Amanda Seyfried plays the part of her life as Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout ★★★★☆

At the height of the hype surrounding her company Theranos, which wanted to market a revolutionary new way of blood testing, Elizabeth Holmes, its founder and director, was worth $9 billion. As a young successful woman in the tech industry, Holmes became the cover girl of her time. She was constantly compared to Steve Jobs, only better, because a tech visionary with a heart, who was really going to make the world a better place. Until John Carreyrou, a journalist from The Wall Street Journal, the curtain pulled back and Theranos turned out to be a house of cards. The central innovation that Theranos was built on, a gadget that could test a drop of blood for hundreds of diseases, turned out to be non-existent. The top-secret lab was shut off from the world for a reason: nothing happened. Meanwhile, investors lined up, also for the opportunity to get close to the genius Holmes.

Carreyou wrote the book badblood, that was the basis for The Inventor, the HBO documentary that Alex Gibney made in 2019. And Adam McKay (The Big Short) bought the film rights. But the fascination with Elizabeth Holmes was far from over. Rebecca Jarvis made the podcast series The Dropoutwhich in turn forms the basis for the eight-part drama series by Elizabeth Meriwether, which can be seen in the Netherlands on Disney Plus.

The Dropout is a fairly conventionally made series (no McKay-esque narrators or stylistic belch), yet utterly fascinating. That has to do with the rather unbelievable story, which says at least as much about Theranos’ deception as it does about the old men’s network opportunistically betting on the next Big New Thing. At its center is the elusive figure of Holmes, who may have genuinely believed in the future of her device and thought she was playing the game exactly like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates before her: sketch a technological utopia, bring in the investors, and then the revolution by itself. Meanwhile, this one undergoes college drop out itself a transformation; from somewhat undisciplined young woman to a feminine version of the great Jobs, including his black turtleneck, and, bafflingly, a forced low voice.

The Dropout stands or falls with the central figure of Holmes and Amanda Seyfried plays the part of her life here, as a woman who combines obsessive ambition with an extraordinarily complex psychological profile, with a surplus of fears and a clear lack of empathy. We follow her life from her early years, with her father’s resignation from Enron (also a major fraud case in American business) serving as the starting point of her own ambitions. The Dropout dares to keep Holmes’ character complex and elusive, aided by Seyfried, who seems to be making a descent into a personal hell.

There’s something to be said for that The Dropout could have been said more efficiently. The first parts, about Holmes’ transformation into an unapproachable tech boss, are the most exciting. In the second part, the story of the Shultz family is given plenty of space. Former Secretary of State George Shultz (beautifully played by Sam Waterston) was one of the former politicians Holmes brought into her board. He came into conflict with his grandson, who worked at Theranos and became one of the whistleblowers. Did Holmes manipulate the ancient statesman, or did he project all his dreams onto her? We are far from finished talking about Elizabeth Holmes.