The Dropout

The drama series The Dropout, based on the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos, goes deep.

Magic Johnson (Quincy Isaiah) is the leading man, with the big smile, and a showboater. Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (Sunday, HBO/Crave, 9 p.m.) is a TV series, not a documentary. Also be aware that Season 1 of Sanditon (Sunday, PBS, 8 p.m.) is repeated in a marathon to lead into next week’s second season arrival. Along with the ambition, there’s a childish naiveté to Elizabeth, something that only a few people can spot. There’s one superb scene in which Elizabeth pitches her first version of the blood-test technology to Phyllis Gardner, a professor of medicine at Stanford University (a real figure played with dynamism by Laurie Metcalf). Gardner advises her to learn more, study more, before pitching unrealistic proposals. What emerges is that Ball worked tirelessly, fought hard to have Arnaz included in her success, and it wore them out. It sure is something to chew on, this series (eight episodes, three available now) about big ideas, big egos and one very big daydream. The story is well known and Alex Gibney’s great documentary, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (streams Crave), has already chronicled the saga. Then it’s back to the teenage Elizabeth, a gawky, geeky kid running awkwardly at school. For reasons it will take time to digest and understand, we’ve been seeing a lot of drama about scams. The supporting cast is also impressive, with some stellar performances. The Dropout (streams Disney+) is the latest, a fictional treatment of the story of Elizabeth Holmes who, as a student, created a machine that could quickly do blood tests, at any time or place, from a single drop of blood.

Hulu's The Dropout casts Amanda Seyfried as Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes. Read our review of the show, which just released on Hulu, to see why it's worth ...

By embracing both the absurdity and gravity of Holmes’ story, The Dropout delivers a stylistic, tightly paced, and at times surprisingly comedic examination of the rise and fall of Theranos. It may not add anything to what I already knew about Holmes, but it doesn’t feel like a predictable rehash of previous reporting, either. As the series progresses, The Dropout dedicates increasing time to its supporting cast, a decision that highlights the scale of those impacted by Holmes’ actions and the very real cost of her con. Among the excellent step-by-step play-by-play that the first seven episodes of The Dropout offer is a sense of how a lie this obscene could be supported by so many. What The Dropout is best at is balancing the micro choices Elizabeth and Sunny (the show often localizes the full conspiracy to these two) make for their company with the macro harm of the fallout. But with Seyfried’s riveting performance as an anchor, I found myself not caring whether the show landed every swing or delivered a revelatory perspective on the founder; it was just a delight to watch. She is constantly churning the flimflam that can power a bullshit factory like the one Holmes was running: strategically crying in front of her board to keep her CEO seat, or quickly diverting blame to underlings. The Dropout is worth your time because Elizabeth Holmes was worth the time of countless writers, podcasters, and documentarians. But the show is careful to never excuse them or even allow for a world in which her deceit is anything more than a desperate bid for importance. In the years since, Holmes’ name has been synonymous with a type of obvious fraudster, fraudulent in everything from her blood testing machines to her voice. John Carryeou’s initial report in the Wall Street Journal is damning, and yet only just the tip of the iceberg. Like Seyfried, just about everyone working on The Dropout is turning out stellar work, it’s just unfortunate that the show, like its subject, is wholly given over to tautology. But the delay of TV always means betting big on audiences still caring, or a show being able to provide more perspective on a story that might be well-litigated in the public eye by the time it reaches airwaves.

Amanda Seyfried leads the all-star cast of 'The Dropout,' Hulu's new series about the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes.

