Amanda Seyfried and Nathan Fielder on “You Can See It All”

Editor’s Note: This article contains major spoilers for the documentary “You Can See Everything.”

“Well, guys, what should we talk about?” »

This is a joke proposed by one of three people on a Zoom with rolling stone an October afternoon. Because like pretty much everyone who’s gone to the movies in the past month, and even many who haven’t, the topic these three love to discuss most is the mind-boggling, meme-throwing documentary, WTF-Did I Just Watch You can see everything.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you probably know the elevator pitch: Nathan Fielder moves into the house of convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, just before Holmes reports to prison. You also know the big moments of conversation: the shower scene. Whisk the eggs. Abundant close-ups of staring gazes.

The only thing that makes this virtual café a little different is that among the people willing to discuss the ins and outs of this cultural phenomenon are Fielder and his co-director, Lance Oppenheim. And if you’re one of the many, many people who helped turn this gonzo experiment in nonfiction filmmaking into a blockbuster, you can probably guess who the third person in the chat might be. Hint: It’s not Holmes.

Rather, it’s the woman who played her not once, but now twice – Amanda Seyfried, the Give up star whose presence in the second half of the documentary was one of the best-kept cinematic secrets in recent memory, and the appearance that sends him into a whole new stratosphere of bullshit.

Seyfried joined her co-conspirators for an exclusive chat — her first time publicly discussing the film, and the first time the three collaborators have discussed it since the premiere — to talk about how she was drawn into the project, that awkward on-camera phone call with Holmes, and how they all coped with the experience. Making and releasing the film was a roller coaster of emotions for both of them (Oppenheim says it “set my brain and body on fire”), but Seyfried, for his part, enjoyed the ride.

“I have no regrets,” she said. “I’m having the time of my life right now!”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Oppenheim: Well, where should we start?

Seyfried: My first question is: what am I doing here? What am I doing in this movie? How did I get here?

Field player: That’s a great question, Amanda. How did you get here?

Oppenheim: I feel like there was a certain point in the process of making this project where we wanted to expand the bubble (of people involved in the project). But a lot of people we contacted didn’t want to be filmed because Elizabeth had this toxic reputation.

Field player: It was two years after I filmed with them at that beach house. We were just wondering, “Where are we going next?” » The dropout kept coming back. Elizabeth’s parents really had strong feelings about this and they felt that it was one of the main ways that the general public knew who Elizabeth Holmes was. So we thought it would be interesting to talk to you.

I got your phone number from Emma Stone. We had a 30-minute zoom, and you were like, “Yeah, come with cameras. “We wanted to show you what happened to the first half of the film, and then we’d talk about it. That’s all you agreed to.

What’s crazy to me is that you didn’t go through any talent reps or people. You just said, “Yeah, come on!” »Why did you trust us like that?

Seyfried: I remember when (Emma) texted, and I was like, “Nathan Fielder? Ooh, I wonder if he wants to do something with me?”

My sister is a big fan (of yours, Nathan), and I know a lot of people are big fans of Nathan for you. I had only seen The Curse. When you said you had 90 minutes of footage to watch and help you work through, I was like, “Oh, he just wants some advice. He just wants us to know my experience playing it and researching it and getting into the mind of this quote-unquote character that I played.” After the Zoom, I was totally ready to do whatever you needed. It was just your energy (which convinced me), and the time you spent (on this project), and that no one knew this was happening.

“It was dangerous. I wanted answers. We all had this need to understand who was pulling the strings.”

Amanda Seyfried

Oppenheim: Weren’t you nervous?

Seyfried: I wasn’t nervous. There were a lot more people in my apartment than expected (laughter). I had just come back from the Venice Film Festival and said it was the only time I could do it; I’m never in town. I didn’t know how long it was going to take. I was like, “Wait a minute, there are cameras. I should probably wear mascara…” There was no protection. There was no advocate for me. I just felt like I was totally on board because I was so invested in what you guys were doing and I already had this weird level of trust in you guys.

Field player: Not unlike Elizabeth, I suppose, who also had a strange level of confidence.

Seyfried: Not different… but not super similar, I would say.

Field player: Thank you for clarifying (laughter).

Seyfried: I would say there was a lot of risk in my head, and then when I told my agent and my lawyer that I had already done it? This is not the normal process (laughter). But I go off to do my own thing sometimes, and no one has any say or control over what I was doing with Nathan and Lance. My lawyer said, “Well, now we need to retroactively implement your agreement because you need protection.” » At that time, we weren’t even considering reenactments.

Field player: We should clarify that because, yes, all you agreed to was just to come in, and we would show you things and talk.

Seyfried: I wasn’t even a subject at that point.

Oppenheim: I think you said you’d never play that person again. When we started showing you this stuff, there was a moment in the conversation where you started imitating it on camera, and you gave Nathan this look. What brought you back into this?

Seyfried: Muscle memory. I think the reason I was able to capture my version of Elizabeth Holmes in The dropout wasn’t it her Night line maintenance, or 60 minutes, or any footage I had seen. It was the 10 hours of deposition tapes, where she was present and completely coherent. This is the thing my brain is locked into. So even though it’s been several years, I see her again in the images… and I can’t help but tilt my head a little. It’s muscle memory when you play a character as intensely as I did and for as long as I did. I think there is something almost uncontrollable. When I was talking to you, it was already coming out of me in a way.

“It wasn’t until I was sitting across from you in these recreations that I realized how well I understood Liz’s tendencies.”

Nathan Fielder

Field player: You started doing it, but you never said you would play her again. It’s so interesting, because the process of making it was trying to give as much information as possible to the audience about how we were interpreting these moments that were happening in the house and with her. Anything that didn’t happen in front of the camera, we took note of. But we were talking about the strangeness of those early encounters, and we always assumed that, obviously, those things couldn’t be in the movie. But then we were like, “Wait, would the idea of ​​doing a recreation work?” At first we didn’t even think about it because we thought maybe it was a bit lame to do that kind of thing. But the way you engaged with it when we were filming in your apartment, we felt like there was something in you. It was like you wanted to come back.

Oppenheim: It was like you had unfinished business – like it was coming out of you. You weren’t resolved or anything like that.

Field player: Do you have anything unresolved?

Seyfried: Don’t they all? (Laughter.) I mean, now that people have seen the movie, doesn’t everyone feel that way? This is what characterizes the power of this whole project, its nuance and its capacity to be everything. You can’t solve anything. You can learn about how you feel and know your perspective on things, but…

It’s not that I wasn’t resolute; I had more information now thanks to (your) images. Anyone who’s watched this documentary knows that for the first 90 (minutes) or so, there’s a lot of information there. So the idea that I could go on this journey with you, in whatever way you needed me, in whatever capacity, was very interesting to me.

Field player: We started having conversations about, “Okay, would be do you still represent her? All I said was we’d like you to recreate some initial conversations that happened off camera. But we also said that because this is a documentary, we didn’t want to discuss these scenes or show you any scripts ahead of time. We just want you to come and we’ll talk about the scenes that were filmed. Anything that comes out of these conversations will potentially be part of it. People need to know that you had no creative control over this project. Everything that was filmed…

Seyfried: No approval. At any rate.

Field player: You had no approval on anything. You were engaging in these scenes for the first time. Were you nervous at any point during this?

Seyfried: Yes! I mean, there was…