Elizabeth Holmes Called Nathan Fielder From Prison: 'I Trust You'

Elizabeth Holmes called Nathan Fielder from federal prison days before the theatrical release of his documentary, "You Can See Everything," and told him twice: "I trust you." Fielder revealed the call in a new interview with Wired, calling it their first contact in more than six months.

Holmes is serving an 11-year sentence for fraud, the crime that ended her career as CEO of the failed blood-testing startup Theranos. She apparently doesn't hold it against the comedian turned documentarian. Fielder, for his part, still can't explain why.

What did Holmes say on the call?

Fielder recounted the conversation with characteristic flatness. "She had not called me in over six months. I had not heard from her in any way… she asked how I was doing," he told Wired. He asked whether she had seen coverage of the film's release. She hadn't read much of it, he said — heard things, seen some things, read almost nothing.

Then came the sign-off. "At the end, she said to me — 'I trust you.' I said, 'OK, thanks.'"

They talked about her children and, in Fielder's words, "some updates that are not really my place to share." Then she repeated it. "She said again, at the end of the call — 'I trust you.' And I don't know what she meant by that."

Two trust declarations in one phone call. Fielder, a man who built two series — "Nathan for You" and "The Rehearsal" — on engineered awkwardness, found it genuinely unreadable.

Why did Holmes let Fielder into her home?

"You Can See Everything," co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim ("Primetime"), follows Holmes and her partner Billy Evans through the final weeks before her prison sentence began. The filmmakers moved in with the couple 34 days before Holmes reported to prison.

Fielder got involved after learning the couple had failed to pitch a documentary about themselves to A24. "Months later, I heard that that had happened. So I called A24 and said, 'Well, could I meet her?' That was the start of it all," he told Wired.

The mystery, for Fielder, is why anyone familiar with his work would invite him in. "This is part of the mystery that, like, doesn't make sense to me," he said. "I asked her that on, I think, one of the first days we shot. I still don't fully understand it. That really messed with my head."

Holmes, he gathered, had seen little of his oeuvre. Evans had seen more. And Holmes's comic sensibility remains her own category. "She said her favorite movie is 'Elf,' the Will Ferrell movie," Fielder said.

What was the couple's strategy?

Evans explained the rationale on the "All-In" podcast the day before the film opened. The goal: let audiences meet Holmes up close and judge for themselves whether she is a bad person.

"It was to have people see who she is," Evans said. He described a pattern with family and friends — from his grandmother to his best friends — who initially thought he was crazy for being with her. "They would meet her and spend time with her and see her in a totally natural environment, like going on a hike or helping a friend. Every opinion of her would radically shift," he said. "That was the intention of the film. To help scale that up and allow other people to sit with her and make up their own minds."

The plan, in short: replace the courtroom verdict with a hike.

Is the plan working?

No. The film is amplifying the backlash against Holmes rather than softening it. Before press screenings, A24 released a teaser trailer that unsettled many viewers with Holmes's demeanor and her claims that she did nothing wrong at Theranos.

The box office is another matter. "You Can See Everything" grossed $15 million in its domestic debut — the biggest opening for a documentary in decades. The film is now playing in theaters nationwide, and Fielder's full Wired interview is available on the magazine's website. Holmes, presumably, will hear about it secondhand.