He's also the singer and rhythm guitarist of the band Wallows. Theranos board member Shultz is a former Secretary of State and Treasury Secretary who passionately supported Holmes, even causing discord in his own family. George Shultz grandson Tyler is one of the earliest whistleblowers from Theranos, after getting a job in its lab and seeing the company's deceptive practices. Continuing TV's spring of scam, the show goes deep on Holmes and the people around her who championed her vision, realized she was a fraud, or got stuck somewhere in the middle. The British-born actor also starred on the shows Sense8, Instinct, and Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. Holmes' childhood neighbor Dr. Fuisz is an inventor, entrepreneur, and physician who runs a biomedical research company. Brooklyn native Liao previously appeared on the shows Cowboy Bebop, Manifest, Unforgettable, Prison Break, and 24. Recently he's starred on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Legion, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and The Gilded Age. Holmes meets Sunny Balwani, a successful tech founder, on a language-immersion trip in China. They later stay in touch and start dating, with Holmes eventually bringing him in on Theranos, though they keep their relationship secret. Stanford professor Dr. Phylis Gardener has a pre-Theranos encounter with Holmes, that leaves her skeptical towards the founder, especially when Theranos becomes a tech unicorn. Elizabeth Holmes is just a sophomore when she drops out of Stanford to found her own biomedical company. Hulu's highly anticipated show about the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes is finally here.

The first three episodes of 'The Dropout' explored the origin of Theranos, but when is the release date for episode 4 of the Hulu series?

With the series running into April, it promises to explore Elizabeth Holmes’ story with plenty of nuance and depth. Episode 4 of The Dropout is titled “Old White Men,” and it’s likely to pick up where “Green Juice” left off. The Dropout premiered on Hulu with three episodes, all of which set the stage for Elizabeth Holmes’ trial and conviction. Amanda Seyfried brings Elizabeth to life impressively, balancing her apparent good intentions with the pride and ambition that led to her downfall. The first three installments paint a fascinating picture of the early days at Theranos. So, what’s the release date and time for The Dropout Episode 4? The Dropout has officially premiered on Hulu, telling the story of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried), who was found guilty of committing fraud.

Amanda Seyfried certainly had the large blue eyes and blonde hair to play Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder and fraud who bilked investors out of millions ...

