Throughout the first act of You Can See Everything, one of the few pieces of evidence that proves the infamous Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes isn’t a complete liar is actually a lack of evidence. The movie opens around the publication of a 2023 The New York Times profile on Holmes, as she and her new husband, Billy Evans, criticize the Paper of Record for misquoting her thoughts on Hollywood’s portrayals of her. “They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created,” the profile quotes Holmes as saying. Holmes remembers the conversation differently, claiming to have said, “They’re playing a character they created.” She even has tapes of the conversation—she and Billy record everything—which are around here somewhere. Ah, damn, you know what, they can’t find them right now. But Evans eventually gave the outlet an 80-second recording of a different conversation as proof, so there’s that. Since the profile is a prime plot point in America’s most-talked-about movie, journalist May Chozick discussed the dispute with her employer. Wouldn’t you know it, Chozick didn’t record the conversation or keep her notes from it.
Chozick tells the New York Times that Holmes said the now-contested line during a walk outside the beach rental shown in the film. She and Holmes had already “talked extensively about the persona she’d adopted as the chief executive of Theranos.” Chozick continues, “We talked about why she made her voice deeper and wore black turtlenecks and red lipstick, so it was an extension of that conversation.” The journalist didn’t record the conversation but says she took notes and “wrote down her exact words in my notebook.” Later that night, as Chozick does when she’s reporting, she went through her notebook and starred important moments and quotes. “This quote was highlighted and the page had a Post-it.”
In her experience, Chozick’s interview subjects are more open and revealing when she’s not pushing a tape recorder in their faces. But that does come at a cost if a subject challenges the veracity of the final product. Unfortunately, after the Times confirmed the quote with Chozick, she considered the matter settled and threw away her notes. “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 says readers should trust her accuracy because of the profile’s uncontested context. She and Holmes discussed “the character she created at Theranos, which she says her romantic and business partner, Sunny Balwani, pressured her to adopt.” Holmes and Evans did not dispute this part of the profile. How could they? As Chozick says, “Hollywood screenwriters didn’t invent the black turtlenecks, the deep voice or the red lipstick.”
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