In the documentary “You Can See Everything,” Elizabeth Holmes tries to convince Nathan Fielder that she was misquoted by The New York Times.
“They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created,” the disgraced Theranos founder is quoted as saying in a 2023 profile. She was talking about actors portraying her in movies and TV shows, like Amanda Seyfried in Hulu’s “The Dropout.” Holmes disputed the quote back when the piece was published, arguing that what she actually said was, “They’re playing a character they created.”
Fielder is fascinated with the quote dispute because he believes it speaks to a larger debate: Does the media have an agenda to distort Holmes’ image, or does Holmes have delusions about how she portrays herself?
The documentary provides no answer to the question. Holmes’ partner, Billy Evans, says in the film that he taped her interview with the Times, but he is not able to show evidence of her being misquoted. And an intertitle card at the end of the film says Fielder and his co-director Lance Oppenheim were able to reach The New York Times journalist, who stood by her reporting but also did not provide evidence of the quote. The paper asserts that, at the time, the reporter “went over her interview notes with her editors and they confirmed that the story’s quote was accurate. We relayed this to Holmes and considered it settled.”
The journalist, Amy Chozick, has now spoken about the kerfuffle to The New York Times itself. She said the disputed quote was uttered while Holmes and Chozick were on a walk outside their rented beach home in California, and Evans was at the gym.
“As we walked, I told Holmes that I heard Jennifer Lawrence had recently pulled out of portraying her in a movie. She looked over at me, and said: ‘They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created,'” Chozick told the Times. “As she walked a couple of steps ahead, I wrote down her exact words in my notebook.”
She added, “Every night when I’ve been out reporting, I go through my notebook and put a star next to anything I think is a particularly important moment or quote and I highlight it and flag that page with a Post-it note. This quote was highlighted and the page had a Post-it.”
Chozick was not recording audio of this portion of the interview; she was only jotting notes down by hand. She lamented the fact that she did not hold onto the notebook and therefore has no hard evidence of the exchange.
“A lot of people’s most honest, on-the-record reflections come when I turn off my recorder and just take notes,” Chozick said. “I wasn’t going to put a recorder in Holmes’s face as we walked on the beach. I take notes constantly, to jot down important quotes and details and to incorporate my impressions in real time. I generally keep my reporter’s notebooks for a couple of years before getting rid of them. My editors confirmed the quote with me in 2023, and I thought the matter was resolved. I didn’t anticipate that the quote would become a part of a documentary years later. Of course, now I really wish I’d kept that notebook.”
Chozick denied Evans’ claim in “You Can See Everything” that he recorded all of their conversations. “I spent several days with Holmes and Evans, always on the record,” she said. “We did several formal interviews at the kitchen table and on the couch when we both recorded the conversations. But a lot of the most revealing moments came when the recorders were turned off.”
When asked why readers should trust the accuracy of the quote in the absence of proof, Chozick said, “It’s a fair question,” but explained the extent to which Holmes spoke about the character she created at Theranos, which was defined by black turtlenecks, red lipstick and a deep voice. Talking about her public persona, Holmes told Chozick, “Maybe people picked up on that not being authentic, since it wasn’t.” She did not dispute that quote, or any of the surrounding context.
“My late mentor, David Carr, used to say writing a profile is like holding a mirror up to a person. They don’t always like what they see. I’ve profiled some of the most controversial figures of our time, and I am always surprised by which details or quotes strike a nerve with them,” Chozick said. “But this one stood out to me because Holmes spoke openly, over several days, about the persona she created at Theranos. This was the first interview she had given since the blood-testing company imploded, and she looked and sounded like a completely different person from the public figure people remembered. How and why she’d created that persona was a topic that we returned to repeatedly.”