How Nathan Fielder managed to keep shocking Elizabeth Holmes documentary a secret for three years

Nathan Fielder’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary that reveals the month leading up to her incarceration after being sentenced to 11 years in prison, was kept under wraps as a heavily guarded secret until last month.

You Can See Everything, which Fielder and co-director Lance Oppenheim created on the controversial Theranos founder, was filmed in 2023, just before her sentence began on May 30.

The pair film for 34 days, and was allowed into her home in San Diego, which she shared with partner Billy Evans and their two children.

However, nobody would know what happened behind those closed doors until a surprise screening on September 6 at the Telluride Film Festival.

"Keeping it under wraps was very important because we never wanted to get in front of what we were capturing," Oppenheim told Variety of the doc which was officially released on Friday, October 16.

He added of the struggle to be private as he said: "It was always about letting life unfold. Part of how we pulled it off was working with a very small crew, about seven or eight people."

However, it wasn’t just a tough time keeping it secret.

Fielder revealed he needs audiences to help him understand what was ‘experienced’ with Holmes in her home.

“I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced,” Fielder said during a Q&A after the screening, per Vanity Fair. “And one of the things I’m genuinely excited about is for this movie to come out and for people to help me understand what I experienced."

Oppenheim similarly shared during New York Film Festival: "I feel like our brains were scrambled. We were also unsure for so long if we even had anything that was worthwhile to make and put together."

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 after leaving Stanford University, which had the aim of changing medical testing by making blood tests more accessible for the public.

The company attracted more than $700 million in funding from investors by 2014.

But just one later, following reporting by The Wall Street Journal, questions began to emerge about its legitimacy.

Elizabeth Holmes was imprisoned 34 days after the documentary filmmakers entered her home (A24)

That’s because Theranos had claimed its technology could perform a range of tests using a tiny amount of blood – which has never been done before.

In the end, criminal charges against Holmes and former business partner Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, were filed, and Holmes was found guilty in January 2022 of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three counts of wire fraud.

Holmes is currently incarcerated at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas, per the supplied report, but according to Entertainment Weekly, a judge reduced her sentence earlier this year, moving her projected release date to February 2030.

According to Entertainment Weekly, earlier this year, a judge reduced her sentence, moving her projected release date to February 2030.

Fielder said it was hard for him to trust her, despite moments where he believed her to be ‘genuine’.

He shared of the experience: "I remember having this weird experience where she seems so genuine at times. But then I'm like, 'No,' and clocking and tracking my thoughts and being like, 'Okay, I know she's a liar.' It was a weird mental thing."

Throughout the project the pair were given the option to pull the plug on the documentary, which Holmes had reached out to A24 to collaborate on.

But they shared that there was one reason why they kept going.

"Every person that worked on this movie was going through a similar feeling of cognitive dissonance,” Oppenheim said.

Reflecting on his time with Holmes, Fielder said he was left with an unanswered question about the convicted fraudster: "I cannot tell you how weird it was that we were there."

He asked ‘why you would want to spend your last month of freedom in a decade with this guy’ after a screening in Los Angeles this month. "Even with no cameras—I like to see myself as like a nice person overall, but still, I wouldn’t choose me."