I was a musician in a band, and stepping onstage in different makeup and wardrobe transformed me from Jorjee Douglass to a persona…I feel like that’s what she did.”Douglass also used tidbits of dialogue from The Dropout’s scripts to understand why Holmes might have chosen red lipstick in the first place.“I think she was drawn to the red because, growing up, she had a mom who was like, ‘You look better when your hair is lightened,’ or, ‘You look better when you wear lipstick,’” says Douglass. “I think she always had this mother kind of nudging her to look more feminine, and when she finally did it, she was like, ‘I’m going to wear this traditional tart face because this is how I’m going to sell. I think sometimes she went to bed with her makeup on and that’s why sometimes it was very clumpy, because she’d wake up and kind of refresh herself as best as she could.”To authentically create makeup that looks as though it was done quickly, Douglass applied a layer of cosmetics to Holmes and then, maybe three hours later, piled more on without removing any of the previous layers—giving Seyfried mascara clumps the textured look of someone who hadn’t washed her face the night before.To replicate Holmes’s imperfect lipstick application, says Douglass, “I used liquid lipstick, sometimes not using the liner so it would bleed or fall out of line. And then sometimes I would use liner to draw a line that went off to a side.” If you look closely on The Dropout, Seyfried’s lips are drawn more raggedly when the character became more manic because of stress.Seyfried herself would have happily gone to further cosmetically destructive lengths to transform herself into Holmes. Douglass says that Seyfried volunteered her immaculate blonde hair as follicular tribute, telling hair department head Vanessa Price to fry and dry her out so she’d look more like Holmes in later Theranos days.“She was like, ‘If you want, we can just fry up my hair. I think we should do that, you know?’”Recalls Douglass, “Of course the hair girl was like, ‘No.’” Not only because that would have damaged the actor’s hair, but because the series was not filmed in chronological sequence, and Seyfried needed to toggle between scenes set in Holmes’s early-aughts college days and her recent 2018 deposition. This is how I’m going to weaponize and rule these men.’ In this circumstance, it felt like a way to protect herself.”“I wanted to honor this person, whether it was the character or the real person,” says Douglass. “Because there was no way to look at the real Elizabeth Holmes without feeling some sort of pain. It had the perfect amount of stretch but was not too polyester…This was [Holmes] saying, ‘How can I just fix [the hassle] of getting dressed everyday so I don’t have to think about it?’ And she obviously imitated someone who is her idol in doing it.”Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in The DropoutEven when The Dropout’s Holmes settles on one red lipstick (Lancome L’Absolu Rouge Drama Ink Liquid Lipstick in French Bisou, for the record), the character still doesn’t have the time, energy, or desire to get her makeup right. During one, according to Douglass, the lights were on far too bright—forgiving the deliberately careless makeup job she had done on Seyfried. So Seyfried still looked more Hollywood actor than Silicon Valley scam artist.“But the funny thing was, as soon as Amanda just morphed her body and started using her voice, every single person’s jaw dropped on set,” says Douglass. “Because we were all looking at a different person. We wanted it to be awkward subtly.”Parkinson also notes that red, signifying blood and lust, was a color palette through line for Seyfried’s costuming in the Hulu series.“The show ends with just red on her lips, but she wore red when she met the family in high school for Christmas, red when she found the first Theranos building. That was our joke.”Douglass’s application of makeup changed from scene to scene—depending on where Holmes was in the story of Theranos’s rise and fall, and how frantic she was becoming behind the scenes of her fraudulent enterprise.“There were points where she was really at a breaking point of trying to sell her [company to investors] and was using her makeup as a weapon almost—using this very stereotypically sexy red lipstick, black-rimmed eyes kind of thing. She was selling that image to the people she was getting money from, but I feel like that also guarded her,” says Douglass. “To me it felt like there was some kind of psychological reason for her to put that on. That helped me get through it.”Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout.Costume designer Claire Parkinson, meanwhile, managed to track down both Holmes’s family photos and her high school’s yearbook to inform the character’s clothing on The Dropout. Given that Holmes was more science-minded than fashion-minded, Parkinson put the character a few years back on clothing trends—referencing J. Crew catalogs from 1998, for example, for scenes taking place in the early aughts.“I had a lot of conversations with [creator] Elizabeth Meriwether about how can we always make her feel a little bit off-trend…and kind of awkward,” says Parkinson, who scoured eBay, Poshmark, various Goodwills, and costume houses for Holmes-like looks. But there was still plenty of magic The Dropout’s hair, makeup, and costume team had to perform to convincingly transform the Oscar-nominated actor into Holmes, a Silicon Valley grind who had no time or want for aesthetic self-care during her 20-hour work days.“I studied all of the different shades of red that she wore, all her unmatched colors of foundation,” says makeup co-head Jorjee Douglass, describing the photos of the real-life Holmes that she pored over as research.

Hulu's "The Dropout" explores the origins of Elizabeth Holmes' supposedly fake voice. Here's why someone might want to change their own.

"The first week of 'New Girl' I lost my voice, and I had to go to a doctor, and the doctor said, 'Have you been drinking a lot of coffee and/or trying to sound authoritative?'" Meriwether recalls. "Because women have been marginalized in comparison with men in terms of power structures, there's an advantage to borrowing stuff that's associated with masculinity," Fought says, likening a woman deepening her voice to a power suit. As her business grows in the episode, titled "Green Juice," Holmes begins to understand her image's impact and starts to play with the pitch of her voice. "It lent to her mystique," Rhimes told the streaming platform. Dressed in a wrinkled gray and white plaid shirt, she's told by Apple alum Ana Arriola (Nicky Endres) she "should just dress more like a CEO." When the noise of an active construction site drowns out a meeting with her all-male board, a member directs her to "Speak up! Her pitch – like Paris Hilton's baby voice or the unique accent of convicted con woman Anna Sorokin (the focus of Netflix's "Inventing Anna") – becomes a defining characteristic.