“The Dropout” starring Amanda Seyfried on Hulu is a retelling of the wildly dishonest rise and eventual, if belated, fall of Elizabeth Holmes and her biotech firm Theranos. In short: Theranos raised billions on the promise that it could build a small, portable device that would change medicine forever by generating a vast array of test results from just a single drop of blood. Despite big-named investors who gave this swindle the stamp of legitimacy, none of it was true.
It is a story already explored, in considerable depth, in the nonfiction book expose “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” director Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” and a podcast also called “The Dropout.” Of those projects and their analysis of Holmes herself, “I watched and listened to all of it, but I learned nothing about her,” Seyfried told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s crazy that she can still be such an enigma with all the information surrounding her.” And yet she remains an enigma in the new project as well, despite a very good performance from Seyfried, who goes all-in on Holmes’ deeply off-putting intensity.
One might reasonably expect new insights from what is now the fourth high-profile version of this story. Failing that, the limited series is just the latest in Hollywood’s fixation on entrepreneurial chicanery. Sometimes there are actual crimes involved (Holmes was found guilty of charges including conspiracy to defraud investors and she faces up to 20 years in prison) and sometimes we’re looking at unethical power moves rooted in exploiting systems (and people) for substantial personal gain.
