Once popular with movie and novel audiences, true crime stories have slowly but surely taken over popular culture, whether it’s podcasts or TV series. But when we talk about The Dropout, we are talking about a title that has worked on both platforms.
The hit documentary podcast, which focuses on the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and her multi-billion dollar health technology company, Theronas, has turned into an eight-episode short series starring Amanda Sefrid.
Holmes became the youngest self-made billionaire in the world when he claimed that his company had created a way to perform a complete blood test using a drop of blood.
The alleged promise would cost Theranos 9 billion. However, Holmes was charged with investor fraud, and in 2018, he was charged with eleven counts of criminal fraud.
ABC News reporter Rebecca Jarvis (an affiliate of The Walt Disney Company) documented the case in a podcast called “The Fault”, the first season of which aired in early 2019.
The new series is adapted from the blog, and Jarvis is working with blog producers Taylor Dunn and Victoria Thompson as executive producers.
The first three episodes of “Failure” will be aired on Hulu in the United States and Disney Plus in the United Kingdom.
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In the following, we present to you an explanation of the true story events that inspired the play and what the series has done so far:
Holmes’s childhood
Although the series only gives us a glimpse of Holmes’ childhood, the basics are based on information.
The series claims that Holmes actually tried to design a time travel machine when he was seven years old. It is said that he told his relatives when he was young that he wanted to be a millionaire when he grew up.
As shown in the series, Holmes’ father Enron was in a senior position. It is also true that his father lost his job when the company went bankrupt in a financial account fraud scandal.
The Enron scandal became one of the most significant corporate fraud cases in U.S. history.
When Holmes was in college
As we can see in the first episode of the series, Holmes actually studied at Stanford University, where he studied chemical engineering.
Another legitimate “failure” detail was that he was awarded a “presidential scholarship” – a privilege that paid him three thousand dollars to help with a research project.
It is also true that Holmes claimed that he had been sexually assaulted while at Stanford and that the police had been notified at the time.
Holmes testified about the alleged rape when he appeared as a witness in the fraud trial against him, telling the court that the incident severely affected him.
“I was wondering what – and how I would be able to take this experience and what I want to do with my life,” he said. “I decided that what I really needed to do was learn how to do it right.”
Holmes was passionate about that thing
Many aspects of Holmes’ character in our series are taken directly from real life, including his love of drinking “green juice” – made with spinach, parsley, wheat grass and celery.
It also proved that he was a fan of the late Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple – the series is another detail collected from his real life.
Holmes’s voice
Holmes’s distinctive deep voice is probably one of the few details in the series whose source cannot be verified.
In the third episode of the series, we see Holmes take on that pitch with complete manipulation and adjust himself to speak in a low voice.
Holmes’s famous deep voice has never been confirmed. However, the casting has sparked a lot of speculation, with commenters sharing video and audio clips of the woman forgetting the cast and speaking for a moment in her “real voice.”
Many people who knew him early in life claimed that he spoke in a very high class. So, while there is a little bit of artistic prudence here, “failure” highlights something that is widely believed to have happened.
That quote in the character of Yoda
In one of the most memorable moments of the first three episodes, a quote from the famous Star Wars character Yoda is published, printed in huge calligraphy on the walls of Theranos’ parlor.
It was, in fact, an order from Holmes: As shown in the series, the real-life Theranos building features a huge mural with a quote from the famous JD Master: “Whether you like it or not, there is nothing to try.”
What happens next?
Although the first three episodes hint at some future prospects for Holmes’ criminal trial, many important events in the story have not yet taken place.
A new episode of “Failure” airs every Wednesday at Hulu in the United States and Disney Plus in the United Kingdom.