Can You Really See Everything?

After seeing You Can See Everything twice in the past week, I am still thinking about what Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s (2026) documentary allows us to know about Elizabeth Holmes, and what it encourages us to believe about Fielder himself. The film brings us close to its subjects, but that closeness raises as many questions as it answers.

One question in particular stayed with me: “What does it mean to know?” That question drew me to the study of epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge, during my dissertation research in graduate school. I became interested in the difference between understanding something and feeling certain about it. That distinction seems especially useful when considering a film about someone we have watched, heard about, and discussed for years.

Many viewers will arrive at the theater, as I did, already familiar with Holmes’s story. Alex Gibney’s (2019) documentary, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, examined her and her company, Theranos. That same year, ABC News launched The Dropout, a podcast hosted by Rebecca Jarvis. Its reporting became the basis for Hulu’s 2022 miniseries of the same name, with Amanda Seyfried playing Holmes (ABC News, 2022).

In You Can See Everything, we immediately recognize Holmes’s voice, stare, presence, and carefully maintained image. Interviews, documentary footage, and scripted scenes may blend together in our memory. We might feel that we know her without remembering exactly how that familiarity developed.

Sorting out those sources is part of evaluating what we believe about her. So is recognizing when her account of herself conflicts with documented facts.

At one point, Holmes insists that she has never lied. Even when Fielder presses her about ordinary little fabrications, she maintains her position (Ford, 2026). This is a truly extraordinary assertion from someone convicted of one count of conspiracy to defraud investors and three counts of wire fraud.

Let’s first consider some facts. The evidence presented at her trial established repeated, knowing falsehoods about Theranos’s technology, finances, and business relationships. Holmes misrepresented what its blood-testing machines could do while knowing their limitations. She supplied misleading financial projections and falsely described the company’s work with the military. These deceptions helped persuade investors to part with their money (U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California, 2022).

The consequences extended beyond investors. Through its partnership with Walgreens, Theranos offered blood collection and testing services at stores in Arizona. Patients received inaccurate results about their health, creating the potential for needless fear, false reassurance, and misguided medical decisions. Arizona’s attorney general alleged that the company misrepresented its testing methods, accuracy, and reliability (Arizona Attorney General’s Office, 2017). Walgreens (2016) ended the partnership, closing all 40 Arizona testing centers and citing the voiding of test results.

Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors though acquitted of the patient-related fraud charges (U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California, n.d.). As the film brought us closer to her, I continued to remain aware of the patients who trusted Theranos with their health.

That history provides essential context for the film’s intimate portrait. The documentary’s first half was filmed in spring 2023, during the weeks immediately before Holmes entered prison. She and her partner, Billy Evans, welcomed the filmmakers into their home and daily lives. Fielder’s growing involvement with them becomes an integral part of the story (Fielder & Oppenheim, 2026).

That access promised a fuller understanding of Holmes. It also gave her an opportunity to influence how we see her. Watching someone at home can feel like getting behind a public image, but a camera does not stop people from managing that image.

Erving Goffman’s (1959) observations may help explain what we are witnessing. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, he examined how people shape the impressions others form of them. We choose what to reveal, how to behave, and which parts of ourselves to emphasize for a particular audience.

This is commonly called impression management. An accessible discussion in Media Studies 101 explains how people use speech, gestures, appearance, and other choices to influence how others perceive them. These efforts can be deliberate or so familiar that we barely notice them (Media Texthack Team, 2014). Someone whose reputation has collapsed, as Holmes’s has, has a strong reason to seek a different public image.

Her openness deserves scrutiny in that light. Welcoming cameras, sharing family life, and displaying vulnerability could all be calculated image management techniques. The invitation to “see everything” may encourage us to lower our guard. We may assume that someone revealing so much must have nothing to hide.

At several points Holmes cries, and her tears deserve attention as well. They may express genuine distress. They may also encourage us to see her as misunderstood or deserving of another chance. Isn’t it possible that genuine emotion and strategic self-presentation can coexist?

Does feeling sorry for someone make their explanation more compelling? It certainly might. Whether it makes that explanation more credible is a separate question.

Anthropology offers another useful concept for considering the Holmes-Fielder relationship: “going native.” Traditionally, the phrase describes the risk of becoming so involved with the people being studied that the researcher loses critical distance. Gale (2010), writing about her own fieldwork, describes the challenge of participating closely while remaining focused on the purpose of her research.

