Elizabeth Holmes had every reason to stay away from cameras after fraud conviction. Instead, she let Nathan Fielder film her before prison. Behaviour experts have an answer why

Elizabeth Holmes had spent years trying to distance herself from the image of the Theranos founder who promised to change blood testing, only for the company to collapse and leave her convicted of fraud. So when prison was just weeks away, staying away from cameras might have seemed like the obvious choice. Instead, Holmes did almost the opposite.

Thirty-four days before she reported to prison in May 2023, Holmes allowed comedian Nathan Fielder and filmmaker Lance Oppenheim to enter her home and document her life. What followed became the three-hour documentary “You Can See Everything,” which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in a secret screening and is set for a theatrical release from A24 in October.

The bigger question is not simply why Holmes agreed to be filmed. It is why someone facing such intense public scrutiny might believe that another documentary could help change the story around her.

Holmes wanted to challenge the version of herself people knew

According to The New York Times, Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, gave Fielder and Oppenheim unusually broad access because they wanted to push back against what they believed was an unfair media narrative about her.

Holmes had already been the subject of documentaries and Hulu's “The Dropout,” but she had not participated in those productions. This time, she was directly involved.

The decision becomes even more striking because Fielder did not simply remain behind the camera. He eventually became a central figure in the film after the interactions inside Holmes and Evans' home became increasingly difficult for the filmmakers to understand.

“We are all smart, operating at the top of our game yet no one could reach a consensus on what was happening in the house,” Fielder said after the Telluride screening. “That drove us to keep going.”

Psychology of believing your own version

Psychologists have long studied how people can interpret information in ways that protect a conclusion they are motivated to reach. Research on motivated reasoning, including work by Ziva Kunda, suggests that people can use their reasoning abilities differently depending on whether they are trying to discover what is true or arrive at a preferred conclusion.

That does not mean Holmes was necessarily lying to herself, and it would be wrong to diagnose her from a documentary. But research on self-deception offers one possible explanation for why people can remain strongly attached to a particular version of events even when others see things very differently.

A 2022 review by Jade Butterworth, Robert Trivers and William von Hippel also examined how self-deception can help people persuade others after first becoming persuaded themselves. More recent research reviewed by Moldoveanu and Visu-Petra in 2025 similarly looks at motivated false beliefs and the difficulty of knowing whether someone genuinely believes something false or is consciously deceiving others.

Five signs that make Holmes' decision intriguing

The documentary provides several details that make the psychology behind her decision especially interesting:

1. She wanted control over the narrative: Holmes and Evans believed they could use the film to challenge how she had been portrayed.

2. She allowed extraordinary access: Fielder eventually lived in their home before Holmes went to prison, giving the filmmakers access to moments that most people would normally keep private.

3. She repeatedly insisted she was genuine: In the trailer, Holmes tells Fielder, “I’m not that person, I can promise you that. I don’t have anything to deceive you on, of course I’m not deceiving you.”

She later adds, “I’m engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you? There’s no reason for me to do that.”

When Fielder asks whether she is being real, Holmes replies, “I’m always being real.”

4. Her plans did not stop with Theranos: The documentary reveals that Holmes and Evans were considering launching what they described as a new and improved version of Theranos, even as she prepared to begin her sentence.

5. The filmmakers themselves remained uncertain: Fielder said he was still struggling to understand what he had experienced, which became part of the documentary's central mystery.

A story that still has no simple answer

The film does not appear to offer an easy psychological explanation for Holmes. Instead, it leaves viewers with a more uncomfortable question: was she trying to manipulate the people filming her, trying to convince them of her version of events, or did she genuinely see herself differently from the way the outside world did?

Fielder summed up that uncertainty after the screening. As per Vanity Fair, he sais, “I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced.”