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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.”

[From The LA Times]

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!

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Photos credit Hulu and via Instagram, screenshots from YouTube