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Elizabeth Holmes isn’t that impressed by Hollywood’s portrayal of her.
“They’re not playing me,” Holmes told the New York Times for a profile published Sunday. “They’re playing a character I created.”
The disgraced Theranos founder, who was recently sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for fraud, was portrayed by Amanda Seyfried in “The Dropout,” a Hulu limited series about her Silicon Valley rise and downfall.
Holmes was found guilty in 2022 of defrauding investors in her blood-testing startup out of hundreds of millions. The company falsely claimed its “Edison” machines could perform hundreds of tests to detect diseases within minutes of a simple pin-prick.
Seyfried’s portrayal of Holmes — and the performative voice she used to be taken seriously — earned her an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe. It was so acclaimed that Jennifer Lawrence, who was set to star as Holmes in a separate film, exited that project.
Holmes suggested that Seyfried did well ― but only in mimicking a fraudulent persona.
Left: Greg Allen/Invision/Associated Press; Right: Jordan Strauss/Invision/Associated Press
“I believed it would be how I would be good at business and taken seriously and not taken as a little girl of a girl who didn’t have good technical ideas,” Holmes told the Times about her throaty voice. “Maybe people picked up on that not being authentic, since it wasn’t.”
Seyfried has said she focused on getting Holmes’ mannerisms down and told ET in 2022 that she had some “freedom” with the voice. She said it was apt that using a throaty voice didn’t feel normal at first— as it hadn’t been “super natural” for Holmes, either.
The New York Times article, titled “Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth,” spurred a backlash. One Twitter user accused the Times of painting her as a “sympathetic figure worthy of redemption,” while another asked: “We’re rebranding Elizabeth Holmes now?”
Holmes recently requested to delay the start of her prison term, citing the recent birth of her second child. The convicted fraudster, who is currently appealing her sentence, was ordered last month to report to prison as that legal process continues.
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