Amanda Seyfried Breaks Silence on 'You Can See Everything': "I'm Having the Time of My Life"

By Tom Whitfield

Amanda Seyfried has spoken on the record about "You Can See Everything" for the first time, joining directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim for a joint conversation with Rolling Stone — the three collaborators' first since the premiere. Her verdict: "I have no regrets. I'm having the time of my life right now!"

The documentary, which has become a word-of-mouth blockbuster, embeds Fielder in the home of convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, shortly before Holmes reports to prison. Its second-half secret — Seyfried, who played Holmes in "The Dropout," re-creating off-camera conversations — was, as Rolling Stone notes, one of the best-kept moviegoing secrets in recent memory.

How did Seyfried get involved?

Not through her representatives. Fielder got her phone number through Emma Stone. After a 30-minute Zoom, Seyfried simply invited the filmmakers over with cameras. "It wasn't like I jumped into the deep end," she insists. "I was committing to each event or moment, and those are little leaps of faith that ended up feeling bigger." She told her agent and lawyer only after the fact; her lawyer had to "retroactively set your deal in place because you need protection."

The initial scope was narrow: Seyfried would watch the first half of the film and discuss it. Then, on camera, she began imitating Holmes unprompted. "It was muscle memory," she says, crediting the 10 hours of deposition tapes she studied for "The Dropout," not the broadcast interviews. She initially doubted she could still do the voice: "the audience will have just seen her for 90 minutes — how are they gonna just suspend disbelief?"

What was it like meeting Billy Evans?

Seyfried describes becoming "this weird Billy detective" driven by "strong negative feelings" from the footage. "It felt dangerous. I wanted answers. We all had this need to understand who was pulling the strings." After meeting him: "Nothing changed. It only got worse."

The now-famous dinner scene, which Oppenheim says he will be "thinking about on my deathbed," saw Evans turn aggressive — "that's the word I'm going to use, as it's more diplomatic." Seyfried says she pushed back because she objected to how he was "using this human being, his wife," as a tool, while managing the rapport so the crew could stay.

Then came the phone call. "I am sitting there with her children and cuddling with her dog! While she's in prison! And then she calls!" Seyfried confirms the call was real: "It's a documentary. Who else would it be?"

What does the process reveal?

Fielder stresses Seyfried had "no creative control" and "no approval" over anything. Directors withheld scripts; scenes were discussed only on camera. The final prison re-creation was built entirely from Fielder's memory — "The second I got out, I recorded everything I could remember into my phone." He also corrects a rumor: he had never visited Holmes in prison before the visit shown in the film.

Fielder credits Seyfried's accuracy with unlocking his own understanding: "It wasn't until I was sitting across from you in those re-creations that I realized how well I understood Liz's tendencies." Oppenheim, watching the final reenactment from behind the monitor, says "I did feel like I was seeing her. It was startling."

The edit, with Adam Locke-Norton, cut roughly 700 hours of footage into the three-hour film. Asked whether seeing all 700 hours would yield different conclusions, Locke-Norton told Oppenheim: "Actually, I don't think so." Oppenheim calls that telling — "it's not always the more you know about someone, the more you see someone." The team deliberately gravitated toward the moments of greatest cognitive dissonance; the film aimed to be forward-looking rather than rehashing the case's extensive public record.

Seyfried will not repeat the experiment — "I'm not going to do this again. But neither are you!" — but her reasoning gestures at why the film has held audiences: real work, she argues, comes from committing to something "that confuses you and excites you and terrifies you."