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The latest trailer from a buzzy documentary about Theranos founder and convicted felon Elizabeth Holmes puts a spotlight on her relationship with hotel heir Billy Evans, with whom she had two children before she went to prison.
Scenes from “You Can See Everything” included in a trailer released on Sept. 23 include co-director Nathan Fielder asking Evans if he was worried Holmes was “sort of scamming” him.
“A hundred percent, but what did she have to gain from me?” Evans answers.
“Well, isn’t your family rich?” Fielder asks.
Evans is the heir to Evans Hotels, his family’s chain of luxury resorts in southern California.
“Yeah, I think that there’s like a lot of different levels of wealth,” Evans responds to Fielder.
Holmes, 42, and Evans, 34, met while she was under federal investigation for her role as the founder and CEO of the med-tech start-up Theranos. She was found guilty of four counts of wire fraud in January 2022 after a federal investigation uncovered critical violations in a Theranos lab following reports that the blood testing technology did not work and could deliver faulty results.
The couple had a child before her trial and then a second one months before she went to federal prison.
“You’ve never been suspicious that she’s ever lied to you,” Fielder asks Evans in the trailer.
“No, ever,” he says.
Rebecca Keegan of NBC News Digital was in attendance at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado when “You Can See Everything” was screened on Sept. 7.
“Nathan Fielder is sort of trying to figure out, since Elizabeth Holmes is best known for fraud, is she pulling a scam on her partner Billy Evans?” Keegan said on TODAY Sept. 24. “Is she pulling a scam on the filmmakers?”
“I think this documentary answers a lot of questions, and then it raises even more,” she added.
The film, which will be released on Oct. 16, was directed by Fielder and filmmaker Lance Oppenheim and produced jaw-dropping reactions from those in the crowd at the screening.
“There were audible gasps and ‘no ways’ consistently throughout this almost three-hour film,” Keegan told NBC News correspondent Erin McLaughlin on TODAY Sept. 8.
The documentary features footage of Holmes and Evans with their two children at a rental home in San Diego before Holmes entered federal prison in 2023.
She is scheduled to be released in 2031, but may be leaving prison early. She has been approved for transfer to a halfway house in August 2027, according to copies of a Sept. 22 letter sent to victims of her crime from a unit manager within the Federal Bureau of Prisons that was viewed by The New York Times.
The Sept. 23 trailer for the documentary also shows Holmes proclaiming her innocence.
“You really feel you did nothing wrong?” Fielder asks.
“I did not,” Holmes says.
“So where did things get lost? Like, how are you where you are right now?” Fielder respons.
“I wish I knew,” Holmes says.
The tension over what Holmes believes about her crimes is a crucial part of the documentary.
“I think part of the film is exploring this question of Elizabeth Holmes’s perception of reality and about things that she’s done,” Keegan said.
An earlier trailer released by the studio A24 on Sept. 7 shows a wide-eyed Holmes awkwardly only inches away from Fielder’s face as she speaks to him in one scene.
“I’m not that person,” Holmes says in the clip. “I can promise you that. I don’t have anything to deceive you on. Of course, I’m not deceiving you. I’m engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you? There’s no reason for me to do that.”
“OK. All right. OK, good chat,” Fielder replies.
The two then stare at each other for an uncomfortable duration.
“You’re being real right now?” Fielder asks.
“I’m always being real,” Holmes replies.
Keegan described a “strange feeling” produced by the interactions between Fielder and Holmes in the film.
“Fielder is very much a character in the film, and in some ways, it’s him trying to understand whether he believes Elizabeth Holmes or not,” Keegan said.
“I’m struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced,” Fielder said during the post-screening Q&A, according to Keegan. “I don’t know why they want me there. I’m a weird guy. I don’t get it. That messed with my head.”
The conversations between Holmes and “The Rehearsal” star are reportedly not the only surreal moments in the documentary. The film also includes an A-list Hollywood actress reenacting Fielder’s conversations with Holmes from prison. Fielder asked the attendees at the screening not to reveal the actress’s identity, according to Keegan.
NBC News reached out to Holmes for comment, but did not hear back. Holmes shared the movie trailer on her X account on Sept. 6 and wrote, “I’m always being real.”
“You Can See Everything” is the latest screen adaptation of the saga involving Holmes. HBO released the documentary “The Inventor” about Holmes in 2019, and then Amanda Seyfried played her in the 2022 Hulu series “The Dropout.”
