Mild Spoilers for The Dropout
The Dropout miniseries, starring Amanda Seyfried as Theranos scammer Elizabeth Holmes, is out now on Hulu. Three episodes are available with the fourth of eight coming out Thursday. I’m glad Hulu didn’t release them all at once because I can’t stop watching it. Seyfried is so good and convincing as Holmes that I actively dislike her. The series is fascinating and maddening at the same time, which is surely what they were going for.
It’s not spoilery to say that you see how Holmes went from a socially awkward college dropout with a pie in the sky idea to a deceptive CEO who valued appearance and status above creating a working product. She cultivated her trademark deep voice as a superficial way to command respect when she had no experience in science, biomedicine or technology. Seyfried told the LA Times that people ask her the most about how she achieved Holmes’ voice, her look and her unblinking stare. She was able to approximate the voice over three months by watching Holmes’ deposition on a loop, but it came at a cost.
“Keep your tongue flat in the back — like, flatten it over the back of your teeth,” [Seyfried] says, disapprovingly yet encouragingly, her wide eyes narrowing with focus as she observes me stumbling over these vocal Pilates.
“It’s funny, this is the first time I’m describing it like this because it became so natural,” she says, slipping in and out of the Holmes voice for emphasis. “I was used to it as a muscle memory. So yeah, it’s deeper. It’s like a kind of Valley girl almost…”
But no aspect of Holmes’ persona has fed into the public’s fascination more than what may be its most peculiar aspect: her deep voice.
Its authenticity has been called into question, with some alleging that the founder affected a lower tone to sound more authoritative while selling investors and the public on her company. In “The Dropout” podcast, former co-workers of Holmes said that she occasionally slipped out of her deep, low voice and spoke in a higher pitch. Her family has denied claims that it’s fake to TMZ.
The limited series takes the position that it’s part of the ruse. Seyfried’s take on Holmes’s distinctive voice comes barely a minute into the first episode of “The Dropout,” during a scene where she’s participating in an interview well into Theranos’ rise. But the narrative quickly journeys back to Holmes’ pre-Theranos, pre-voice origin story. It’s not until the third episode, “Green Juice” — which explores what it means to be a young woman in a position of power — where its genesis is dramatized…
Getting it right was important to Seyfried because “people are always talking about the voice. It’s the first thing people mentioned. Second is the turtleneck; third is the non-blinking. But the voice is number one. The voice is the foundation. If you don’t, it’s like you’re missing the whole thing.”
“I went full force into finding out everything I could,” she added. “There was this huge [encyclopedia], that’s still actually on my desktop, of all the information that had been collected over the two years of research during the development phase of ‘The Dropout’ … The thing that really helped with the voice and how that evolved for me was the deposition, because it was so many hours, and I could just play it on loop. I had them all on my desktop, little thumbnails. And I’d be sitting at my desk — at that time, my son was really, really young and he wasn’t mobile yet so it was a lot easier when my daughter was at school to just crochet and listen, or to just write things down. I felt like I was really doing homework, I was really studying. I was most excited about that, than any homework I ever had to do…”
While she didn’t work with her vocal coach, Liz Caplan, for this project — their collaboration tends to focus on singing — Seyfried did seek her advice early on because she was worried she was causing damage to her vocal cords.
“I would be talking like Elizabeth and [my throat would] get a little sore,” Seyfried says. “And I’d be like: this can’t happen. Like, this is freaking me out. Am I going to be able to do this for weeks? We worked together as much as we could. Sometimes we’d have to work together on weekends because I was auditioning for a musical. But, yes, at first I was f— scared…”
“I still sometimes talk like her,” Seyfried says. “It’s hard to shake.”
I’ve watched interviews of Seyfried promoting this show. As she mentioned to the LA Times, you can tell she’s still shaking this character! She seems different than she has in past interviews. She’s not as relaxed and happy-go-lucky as usual. Maybe I’m just making assumptions based on how good she is in the role. She will win an Oscar in the next few years, mark my word. (Not for this role, obviously, but she’ll likely nominated for a Golden Globe and a SAG.)
Seyfried and Naveen Andrews, who plays Holmes’ evil boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, were on Good Morning America last week. Seyfried called this role “juicy” and said, of Holmes, “playing a person who exists.. is very exciting. I hate to say that because it’s a real person with real consequences. I wish her well. As an actor very specifically it was thrilling.” (Sidenote: Andrews is so good in this too! You hardly recognize him.)
Getting back to this show, I am invested in the employees, much like I was in the HBO documentary The Inventor. That’s because I used to work at dot coms and have experienced environments like this. Leaders talk a good game but the product is all all hype and no substance. Employees are expected to make up for the complete lack of management, planning and technical feasibility while salespeople raise money off an idea.
I’ve listened to the podcast too and I know how it turns out for one main character. I’m not looking forward to seeing that dramatized, but I’ll keep watching no matter what.
