From The Big Story: Nathan Fielder Tells Us Everything

Including what Elizabeth Holmes said to him last week. A WIRED exclusive interview with the comic auteur, as his first feature film hits theaters. The conversation between Katie Drummond and Nathan Fielder is performed by voice actors. These are not their actual voices. Written by Katie Drummond. Originally published on October 19th, 2026. Listen to more of The Big Story here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠http://swap.fm/l/wi-bigstorypod-feeddrop For more of the most ambitious, future-defining stories from our favorite human writers, subscribe to The Big Story newsletter: https://www.wired.com/newsletter/the-big-story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:07Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Katie Drummond and you're listening to the big story from Wired. Today, we bring you a special episode, my exclusive interview with the star of this month's Wired cover, Nathan Fielder. The following conversation will be narrated by voice actors M. Eldridge and Christian Titus.

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• 1:56Speaker 04

  A few months ago, Nathan Fielder's publicist sent me an unexpected email. Would Wired be interested in Fielder for a fall cover of our magazine? The answer, before we even got a reason, was yes. The reason, it turned out, was that Fielder would soon release a project that was so top-secret, I'd need to sign an NDA to even hear about what it was, let alone watch it. I signed, I heard, and then I saw, counting myself among the few dozen people who'd screened "You Can See Everything" before the film debuted in the first days of September as a secret addition to the Telluride Film Festival. If you're a human being with internet access, you know that the buzz following Telluride was nothing short of an online thermonuclear event.

• 2:39Speaker 04

  Reddit forums exploded, best-in-class memes were born overnight. Every journalist on planet Earth, including the staff at Wired, who had no idea their boss was NDA'd to hell, and seemed confused when I ordered them repeatedly not to contact Nathan Fielder's publicist. Pined pleaded and jockeyed for access to the film, or even better, for access to Fielder himself. The notoriously inscrutable performer, after all, has become a cult hero for his ability to turn human discomfort into high art. He built a coffee shop called Dumb Starbucks, creating an international news event in the process. He built an entire fake bar so that one man could practice having a difficult conversation with a friend.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  He trained to be a commercial airline pilot, lunacy, and flew a 737 filled with passengers, the miracle over the Mojave, in what can only be described as the most transcendent moment of television I've ever seen. For a certain genre of viewer, Nathan Fielder is a comedic god among us mere mortals. He's also, not surprisingly, rather particular. Fielder was going to do the cover of Wired, then maybe he wasn't. A week went by, our features director and I didn't sleep. Then we were a go. Great. For a few days, at least, until things got dicey again. This kind of back-and-forth is a normal part of booking celebrities.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  But given the secrecy, the buzz, the Nathan of it all, the stakes for Wired were high. I told several people in my life that I hated Nathan Fielder. Then we were on again. I told several people in my life that I loved Nathan Fielder. You might be wondering, if I found Fielder's pre-interview agita so stressful, why didn't we just scrap the cover entirely? Maybe see if Aaron Sorkin was still available, or some other guy involved in some other tech-adjacent fall movie. There are plenty. "The Thing Is: You Can See Everything" is a singularly astonishing film. I go so far as to say that it's among the best I've ever seen. Co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, it begins in a strange, captivating, occasionally

• 4:47Speaker 04

  hilarious, 34-day psychological dance between Fielder, Elizabeth Holmes, and her partner Billy Evans before Holmes's incarceration, and subsequently morphs into something so beguiling and brilliant that it's futile to try and describe. After screening "You Can See Everything" in early September, I thought about the movie every single day until I saw it again a few weeks later. I'm still rolling it around in my brain. When a small handful of Wired staffers screened the film before Fielder's cover shoot, we spent hours afterward debating facial expressions, relationships, and even the meaning of single sentences. We agreed on very little, other than that Fielder, notorious for his meticulous building

