Jen the Showgirl ❤️‍🔥

What made this documentary mesmerizing were the fourth-wall breaks. You realize that these aren’t characters, but actual people, and that not only are they deceiving each other, but they’re deceiving the documentary. They’re deceiving you. This is my attempt to make sense of it all. Nathan Fielder brings comedic and creative genius, skillfully mixing a range of registers throughout the documentary. There were hilarious moments of total laughter that were grounded in serious themes, moments of relief only to be followed by mesmerizing segments you can’t take your eyes off, and pacing that at times felt monotonous but coalesced into deep realizations. The constant close-up face shots provoked countless questions of what each person was thinking at any given moment. Elizabeth’s soulless stares into Nathan as she defends herself from accusatory lines of questioning make you wonder if she’s deceiving you, the viewer, as much as she may be deceiving Nathan. We get an intimate look into what it means to fall under Elizabeth’s thrall, as Nathan, to some degree, falls under it himself. Despite the irrefutable evidence of Elizabeth’s fraud, the documentary leaves viewers (and maybe even Nathan) with a lingering feeling that there’s more truth than meets the eye. Nathan himself is confused with how transparent Elizabeth and Billy are, even inviting him to live in their home. You can truly see everything. If these were really scam artists, why would they want such an intimate documentary following their life? Do they truly believe they’re in the right? Do they believe they can deceive the audience? Or do they simply believe that at least this way, they’ll at least become more humanized in the eyes of the public? While it seems most people finished the documentary with a deeper sympathy for Elizabeth, I felt the opposite. I got a deeper look into how she attempts to pull people under her thrall, as she seemingly does with Nathan throughout the film. Near the start, when Nathan questions Elizabeth about how the device didn’t actually work she begins to cry and talks about her children. It’s impossible not to feel sympathy at this moment. You forget about the enormous pile of evidence against her, including everything she did admit to, and see her as a grieving mother of two kids who will soon be further away from her family than ever. This gives us a glimpse into what Elizabeth and Billy’s intention seems to be with the documentary. Instead of directly answering Nathan’s questions during this scene, Elizabeth stuns us with an emotional breakdown instead. While this reaction may have been completely genuine, knowing her history of deceit, it’s not implausible to assume the reaction was purposefully intentional to divert attention away from her crimes and towards humanizing her for the audience. Nathan's questions during the documentary's interviews felt so banal that they shouldn't have worked, yet they consistently revealed insight into how Elizabeth and Billy approach the world both individually and together as a unit. This ultimately reveals a theme of control throughout the documentary. But it’s not Elizabeth controlling others; it’s Elizabeth being controlled by her partner Billy. Their "monuments of love" for each other, and the total trust and autonomy Elizabeth hands Billy over herself, build up as the movie goes on. I saw the first instance revealing this dynamic near the start of the film when Elizabeth is whisking eggs while answering Nathan’s question, and Billy abruptly takes over for Elizabeth. Nathan immediately clocks this unusual move, asking Billy what was wrong with how Elizabeth was whisking the eggs. Fascinatingly, Billy and Elizabeth give different answers for why he took over. Billy tries to deflect by saying it’s because he wanted her to be able to focus on answering the questions. But Elizabeth offers up the real reason: she’s not beating the eggs right. I see this as a pivotal moment in the movie, because despite Elizabeth and Billy describing their relationship as a unit acting as one, this scene shows a sharp divergence in their immediate responses to Nathan’s confusion. One may think that Billy deflected simply because he didn’t want to come off overly-controlling of Elizabeth, but then, why would Elizabeth almost instinctually respond in a way that paints exactly that? If the duo truly are as deeply connected as they say they are, Elizabeth would’ve gone along with Billy’s answer. However, I believe it’s possible Elizabeth saw this as a subtle opportunity to paint Billy as controlling without obviously coming off as intentionally trying to do so. Despite this being a documentary meant to capture transparency, not every line said by each person can be taken as transparent. Everyone has their incentives. Elizabeth can’t truly ever throw Billy under the bus on film, even if that’s what would be most authentic to her, because she knows he’s ultimately the only window she has to her kids. As the movie progresses, so does the theme of Billy being controlling. Nathan gives Elizabeth direct opportunities to comment on this, like when he asked her about being left out of the financial details Billy negotiated on her behalf for the documentary, but she never responded to these direct allegations. However, she indirectly said plenty. It’s possible she was deliberately painting a narrative with these subtle actions, and intentionally planted the seeds for Nathan to swing the theme of the documentary in this direction. After all, if she had never revealed the real reason Billy took over the eggs and had just played along with him, it’s possible this thematic direction would’ve never even taken place. Elizabeth wants you to feel that Nathan is the Director, and that the narratives presented in the movie are his choice, but her subtle actions seem to influence the film far more than Nathan can. Nathan falls under Elizabeth’s thrall without even realizing it; his documentary is hijacked. Elizabeth’s reality distortion field is a theme that looms over the film throughout its running. Does she really not think she’s lying? During the segment when Nathan is questioning Elizabeth about the choice of words she used to describe Theranos’ technology, and how others can find it misleading, Elizabeth seems oblivious to how others may perceive her words differently than she does. I don’t buy her ignorance; it doesn’t take much intelligence to know how