‘You Can See Everything’: That Shocking, Meta Twist With [SPOILER] Explained in Elizabeth Holmes Doc

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for “You Can See Everything,” now playing in theaters. About halfway through Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything,” the film’s shock value ratchets up yet again. Even after a full-frontal scene from Holmes’ boyfriend Billy Evans and the convicted fraudster claiming she’s never told a lie, the movie dials it up to 11 with a meta appearance by actress Amanda Seyfried.

Seyfried memorably played the Theranos founder in Hulu’s 2022 series “The Dropout,” which Fielder shows Holmes and Evans for the first time — though it brings the real-life subject to tears. The documentary chronicles the 34 days ahead of Holmes’ 11-year prison sentence, and then Fielder introduces the Seyfried twist halfway through the film after Holmes is incarcerated. Fielder recruits Seyfried to get her take on some of his odd interactions with Holmes once she’s gone, given that the actress won an Emmy for playing her on “The Dropout.” The meta-ness of Seyfried returning to play Holmes snowballs into her reenacting real-life moments that Fielder and Oppenheim couldn’t capture on camera.

Alongside her is “East of Eden” actor Christopher Abbott, who plays Evans, albeit with a smaller role than Seyfried (who goes on to become a main character of the final half). The two actors recreate a private negotiation between Fielder, Oppenheim and the A24 team that happened before filming for “You Can See Everything” commenced. In it, Seyfried (as Holmes) leaves the conversation to tend to her child, and Abbott (as Evans) demands that he be paid for participating in the documentary.

Fielder and Oppenheim (as themselves) push back, arguing that paying the couple would severely discredit the film, but A24 relents and agrees to pay them. The question then looms over the rest of the film: Did Holmes intentionally leave the room to have deniability on the sketchy payment, or did Evans go rogue and request the money by himself, leaving Holmes out of it? Fielder eventually visits Holmes in prison, where she says she didn’t know about the payment (which we later see recreated in a scene with Seyfried).

At the end of the movie, it’s also revealed that Evans dropped his financial request, without further explanation. In what is perhaps the film’s most meta moment, Seyfried (as Holmes) tells Fielder during their off-camera prison visit, “I don’t want that to happen ever again,” referencing “The Dropout.” In the conversation, Holmes rants about how awful it is that women would “do that” to other women, making a point that Seyfried and the entire “Dropout” team is at fault. She adds that so many of the women incarcerated with her believe that “The Dropout” depicted entirely real events.

Intercut with Seyfried playing Holmes in the prison visit, we see the actress (as herself) reading the script Fielder prepared with his actual conversation from Holmes. Reading Holmes’ accusations, Seyfried’s guard is immediately up. The actress argues that she “didn’t do that to [Holmes].