Amanda Seyfried thought Elizabeth Holmes doc would 'destroy my career' - USA Today

Spoiler alert! The following story contains major details about the Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything” (now in theaters).

Amanda Seyfried is finally ready to talk about “You Can See Everything.”

Over the last month, the “Mamma Mia!” actress has been comically cagey about discussing her involvement in the brain-bending Elizabeth Holmes documentary, telling one journalist that she’d prefer to discuss emus, olives and “really good hard ciders” instead.

But in a lengthy Nov. 11 Rolling Stone interview, Seyfried spoke at length with codirectors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about reprising her role as Holmes after her Emmy-winning turn in Hulu’s “The Dropout.”

Initially, Fielder got Seyfried’s phone number from his friend and collaborator Emma Stone. After a 30-minute Zoom, he went over to Seyfried’s apartment to show her footage from the documentary, in which he embedded himself with the ex-Theranos CEO for a month in 2023 before she started her prison sentence.

“I was like, ‘Oh, he just wants some advice. He just wants us to know about my experience playing her and researching her and going into the mind of that quote-unquote character I portrayed,’” Seyfried told Rolling Stone. “After the Zoom, I was totally game to do whatever you needed. … The idea that I could go on this journey with you guys, however you needed me, in whatever capacity, was very interesting to me.”

Seyfried didn’t tell her agent or her lawyer she was filming “You Can See Everything” until after she had already done it. She disappears into Holmes in a series of Oscar-worthy reenactments but also helps dig for answers about Holmes’ fiancé, Billy Evans, who allegedly sought to profit off the documentary without his partner knowing.

Making this movie, “there was always this vibration of risk and that sensation of 'Am I going to destroy my career in some way?'” Seyfried tells Rolling Stone. “'Am I going to get entangled in this, like, wasp’s nest with Billy? Am I gonna say the wrong thing? Am I gonna perpetuate negativity for her?' … It felt dangerous. I wanted answers. We all had this need to understand who was pulling the strings.

“What he was doing and how he was in the footage that I saw, how you guys were interacting – it felt yucky to me,” Seyfried continues. “I just wanted any information I could get on Billy. I became this weird Billy detective because I had gotten such strong negative feelings from him in the footage. I felt like I needed to meet this guy. It was exciting to me, and it was scary, and it was questionable.”

In one of the documentary’s most jaw-dropping scenes, Seyfried and Fielder visit Evans at home one evening. As Seyfried plays with Holmes’ young kids, Evans gets a phone call from his fiancé in prison, and the actress stammers through small talk with Holmes.

“We didn’t know she was gonna call right then,” Seyfried recalls. “And I am sitting there with her children and cuddling with her dog! While she’s in prison! And then she calls. … Someone asked me if that was real, if that was really her on the phone. And I’m like, ‘It’s a documentary. Who else would it be?’”

Afterward, Seyfried and Evans have a heated confrontation at the dinner table, as she grills Evans about how he controls Holmes’ social media accounts. In turn, he lambastes Seyfried for her negative comments about conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was killed last year.

“I was honestly trying to connect with [Evans],” Seyfried says. “There was no reason for him to get that aggressive. … I don’t want to provoke him, but at this point, it’s kind of like, the gloves are off. Because this guy has disrespected me in such a way that I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t think so, buddy.’ I was in the frame of mind where I’m like, OK, this guy is disrespectful, and I’m here in his home; I’m gonna argue this because I actually have a pretty solid stance on things.

“I don’t like the way he’s using this human being, his wife – the person he says he’s ‘building monuments of love' to – as a tool,’ Seyfried adds. “Maybe he does respect her, but he’s behaving like he does not respect her.”

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