In 2023, Nathan Fielder, who is known for his unique style of reality-based comedy, invited the documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim to the Magic Castle. Fielder is a member of that exclusive Los Angeles institution—a private club housed in a mansion, which only magicians are allowed to join. In Vancouver, Canada, where Fielder grew up, he had worked as a magician at birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. “I was doing magic, and I worked at a magic shop from when I was 13 until I was 20,” Fielder told me. “I had to stop, because if you don’t stop, people will forever say to you, ‘Show me a trick.’”
Fielder had initially met Oppenheim because he is a fan of Some Kind of Heaven, Oppenheim’s documentary about the Villages, a retirement community in Florida. The two started talking, and Oppenheim mentioned that he’d heard that Elizabeth Holmes, the notorious indicted CEO and founder of Theranos—the company that fraudulently maintained it had invented a machine that could diagnose many diseases with a single drop of blood—had approached A24 about a documentary. Holmes and her life partner, Billy Evans, wanted someone to film their lives together, theoretically to reveal a more human side of Holmes than the one that had been depicted in the media.
“We were both intrigued by the Holmes story,” Oppenheim recalled. “But initially, we were just spending an evening at the Magic Castle. Nathan loaned me a belt and a tie because there’s a dress code, and we were in the close-up magic room and they asked for a celebrity name from the audience. Someone shouted ‘Elizabeth Holmes,’ and we took that as a sign.” Within days, Fielder had contacted A24, which had produced his show The Curse, and met with Holmes and Evans at their home in San Diego. That was the beginning of a three-year project: the documentary You Can See Everything, which premiered in September at the Telluride Film Festival with a super-secret screening.
The film, which takes place largely in the Holmes-Evans household in the days before Holmes is set to go to prison in Texas, is remarkably intimate and revealing, but also confounding. Fielder moved into the couple’s guesthouse, and Oppenheim and Fielder and their crew worked up to 17 hours a day. Holmes is inscrutable, despite the fact that Oppenheim, using three different cameras, captured scenes of the couple in bed and in the kitchen making breakfast for their two young children, William and Invicta. There’s even a striking moment in which Billy is brushing his teeth in the shower.
The intensity of You Can See Everything is amplified by Fielder’s interviews with Holmes. “When I started the project, Elizabeth seemed black and white to me,” he explained. “In my mind, she was guilty. But I was very interested in her and her situation. Curiosity drove me. I’ve always tried to find out the truth in any situation, even if there’s a lot of artifice involved. But when I met Elizabeth, she was so different than I thought she would be. She was disarming in real life. I told her right away that I believed everything that I’d read about her, but that didn’t frighten her.”
Fielder and Oppenheim, who codirected the film, retained creative control over the project and also the right to pull the plug at any time. “Every day, I’d say, ‘If this is too much for you, we’ll bail,’ ” Fielder recalled. “But Billy and Elizabeth always said, ‘We want you to stay.’ We didn’t want the film to relitigate the past. This was about their present moment, but we still had to reconcile with who Elizabeth Holmes is, and was.”
In one stunning segment, Fielder asks Holmes about her veracity; Holmes maintains that she’s never lied in her entire life. Fielder gently probes: not even a white lie to get out of a dinner obligation? Holmes says no, never, I can’t recall ever lying for any reason. “That was one of the moments when I realized the documentary was about something meaningful,” Fielder said. “When she said she’s never lied, she widened the gap so much. I realized there’s more going on here than I thought.”
Fielder appears in the film as a classic journalist, though there is a non-journalistic twist in the second half of the film, which he asked me not to reveal. His other award-winning TV projects have also combined journalism with a sense of the uncanny. The four seasons of Nathan for You, which premiered in 2013, were definitely funny, but the premise of the series was that Fielder would offer professional advice to struggling businesses. His more recent show, The Rehearsal, helps people navigate difficult life situations by gaming out scenarios in elaborately designed sets. For example, in order to investigate communication failures in aviation, Fielder actually became a pilot and flew a large passenger plane.
He had a similar level of commitment to You Can See Everything. “I felt conflicted at times, which was new for me,” Fielder said. “There was always more going on than I thought, and, even now, there are certain aspects of the film where I don’t feel I have a clear conclusion. I want the audience to help me understand the experience.”
Three Questions With Nathan
Do you watch reality television?
I was into The Bachelor for a period of time. I prefer The Bachelor to The Bachelorette. The dynamic between women is more interesting than the dynamic between men. Chris Soules [as the bachelor] was a good season of the show. He’s a total blank thing—there’s nothing from him—but the women were really interesting. When it works, I think The Bachelor has the best reality show format.
What chronological age do you feel?
Twenty-two. I’m 43 now, and sometimes when I’m with people in their 30s, I feel like they are older than me. I don’t know things that other people know. I always feel that everyone knows more than I do. So it’s very easy for me to ask people questions.
Did you feel that way with Elizabeth Holmes?
Yes and no. It was immersive: I was living there, at their request. I didn’t go out of their gated community because there were paparazzi everywhere, and we wanted to keep our project a secret. I think linearly—I always believe there’s a way to untangle any mess. My curiosity with Elizabeth was to understand her. And, in my life, I’ve never been so confused by a person.
Grooming by Kerrie Urban for Oribe at the Wall Group. Set design by Ava Villafañe at Streeters.
Photo Assistants: Abena Appiah, Milly Heane, Luis E. Rosa; Retouching: Grain; Lab: Color&Black&White; Stylist’s Assistants: Lauren Marron, Makayla Godden, Alena Nitti; Set Assistants: Miguel Burris, David Celaya, Noah Heie, Ben Minty, Rene Ureno; Production Assistants: Peter Giang, Lance Williams, Henri Wuilloud; Tailor: Susie Kourinian; Special Effects Artist: Gage Munster.