Elizabeth Holmes reacted to actress Amanda Seyfried playing her in the Hulu series “The Dropout,” claiming that portrayal didn’t reflect her true self.
“They’re not playing me,” Holmes told The New York Times of Seyfried and others. “They’re playing a character I created.”
Holmes told the publication that she created the persona because “I believed it would be how I would be good at business and taken seriously and not taken as a little girl or a girl who didn’t have good technical ideas. Maybe people picked up on that not being authentic, since it wasn’t,” she said.
The 39-year-old former biotechnology entrepreneur and founder of the blood-testing company Theranos was convicted of fraud in 2022. She is currently out of prison as she appeals her sentence. Holmes was supposed to report for prison on April 27.
Seyfried won an Emmy for her portrayal of Holmes, which included wearing a black turtleneck, red lipstick, and speaking in a deep voice to mimic Holmes. The actress said she wants to play Holmes again in any capacity. “I’m not kidding, a two-hour special. Come on!” Seyfried told Variety in a joint interview with “The Dropout” showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether.
Jennifer Lawrence was going to play Holmes in a movie directed by Adam McKay but has since dropped out of the project, Variety noted.
Some critics take issue with NYT seemingly allowing Holmes to try to “reinvent” herself as Liz Holmes, a soft-spoken mother of two who is just trying to move forward from the scandal.
Holmes founded Theranos at 19 in the hopes of developing a revolutionary blood-testing device that could detect a wide range of illnesses using just a finger prick. She quickly became one of the world’s most sought-after entrepreneurs and was toasted by the media for being the youngest self-made female billionaire.
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After it was discovered that Holmes was lying about the capabilities of the technology, her rise to fame turned into a huge corporate fraud scandal. She was found guilty on four counts of fraud after taking millions of dollars from investors while knowing it was all based on falsehood. Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison, which she is currently appealing.