything, the latest A24 movie from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, is the fact Elizabeth Holmes and her set-up-to-be-the-villain partner Billy Evans seemed to be going back to the drawing board and creating a system that sounded like a Theranos 2.0. Obviously, several years have passed since Holmes went to prison, and her partner is now working on a new business. He bristled at a comparison to Theranos.
When journalist Matt Gutman asked Evans about “Theranos 3” in an already-viral Sunday Mornings interview, the entrepreneur and husband wanted to set the record straight. Even prior to the interview finally airing in full, we know the man felt his You Can See Everything portrayal was “crazy.” And I’m not even talking about whatever happened with that shower scene.
Per Evans, Gutman is actually a bit behind the times. The journalist asked about the project we see in the documentary, a project that had Evans and Holmes attempting to fix the technology that led to Theranos dealing with legal troubles by approaching the problem in a different way. According to the scientist, that project is dead, and it’s dead for one big reason: The tech was too expensive.
No. I am not working with Elizabeth on [my current project]. Important distinction from the movie: That was a different idea. Completely different technology.
Gutman interrupted and asked, “So, we’re talking about Theranos 3 now?” Evans shook his head, and responded:
It’s not Theranos. At the time we were filming, we were talking about basically using microscopes, taking really good camera images of bacteria, and then using computer vision like driverless cars use to determine that’s a car, that’s a bus, that’s a person… So, that was kind of the idea. Turns out, that the cost was just too high.
Shortly after Holmes was in prison, they scrapped the idea we see them chatting about in You Can See Everything. Despite the way the now-infamous egg scene portrays Evans, he said here he spent about seven months worrying about the kids and life in Texas. Where the kids would go to preschool, what hotels to stay at while visiting Holmes in prison.
Then, he got back to it. Now, he is still working on "the problem," but he feels his research is not the same thing.
Once I finally settled and I regained like my strength and my energy back, I started thinking about, ‘Well, that last one didn’t work. But how could it? And my background’s in photonics, lasers. You know it’s a big thing in the movie, lasers. So I started reading research papers, and I’m now working with a group of scientists and other people to solve the same problem in a different way.
You can see the full back and forth below.
One thing that was consistent between Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans during You Can See Everything was a (seemingly) shared passion for talking out theoreticals. Despite Holmes preparing for life in prison, there was a shared sense between the two the work would go on, and Fielder said they both had optimism while filming she may not end up behind bars. Ultimately, from what Evans seems to be saying, the former happened, though the latter did not pan out as expected.
Elizabeth Holmes is expected to be released from prison on February 22, 2030.