a claim of a machine currently being able to accomplish XYZ tasks insinuates that these tasks are already supported by the machine. I believe she feels the convenient angle to portray herself in during the documentary is one where she’s simply a misunderstood inventor who just wants to make the world a better place. Considering that she admitted to personally performing deceptions of all kinds, including forging pharmaceutical reports and covering up third-party machine use, Elizabeth is far from misunderstood. There was real intention behind her fraudulent actions. When Nathan asks her how she found herself in this situation, just weeks away from prison, she says she wishes she knew how. Of course she knows how, but coming off as misunderstood is simply convenient for her public image, and she plays the bit strikingly convincingly throughout the documentary. She paints herself as confused, lost, and the real victim in the controversy. Like the world is conspiring against her for no true reason. What further reinforces this is how she handles Nathan’s hardest questions, often saying “I’m not sure” to questions that could be answered with a “yes” or “no”. Her biggest slip up here is when Elizabeth Holmes is on speakerphone and is asked if she knew Amanda Seyfried was in the room. Elizabeth replies with “I’m not sure if I knew.” What she seems to mean is “I’m not sure if saying I knew or I didn’t would be advantageous to me here.” Bringing on Amanda Seyfried was probably the most impactful creative decision made for the film. We had a woman who played Elizabeth Holmes in the hit series The Dropout, now confronting the reality of the woman whose public reputation she directly helped tarnish but who she had never met. For scenes that couldn’t be recorded (like interactions between Nathan and Elizabeth in prison), Amanda was the one who did the re-enactments playing Elizabeth, at times even re-enacting scenes where Elizabeth referenced Amanda. Despite Amanda having played Elizabeth Holmes in her most critical and awards-sweeping role, she found herself, for the first time, truly in her sphere. When Nathan and Amanda visit Billy’s home in Texas together, Holmes calls from prison, and Billy puts her on speakerphone. Seyfried speaks with her briefly and cordially. This is the first and only time the two had spoken, since contact was strictly restricted during the production of The Dropout. During the visit to Billy’s home, it doesn’t take long for Amanda and Billy to get into an argument. Billy reveals he controls Elizabeth’s Twitter account, which Amanda pushes back on, and the two get heated. Billy ridicules the irony of Amanda criticizing Billy’s control of Elizabeth’s social media presence, citing her recent backlash for her comments on Charlie Kirk, and it’s revealed Billy is a fan of Charlie Kirk. Interestingly, after the documentary comes out, the first thing that Billy tweets through Elizabeth’s Twitter account is a reply to a 2025 tweet from her (or more precisely, him) about Charlie Kirk’s words on forgiveness, to which he replied with “-EAH” (Elizabeth Anne Holmes). It’s odd that this is his first move. It’s been exposed that it’s you controlling Elizabeth’s Twitter account this whole time. Why bother to clarify that this specific tweet reflected her true thoughts? Perhaps with how Billy describes Elizabeth and him operating as one unit, if he’s going to be dragged for admitting his support of Charlie Kirk, he wanted Elizabeth to be dragged for it too. While everything filmed in the documentary truly happened, it’s important to realize that Nathan is the one ultimately piecing the shots together, which carries great influence over the audience’s perception of everything going down. Multiple times throughout the documentary, Nathan stresses his commitment to ensuring its authenticity, and he deliberately crafts scenes to reinforce this commitment to us. For example, when Amanda is re-enacting scenes with Elizabeth, we see Nathan stop her to change things as simple as her tone of voice to truly portray the events honestly. There’s a particular scene where Nathan seems to think really hard over a specific word Elizabeth used to describe her level of awareness over Billy making financial negotiations regarding the documentary. He starts with thinking the word is “it”, but through going back and forth with Amanda, eventually decides the word she had actually used was “something”. These scenes are cleverly woven into the documentary to ensure the audience can trust Nathan’s journalistic integrity. One of the smartest narratives crafted into the film calls directly to us, the audience. We’re made to feel complicit in even buying a ticket to the movie, when we learn that Billy negotiated a financial deal to get a cut of proceeds from the film’s success. Considering how narcissistic Billy comes off throughout the movie, the audience feels disgusted at putting money in Billy’s pocket. This skillfully makes the conflict feel larger than between the people in the film, but actually involves us as well. As Nathan threads making Elizabeth aware of Billy’s negotiation, we feel ourselves at stake right with him. After all, if there was a financial gain for Billy and Elizabeth from the film diminishing the documentary’s integrity, how much of what we had just watched could we even trust? As the movie ends, we learn that Billy ultimately gave up a financial interest in the film, leaving us with an ending of relief. But perhaps the greatest deception in the documentary is the illusion that we've finally escaped it. We're relieved to learn that Billy isn’t profiting from the film, reassured by Nathan's consistent commitment to authenticity, and left believing that we've seen through Elizabeth's attempts to manipulate us. Yet all of these feelings are themselves products of a narrative deliberately constructed for us. Nathan decides what we see, what we don't, and ultimately what we walk away believing. Elizabeth, meanwhile, may have exercised far more influence over that narrative than either Nathan or the audience realizes. The documentary leaves us questioning who was deceiving whom, but perhaps the more fascinating question is who was really in control. Nathan set out to document a woman who deceived the world, only to create a film in which we're never quite sure whether we're watching him expose her deception, or watching her deceive him into telling the story she wanted told.