Ooh here’s the preview for episode four!
Photos credit Hulu and via Instagram, screenshots from YouTube
I watched episode 3 yesterday and can’t wait to see the rest of the show. Though 8 episodes seem like they’re stretching the whole thing. Same happened with Pamela and Being Anna.
They all start great but fall flat when they stretch so much the plot lines. So hopefully this doesn’t happen with The Dropout
I have been so intrigued with this story since watching the doc Out for Blood.
I’m still just flabbergasted Holmes was able to dupe so many people..educated, business savvy people.
On a superficial note, why was Holmes appearance so atrocious?? Her hair literally looks like someone took straw, soaked it in bleach and glued it to her head. Her makeup is cartoonish.
Strange woman, garbage human.
If you read The Dropout, you were left feeling as if she was mentally unwell and it manifested in her unkempt appearance. There’s just no excuse for the state of her hair and makeup.
I have a former friend who is very much a malignant narc and her narcissism is bad to the point that her appearance went from being very groomed to cartoonish makeup and wild hair (her hair is naturally v curly and it kinda looked like she wasn’t brushing it properly, in fact she was back combing it to make it bigger damaging the sh!t outta her hair).
The former friends appearance reminded me of the titular character in Whatever happened to Baby Jane? Same goes for Holmes
When you actively dislike an actress playing a real life person in a movie or tv show, that’s when you know they’re doing an amazing job
I have only heard the real Elizabeth Holmes speak once and that was a small piece I saw of her on the news. That’s some voice she’s got there…
So far the series makes me incredibly sympathetic to Holmes. Especially because I’m also watching Super Pumped, the bro-iest story ever to bro.
I can see that because it is so early in her story but I am interested to see how hard it goes when she starts actively threatening and attacking those who disagreed with her and whistle blowers and how her actions knowingly risked the medical health and safety of people.
What I do find fascinating is how every inventor she looks up to is male and when Laurie Metcalf gives that speech about women not being able to skip the steps and needing to know their fields, I was like “hard agree”
Oh, definitely. I know it’s going south from this point, and yeah she should have listened to Laurie Metcalf, stayed in school, and worked her way up. I actually don’t know anything about her, so most of this is new info to me, but if she really was raped on campus and Stanford really did nothing about it (fully plausible), her decision to drop out and be an entrepreneur as many many men have done before her, makes sense. The problem is that unlike all those who came before her and developed killer software products, she tried to develop a medical device without the scientific knowledge to do so. But the details of her transforming herself into a woman the men in Bro Valley would respect are real. I worked in Silicon Valley in the late 90s/early 00s, so that probably feeds into my sympathetic feelings.
I agree completely. She sought out men and played into their biases. When Laurie Metcalf gave her the truth bomb, Holmes couldn’t handle it.
Amanda has done a fantastic job! I feel like Elizabeth Holmes and Ana Delvy have undermined so much of the progress made by legitimate female entrepreneurs. They are such garbage humans. I wish their stories hadn’t been dramatized by the entertainment industry.
That’s such a good point. Both stories really play on how much harder it is to make it as a woman and yet there are thousands of other stories of women who fight every day to make it in business and technology without taking shortcuts. The other thing about Holmes and Delvy is they are both conventionally attractive white women, and they both understand that privilege and use it to their advantage. (Per the shows. I honestly don’t know anything about either one other than these recent series.) They’re also both very intelligent, so it makes me sad that they wasted opportunities to use the more traditional channels of higher education to enter the business world and launch their empires from there. Can you image where Holmes would be now with a technology-focused MBA and fluency in Mandarin?
I don’t know… I’m a bit worn out by the story only because I’ve been hardcore following it for years, but sooo many people were duped that I’m glad she is getting called out in such a big way. I’m glad Sunny is getting called out for his coercive control in their relationship – to whatever degree that actually happened – I’m happy the lower level people are happy they can publicly speak again without any worry of threat to their safety. These machines actually made it as far as I believe CVS so the threat to public safety was real. As another commenter stated, this is the first time the story has hit their radar and yet there have been soooo many victims, so I’m ok with it being dramatized if it brings, well, not closure but an end to that many people.
The show is terrific. Seyfried is good. Naveen is so good in the part, he’ s managed to make himself un-sexy, which is hard to do .)
Don’t judge me, I still find him so sexy in the part. Okay, some scenes they really emphasize his middle aged gut but he’s still Naveen Andrews and I’d hit it.
I am loving this show so much. Seyfried is fantastic and it’s been such a delight to see Naveen Andrews on screen again! He’s amazing as Sunny.
I’ll admit I thought she sounded more like Emma Stone than Elizabeth Holmes during my viewing. But I think she’s fantastic in the role and I can’t wait to see the rest of the series. I read Bad Blood back when I was in college in 1 day because I was so gripped by the story and I’ve been obsessed with the scandal ever since.