Her account also shows why reflection matters throughout that process. She describes using a research diary to examine her experiences and return to the work of analysis. Closeness can deepen understanding but, from an academic perspective, researchers must also consider how participation changes their responses and assumptions (Gale, 2010).

That raises a question about Fielder: As Holmes becomes more and more familiar to him, does her account become more believable? Does his attachment to her begin to outweigh his skepticism?

The second half, filmed two years later in 2025, brings Seyfried into the story. In an extension of her miniseries role, she plays Holmes in recreations of conversations Fielder remembers. She also appears as herself, watching footage and discussing Holmes with him. We move back and forth between an actress performing a role and a person apparently speaking her own mind (Fielder & Oppenheim, 2026).

An episode of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour brought another possibility into focus for me. Host Linda Holmes and critic Bob Mondello questioned whether some of these apparently spontaneous conversations might themselves be scripted. Their discussion sharpened my uncertainty about how to interpret these scenes (Holmes, 2026).

The recreations announce themselves as performances. Their conversations invite us to accept them as spontaneous. But were those exchanges unrehearsed? Or were they scripted, prompted, or shaped around ideas Seyfried and Fielder had already discussed?

Seyfried seems like someone we can trust to ask the questions we would ask. She is involved enough to understand Fielder’s experience but distant enough to challenge him. Her doubts may reassure us that someone within the film is keeping a clear head.

Yet that reassurance deserves scrutiny, too. Could she and Fielder have been working together to create the impression that she is independently questioning him? Is her apparent skepticism another way of guiding our response? I have no evidence of such an arrangement, but a film so concerned with appearances logically invites the question.

If her challenges were planned, we might be watching a carefully constructed image of Fielder as a man whose feelings have compromised his judgment. If spontaneous, they might capture someone recognizing that problem as it unfolds. The conclusions we draw could be similar, while our reasons for trusting them would differ.

At the end of the film, when Seyfried challenges Fielder about his feelings and judgment, the question of objectivity becomes impossible to avoid. Has he become too emotionally attached to assess Holmes clearly? Is he giving her claims consideration they have not earned because he wants to believe in her? Has he gone native?

I even left the theater wondering whether Nathan had fallen in love with Elizabeth.

But I also wondered how deliberately the film had led me to that very question. Had I recognized something in his behavior, or had Fielder and Seyfried helped construct that interpretation?

Goffman’s ideas apply to everyone on screen. Holmes presents herself to Fielder. Fielder and Seyfried present their encounters to us. Her apparent candor deserves the same scrutiny as his apparent confusion and Holmes’s apparent openness.

We do not have to resolve every question about the filmmaking to recognize the evidence of Holmes’s fraud. Assessing Fielder’s relationship with her is harder. We see it through a film he helped make.

Understanding people requires empathy. Deciding whether to believe them requires evidence and a willingness to question our own attachments. By the end, I was asking whether Fielder had maintained that distinction, and whether the film had helped me maintain it myself.

I left the theater with plenty of questions. I suspect you did too.

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References

ABC News. (2022, August 5). New “The Dropout” podcast episode features Hulu series creator and star.

Arizona Attorney General’s Office. (2017). 2017 annual report.

Fielder, N., & Oppenheim, L. (Directors). (2026). You can see everything [Film]. A24.

Ford, R. (2026, October 16). You can know everything about You Can See Everything (spoilers ahead!) Vanity Fair.

Gale, N. K. (2010). The embodied ethnographer: Journeys in a health care subculture. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 9(2), 206–223. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691000900206

Gibney, A. (Director). (2019). The inventor: Out for blood in Silicon Valley [Film]. HBO Documentary Films; Jigsaw Productions.

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday.

Holmes, L. (Host). (2026, October 16). You can see everything [Audio podcast episode]. In Pop culture happy hour. NPR. Episode · Transcript

Media Texthack Team. (2014). Impressions management. In Media studies 101. BCcampus. https://opentextbc.ca/mediastudies101/chapter/impressions-management/

U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California. (n.d.). U.S. v. Elizabeth Holmes, et al. U.S. Department of Justice.

U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California. (2022, January 4). Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes found guilty of investor fraud. U.S. Department of Justice.

Walgreens. (2016, June 12).Walgreens terminates relationship with Theranos; Will be closing operations at all 40 Theranos Wellness Centers in Arizona.

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