• 5:29Speaker 04

  of worlds, seemed to have finally stumbled into one much stranger than anything he could have conjured. When I ultimately sat down with Fielder for a conversation in late September, any lingering irritation at his pre-interview jitters instantly fell away. For all his overthinking, lines in the sand, and apparent ambivalence to press, Fielder presented as considerate and genuine. Over nearly an hour and a half, Fielder, in trademark New Balance sneakers and nondescript men's apparel, a Summit Ice Windbreaker in tow, slumped casually on a sofa, seemed to mull my questions earnestly and in good faith, and did the best he possibly could to answer them. Verbal communication, Fielder repeated several times in our conversation, isn't always easy

• 6:14Speaker 04

  for him. It's a quality that's often put to good use in his work, and his blunt demeanor makes Fielder particularly effective in the role of truth-seeker vis-à-vis Holmes and Evans. The same can't be said for a sit-down interview, which made my conversation with Fielder all the more endearing in the moment. At least, I told myself, the man was really trying. Our time together concluded at 12:17 PM. I'd been warned beforehand that Fielder had a Zoom meeting at 12:15 PM sharp. "I'm trusting you," his publicist told me before leaving us alone to talk. I took the entreaty seriously, practically shoving Fielder out of the room as soon as I realized he was running late. This lovely, thoughtful man has a meeting.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  Days later, the thought nodded me that 12:15 PM is an odd time to start a meeting, on a Sunday, no less. I couldn't shake it. Had the publicist looked me in the eyes and lied? Had Nathan? I considered asking them outright. I've never been one for ambiguity, and a journalist craves nothing more than to know what's real. Then again, people make things up all the time. They present different versions of themselves to different people, obfuscate and perform, and they do it in little ways and sometimes bigger ones. Did it really matter if he'd left for a real meeting or the excuse of one? And hadn't I spent enough time letting Nathan Fielder make me feel crazy?

• 7:40Speaker 04

  In the end, I decided that this time, it was better not to know. It was better just to trust. And after a second talk with Fielder a few weeks after our first conversation, I learned that Elizabeth Holmes might feel the same way.

• 7:57Speaker 04

  I have a lot of anxiety about recording interviews.

• 8:00Speaker 05

  Why? About losing the recording?

• 8:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  Okay, you have a backup, too?

• 8:06Speaker 04

  I have two.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  I would do the same thing.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  Do you?

• 8:09Speaker 05

  What?

• 8:10Speaker 04

  Double-record things.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  No, but if I had your job, I would.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Okay. Before we get into it, I just want you to know that I know how important it is for you to preserve the experience of the film.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  Yes, but, you know, some people enjoy knowing what happens. I read this thing where they told people the end of a story, and then they had another group that didn't know, and then the group that knew the ending said they enjoyed it more. So it could just be a me thing. Maybe it is, but I love being surprised. I love the experience of just sort of not knowing.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  When this interview comes out, the film will be just out in theaters. But it was a secret for three years, right?

• 8:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  My understanding is that only a few dozen people knew it was happening.

• 8:59Speaker 05

  We kept it really small.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  Secrecy has been a feature of your work before. What made you decide to keep it so under wraps? Why was that important to you?

• 9:07Speaker 05

  I think, firstly, it was a concern on the subject's part. No one knew where they were at first. But while we were shooting there, paparazzi started surrounding the location and all that. So one of the understandings was, we needed to keep it secret because it could affect things with them, and we didn't want to do anything where our involvement would be a news story or change things with them. In addition to that, I think when stuff comes out about a thing, then the narrative is out there, and it may affect our ability to make the project. We didn't know who we wanted to talk to or get on camera. We didn't have a plan when we went in, so we were just like, it's best to operate in

• 9:50Speaker 05

  a place where no one knows it exists. We thought it would be a net benefit.

• 9:56Speaker 04

  How many people did you have to lie to about this?

• 9:58Speaker 05

  I didn't lie as much as say, "Oh, I can't talk about this thing I'm working on, but I really want you to see it when it's out." People knew I was working on something. My family knew, people I'm close with that are trusted friends and collaborators.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  And now there's a teaser out, there's a trailer, that's about it. How did you think about the lead-up to the film? Was that strategic in terms of deciding what to put out there and what not to?

