Theranos Whistleblower John Carreyrou Praises New Holmes Film — With a Warning

A documentary about Elizabeth Holmes earned an estimated $15 million in its first weekend — the second-biggest opening for a documentary ever — and the reporter who exposed Theranos has seen it twice. John Carreyrou, author of the 2018 book "Bad Blood," says he was won over by the film's craft. He also says viewers shouldn't let that craft obscure what Holmes did.

"The film is a great piece of art, but let's not confuse that art with the underlying facts," Carreyrou said in a statement to Fortune.

The film, "You Can See Everything," was produced by A24. Comedian Nathan Fielder lived for 34 days in the guest house of the home Holmes shared with her partner Billy Evans and her two children before she went to prison. The film has earned rave reviews and thrust Holmes, and indirectly Carreyrou, back into the spotlight.

What did Carreyrou say about the film?

Carreyrou told the New York Times' "Hard Fork" podcast that he first saw the film at a virtually private screening with his wife at A24's Manhattan offices. He enjoyed it even more the second time.

"I guess, over two viewings, I was really won over by the artistry of the way they filmed this thing, but also the structure, the amount of meta-thinking that went into it, how unusual it is," he said on the podcast.

On X, he went further, saying the documentary deserved best picture. But he flagged what it leaves out.

What does the film miss, according to him?

Some people have told Carreyrou that Holmes is "unknowable and everything is ambiguous," he wrote on X. What they're missing, he said, are the details of his reporting — including legal threats from Theranos' lawyers against him and two of his sources, Tyler Shultz and Erika Cheung.

"She went after Tyler Shultz and Erika Cheung with everything she had. I was threatened with litigation on a daily basis for months on end. It was a ruthless cover-up of a breathtaking fraud, and she was at the controls," he wrote.

His book details more of that campaign. Holmes tried to kill his original story by appealing directly to the Wall Street Journal's billionaire owner, Rupert Murdoch, who was also a Theranos investor. Theranos' lawyers also confronted Carreyrou at the newspaper's offices in a meeting that lasted about five hours. Carreyrou now works as a reporter at the New York Times.

What was the fraud at the center of it?

Holmes promised that Theranos could perform hundreds of medical tests with just a few drops of blood from a finger prick, marketed as a cheaper, more accessible way to test. In reality, the machines could only perform a limited number of tests and often produced unreliable results, according to the Justice Department. Some tests required far more blood than claimed, or had to run on conventional equipment. Holmes also told investors Theranos had been validated by major pharmaceutical companies and projected $1 billion in revenue for 2015, while knowing the actual figure would be negligible.

Holmes was convicted in 2022 on three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She received a sentence of just over 11 years, and she and former business partner Sunny Balwani were ordered to pay $452 million in restitution. A federal appeals court upheld the conviction, but in March a federal judge reduced her sentence to 10 years and three months under revised federal sentencing guidelines. She is scheduled for transfer to a halfway house in 2027 and release in 2030.

Did the film change her image?

Carreyrou was frustrated on first viewing. When Fielder repeatedly asked Holmes whether she did anything wrong and she denied wrongdoing, Carreyrou said he "would have liked to jump in and grab the mic from Fielder, and drill down a little bit more, and not be so polite."

Tyler Shultz — whose grandfather, former Secretary of State George Shultz, sat on Theranos' board — told CBS that despite her denials, "she knows she did something wrong." He added: "She created this whole web of lies that you would not have needed to create if you actually believed the lies."

Some argue the documentary is a ploy to restore Holmes' reputation. Carreyrou points to one scene where she insists she has never told a lie in her life — a claim he called "preposterous." In his view, the film had the opposite effect: "It comes off as this absurd statement that can't possibly be true," he said. "And if anything, she looks worse for it."