In the sort of casting decision apparently target-engineered to elicit an “Oh fuck, that’s perfect” from any and everyone exposed to it, Deadline reports this afternoon that Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon has just been tapped to play Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in an upcoming limited series from Hulu. If the deal goes through, McKinnon would star in The Dropout for the streaming service, applying years of experience playing dead-eyed, tight-lipped, off-puttingly smiling weirdos to perhaps the apex of said craft.
Holmes has come under much amused scrutiny in recent months, thanks in part to Alex Gibney’s recent HBO documentary The Inventor, which detailed not only the massive con that was Theranos’ much-hyped, much-didn’t-do-shit blood-testing kits, but also a lot of long, terrifying looks at her eyes, the windows of the…soul? (In this particular case, it’s kind of difficult to tell.)
In fact, we just had to go back and check to make sure that McKinnon hasn’t already played Holmes before, or, indeed, created her, as part of some sort of clandestine experiment in comedy character generation gone horrifically awry. Meanwhile, McKinnon would also serve as an executive producer on the series, which is being adapted from a podcast-turned-20/20-documentary of the same name that aired earlier this year.