• 10:24Speaker 05

  Is this strategic? I don't know. I think everyone didn't really know how to handle this. Even people at A24 didn't know we were making this for a bit because we just went and started doing it. And so it wasn't really on their radar in terms of what it's going to look like. Then there are the pros on how to release a movie. I think they saw an opportunity in doing it all at once at Telluride. I was like, will that be enough time? Because they normally have a long lead time when they first do these movie things. It was gonna give us five weeks until it was released.

• 11:01Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 11:02Speaker 05

  They felt confident in their plan. And then it was a question of what we put out there. We got the sense pretty early on that she's a very toxic figure to people everywhere. So I understood we were dealing with material that people were gonna project a lot onto. I think everyone thought that maybe the audience will meet us halfway with some of the stuff we put out.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  Have you been reading the speculation? Are you reading?

• 11:28Speaker 05

  Speculation about what?

• 11:30Speaker 04

  About the film, from everyone who hasn't seen it.

• 11:33Speaker 05

  What are people speculating I haven't seen?

• 11:36Speaker 04

  Theories that she's naked, that you're naked, that...

• 11:39Speaker 05

  Oh, that.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  That you dress up as Elizabeth Holmes, that you become her? I saw an image someone made of you with a blonde wig on.

• 11:47Speaker 05

  I haven't seen a lot of that stuff. When this all came out and we did the Telluride Film Festival, my phone was off for that whole night. And then I started looking at some stuff the next day. But there was a lot, and it was a little overwhelming. I couldn't really engage with everything. I definitely understand that people would project stuff onto a new project that feels like stuff I've done in the past. But this is a totally unique thing. It feels, to me, so different than what I've done before in the way it came together, in the way it functions, and what we're able to explore in it. I've never done something like this before, but the process was fascinating,

• 12:30Speaker 05

  and I really enjoyed shooting this way. It was a real freeing and fascinating experience.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  What was freeing about it?

• 12:38Speaker 05

  Well, for example, I think a lot of projects usually have to be generated by you. You have a concept, and you go and pitch that concept. And then you have to present a plan to get the money to make it. And then you go and execute it. Things can change while you're doing it, but usually if they greenlight a project, you have to deliver something.

• 13:01Speaker 04

  Ideally.

• 13:03Speaker 05

  Yes. You can't...

• 13:05Speaker 04

  You seem like someone who plans quite a bit.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  I mean, I try to. I try to plan. And then I'm always met with the absurdity of me trying to plan too much. I experienced that when I did Nathan for You. I was trying to be like, okay, we can know where things would go. But then the best moments were when we're just totally surprised by something we didn't expect. And then we end up going in that direction. And the aftermath of that was like, why did I think I could predict or control that? That was part of the inspiration for the rehearsal. That tendency that I have to want to, like, plan. There was a pressure sometimes of, you have to deliver something. So you want to think things through.

• 13:51Speaker 05

  You can't just go into something. But with this, because I came into this feeling, like the story's been told about her, I was very interested in meeting her. But I did not see what a film about her or a project about her could be.

• 14:07Speaker 04

  You and Lance reached out to her initially, right?

• 14:10Speaker 05

  It was a bit of a both thing. Because she and Billy Evans had approached A24 with the desire to have their life documented in some way, but no one was attached. It's just them approaching A24. And I guess the negotiations fell apart because there was nothing to it, really. 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.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  Why her for you? Why did she seem interesting?

• 14:43Speaker 05

  It's a good question. Sometimes I don't know why I'm drawn to something, but I had read Bad Blood.

• 14:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:51Speaker 05

  I was really interested in that book when it came out. And I thought her relationship to the media was interesting too, because she sort of went silent and didn't talk to anyone about anything in the aftermath. I was just personally curious, like, I wonder what this person's like. And also, why now? Why is she wanting to speak and have her life documented and do it in this way? And even after I met her, if I didn't know what I knew, I would just think I was talking with a very affable, soft-spoken, kind person. But then I kept having this thing where I was tracking my thoughts

• 15:31Speaker 05

  about how honest she was being, or if I was being manipulated in some way. The feeling is so odd. It felt like watching a magician. I talk about it a little in the film, but when me and Lance were first talking about her, we happened to be at the Magic Castle. I'm a member, and it just came up that way. It was sort of poetic. I told A24, I don't really know what the angle is, but there is something tickling in my brain. She was about to go to prison, so we didn't know what was gonna happen. I was like, if you guys want, I'm down to go down and start filming and see what emerges. But we need the ability to deliver nothing to you guys if it doesn't work out.

• 16:16Speaker 05

  And they said, sure.

• 16:17Speaker 04

  So was that freeing?

• 16:19Speaker 05

  Yes. It really meant I didn't have to hold back with her or with them. Making a film or making any project is very stressful. So if we had to pull the plug because it didn't work out, it would sort of be a relief to me. It's a very nice zone to operate in. Lance and I both thought, well, at the very least, this will be an interesting week or two that we'll have as a story.

• 16:43Speaker 04

  I've seen it a few times. As I was watching it recently, I found myself trying to figure out, what did Elizabeth and Billy think they were bringing you in to tell? What was the story that they thought had not been told?

• 16:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, right?

• 16:55Speaker 04

  Do you know? Do you feel like you know why they wanted you in their home, in their life?

• 17:00Speaker 05

  This is a question that we are still debating to this day. Me and my editor, Adam Locke Norton, who has worked with me on the rehearsal and for years. We were debating exactly this, because it keeps changing. The difficult thing about this whole thing is there are so many pieces. And some of them are contradictory. You have to have a mindset of someone playing 7D chess with you. And they are so far ahead to make sense of all this stuff that it almost seems implausible sometimes.

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• 19:19Speaker 04

  Did you worry that they were ahead of you?

• 19:24Speaker 05

  I didn't worry because I'm there and I'm just trying to experience it and let my curiosity drive me. The first couple of days, we were trying to figure out how to capture this and what they were gonna give us and what they were trying to do. We didn't really know. We didn't know if we would sit in there and they'd bring out papers and lay out a whole thing, or they'd just be like, "We're just gonna live our life." They weren't immediately coming to us with some sort of narrative they were trying to push. So, we realized it was this game of figuring this out, in a way. We ended up having this plan where we would come in every morning. We started with two cameras, and we eventually got to

• 20:09Speaker 05

  three cameras, and we had one that was a 12-millimeter-wide lens that could get the whole main area of the house. And then we had two other cameras that were on 25- to 250-millimeter zoom lenses, so they could go wide, but they could also go really tight, and we'd place them in the far ends of the house. We found these angles where if anything happened at any point in the house, we could not only have it in our wide shot, but then we could get it in close-ups eventually. We only had two camera operators. Lance wouldn't always be in there. He would sometimes be outside with a monitor. So, sometimes there

• 20:52Speaker 05

  were only three people, and our sound guy, who'd sometimes be outside. I could definitely sense that she felt the stakes were high for her. And that can cause people to be unnatural in ways they may not be in real life. That's the part of the work I make. I like to show how the cameras can affect how people are, a little bit. That feels like the most honest way to do things. With this project as well, we were really trying to show how she is, even when the cameras aren't there.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  When did you realize that you needed to be in it?

• 21:25Speaker 05

  That's another thing. I started this thing being like, "I'm definitely not gonna be on camera in this." The situation was very intense. She was going to prison. And that's another thing about having the ability to pull the plug on the project with no consequences. Why, it was really nice for me. Because I could also say to both of them, if I did sense there was tension or stress about this whole thing, I was very aware, this is the final month that she's gonna have for a decade with her kids and her family. I said almost every day, "If ever you're regretting this decision, just tell me and we'll go." Like, no problem. I'd usually bring it up if there was tension, because

• 22:08Speaker 05

  sometimes we'd be trying to do shoots, and Billy would be trying to stop it, or just be like, "That's enough time." So, I was like, "We don't have to be here at all, but if we're gonna be here, we just wanna be able to do this." They never once said, "Okay, we don't want you here anymore," or seemed to be like, "Okay, let me think about if we wanna change our minds." That was confusing for me, too, because it didn't make sense to me. I definitely would not want a camera crew following me for the last month of freedom that I would have.

• 22:43Speaker 04

  Not only would I not want a camera crew, I don't know that I would want you there.

• 22:47Speaker 05

  Are you feeling that because of the conversation we've had so far?

• 22:51Speaker 04

  No, but I would-

• 22:52Speaker 05

  You're saying I'm worse than the average person?

• 22:54Speaker 04

  No, I would've seen your earlier work and the way you observe people and behavior. And I'd be very stressed out at the prospect of Nathan Fielder being in my house.

• 23:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. This is part of the mystery that, like, doesn't make sense to me.

• 23:08Speaker 04

  No offense, but why you? You know what I mean?

• 23:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. 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. Also, I got the sense very early that she hadn't seen a lot, but she had seen some of what I did, and she had talked to people who had seen what I did. Billy had seen more. I think she found the clip that she said she saw funny. But, you know, her relationship to that, to what's funny, I don't even know. She said her favorite movie is Elf, the Will Ferrell movie. You have the tattoo?

• 23:49Speaker 04

  It's actually my daughter's initials, but I get that a lot.

• 23:52Speaker 05

  Do you love that movie?

• 23:53Speaker 04

  I like the movie well enough.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  Okay. So, you and her there?

• 23:58Speaker 04

  I like it well enough.

• 24:00Speaker 05

  What areas do you feel like you're similar to her? Besides liking Elf? Or, in what ways?

• 24:07Speaker 04

  To Elizabeth Holmes?

• 24:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  I don't like where this interview is going, but we're both convicted felons with a long track record of fraudulent behavior. We both had children to avoid prison time. We have that in common.

• 24:19Speaker 05

  Do you feel those things about her?

• 24:22Speaker 04

  Everything I just said?

• 24:23Speaker 05

  Well, I guess you said various things. Some things are obviously true.

• 24:28Speaker 04

  We both have blue eyes. I believe that her eye color is real.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  Here's a question. How do people view her? I'm assuming Wired is very in with the tech world.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  How did people view that at the time, in that world? And how do people view it now? And is it the same? Or has that changed?

• 24:47Speaker 04

  There's this broader culture of Silicon Valley that she operated within, where everyone's a liar. You start a company, you lie, you fake it till you make it, and VCs expect it, and it is part and parcel of launching a business. Elon Musk is an incredible liar. Lies to the public, lies to regulators, lies to lawmakers, investors, shareholders. That's part of the game. And she, to me, in many ways, played that same game. She took it to the nth degree. She took it very far. But what she was doing at the time was very much in keeping with what startup founders do. They go out, they raise money, they talk a big game, they get magazine covers. I think today, if you ask any journalist, whether they're a tech journalist or not, they'd say she's a convicted felon. She's a fraud.

• 25:32Speaker 04

  And I think the first time I saw the film, now I'm going on a bit of a tangent, and I'm going to have to start asking you questions again soon, but-

• 25:39Speaker 05

  No, I'm really curious, though. I hadn't thought about Theranos in a long time, right?

• 25:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think a lot of people coming into this haven't thought about Elizabeth Holmes in five, six, seven years.

• 25:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  I have a nine-year-old daughter, and watching Holmes with her kids in the first half of the film, I felt tremendous empathy for this woman. I was asking myself a lot of questions about her romantic relationships and wondering whether that was at the root of it all along. I wondered if there was something wrong with her, cognitively wrong with her. And then, I was getting ready to do this interview, and so I read back about everything she had done, about the timing of when she had kids. I went to screen the movie a second time and felt like such a fucking dupe for being close to tears watching her with her little kids. I still feel sad for the kids, but I felt much less empathy for her. I would say broadly, within the journalism community, bad blood was the definitive reported account of what she did.

• 26:33Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 26:34Speaker 04

  But I think watching the movie brings a lot to the surface for the viewer, and raises a lot of questions about her and her character, and what's influencing her and what motivates her. What was I asking you? How rude of you to distract me.

• 26:46Speaker 05

  It's interesting for me, I think, because I couldn't really talk to people about this fully while I was making it, besides the people that we were there with.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  How did you process, on a daily basis, what you were experiencing?

• 26:58Speaker 05

  In a way, we processed it with each other. One of the reasons, early on, that we felt this could actually be a project was because of what came out of those processing sessions. At the end of the day, I would have in my head what I thought was a very clear idea of what was happening, and Lance, or our camera guy, Jonathan Mitchell, or our DP, David Bolan, or our sound guy, Richard Carlos, they would all have a different take on what actually happened. I was like, "How is this possible? We're all in this room experiencing this thing. We're all witnessing something and having a different idea of

• 27:38Speaker 05

  what's going on." And I thought that was a basic premise to explore and chase.

• 27:45Speaker 04

  At Telluride, you said that you still don't know what you experienced. You want audiences to help you understand. What specifically do you want to hear from people after this comes out?

• 27:55Speaker 05

  I generally don't see myself as having a great framework for understanding all the variables of things and people. In a lot of the work I do, because it's shorter or television, sometimes, you have to take a human that's very complex, obviously, with a lot of nuance in a lot of different areas, and you're generally trying to simplify. You have to be like, "Okay, well, this is the essence of the situation, or the person, or this is an interesting flavor of them, and that's what we're gonna show." But with this, we're really trying to give the viewer everything. We're trying to focus on these

• 28:36Speaker 05

  moments that we couldn't really make sense of fully. Like I was saying, still to this day, I'm debating. Why are me and my editor talking two days ago about trying to understand certain things? I've talked to people who have seen it, and they're all bringing out new ideas that I would never even consider.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  So, you trust the audience?

• 28:59Speaker 05

  I just think people are smart. I don't see myself as the most knowledgeable at everything, and I love learning from the world and from people. I definitely don't come to anything being like, "I know what the answers are," or, "I know what things are," just in general, not with this project. When I was in grade six, maybe, or grade seven, I was with a tutor and they were like- I think you know probably less than 200 words. And I was like, no, I know more than that. I started naming them. I started trying to count because I was insecure that I didn't know as much as others or something. But now I think I've grown into being comfortable with anything I don't know.

• 29:45Speaker 05

  I think it drives a lot of my curiosity and probably why I hate you asking me questions.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  You hate this right now?

• 29:54Speaker 05

  I want to set this thing up so people can watch this in the right way. I want people to go see the film because that's what I want to express, you know? It's the film. So that's why I'm more curious about your experiences. Because you can think you know something. And then you start talking to a lot of people and then you're like, oh, I actually know nothing. Anyways.

• 30:18Speaker 04

  No, it's funny, it's.

• 30:20Speaker 05

  I'm not even sure if what I just said made any sense at all.

• 30:23Speaker 04

  I get what you're saying.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  This is not my skill set, like articulating with words as a verbal storyteller.

• 30:31Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 30:32Speaker 05

  I can do things with how I've learned to do them visually.

• 30:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:36Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 30:37Speaker 04

  That's fine.

• 30:38Speaker 05

  But this is your medium. You're good at doing this. You do the storytelling like this.

• 30:43Speaker 04

  I do my best?

• 30:44Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 30:45Speaker 04

  That's what I do. How do you feel like you know Elizabeth Holmes? You spent a lot of time with her.

• 30:51Speaker 05

  I didn't answer your question. What was it? I remember you asked me about being on camera.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  That was 20 minutes ago.

• 30:59Speaker 05

  But I went on a tangent about how we filmed it.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  I do want to know, when did you decide you had to be in the film?

• 31:06Speaker 05

  I was talking about that process of where we put the cameras and how we did it to get to this. Because what would happen is they would be living their life and doing things. And we would try to capture these things. But then a couple of things started happening. Firstly, because I was there, they would keep engaging with me. So they would be talking to each other, but then they would be like, Nathan, what do you think? And I would chime in from off camera. Or if nothing was really happening, I would ask a question to see what they would say about something. But I was off camera and it was more to prompt a discussion or something like that. Or they would start talking to me and conversations would go on for long enough that the operators started panning over to me.

• 31:51Speaker 05

  But also they would say stuff that tickled a part of my brain that was like, something's off about this. Or I feel like this is them trying to do some sort of propaganda. So I would want to interject to be like, well, actually I read this. Or I thought this was the case. We realized, oh, someone has to push back and we can't just let them run whatever show they kind of want to do.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  Now, back to my most recent question.

• 32:21Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Do you feel like you know Elizabeth? You spent so much time with this woman. You lived in their home.

• 32:28Speaker 05

  Well, I know her better than I did going in. Sure, I knew nothing about her.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  How much about her had you read and watched before you showed up? Did you go in with this canon of Elizabeth Holmes reporting and filmmaking?

• 32:40Speaker 05

  I'd read the book, which I thought was the main document. And then when we started doing it, I listened to the ABC podcast they did on the trial. But I was sort of cramming it. I would go home, I would listen to more. As we were there, I would just be like, okay, I'm trying to digest everything I can. But at the same time, I'm not a science journalist. This isn't my specialty, so. I was also aware that I may not be able to go into certain areas with her. But I could approach her through other means. I felt like I knew enough to know when something didn't feel right.

• 33:20Speaker 05

  I definitely had engaged enough with that, but I was digesting more and more as time went on. I don't know. That's such a crazy concept, knowing enough, I'm realizing. It's like, what does that even mean?

• 33:35Speaker 04

  Well, yeah. How do you know that you ever really know someone is kind of a big.

• 33:39Speaker 05

  Oh, well, that, yeah, I mean, in terms of knowing her, I'm like.

• 33:43Speaker 04

  Do you feel like you know her as a real person? Like a person person, not the character of Elizabeth Holmes, the fraud that everybody has read about. Is there a different version there?

• 33:53Speaker 05

  I think because she's someone that has limited her presence. She hasn't done a lot of interviews. And she has really limited her engagement with the media in general. I think the version that is out there of her is largely a version that people are putting together from the pieces they have. The first time I met her, I was like, this is not how I thought she would be.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  How did you think she would be?

• 34:20Speaker 05

  I guess I expected a little more outward anxiety and a desire to control.

• 34:26Speaker 04

  She wasn't controlling?

• 34:28Speaker 05

  That was very jarring for me because she did not come across as controlling. I thought the situation that she was in, there would be a lot about it. We're in this tiny beach house. That's a tense environment. The weird thing is that she let us come there without trying to be like, okay, well, what's your angle? What are you going to do here? What is this interview going to be about? You know, there wasn't that stuff and I totally expected we would get all that. And that, I think, messed with my head as well. Is that intentional? Or is there some design to this whole thing that I'm not aware of?

• 35:10Speaker 05

  And I'm in some hall of mirrors that I am not even conscious of? It was a wild experience, but one thing I feel like I really know is her tendencies. We're talking about spending 12 hours, 18 hours a day with this person in all these different environments. I feel like I know how she would handle any situation or what she would act like or say in response to something. Can I say something off the record?

• 35:39Speaker 04

  Nathan and I speak off the record for a bit.

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• 36:27Speaker 01

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• 37:33Speaker 04

  You were saying you felt like you knew her so well in a certain way. But what is it like to feel that way, but also grapple with the fact that she may have been lying to you the entire time?

• 37:43Speaker 05

  We're back on.

• 37:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:45Speaker 05

  It almost feels, at times, that it's not so black and white, what's going on in her head. A lie. A classic lie is someone who's like, okay, I am saying something that I'm consciously knowing is not true in this moment. But it's not just the words. It's the design of every aspect of her life that feels like a part of what is going on. What's interesting about her to me, I think, just goes beyond that in any given moment. I can't piece it together. She makes these claims that are like, how could anyone believe this or say they've never done this? Is it a lie in that moment?

• 38:29Speaker 05

  Is it a lie if she believes it to be true? One thing that's interesting about this situation with her is that I don't think she believed she was going to prison until very close to her going.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  How is that possible?

• 38:44Speaker 05

  They were working on an appeal. There was a sense that something maybe was going to happen that would cause her not to go.

• 38:51Speaker 04

  I don't know if I find that endearing or just so, what's the word? Just the arrogance of it, the delusional arrogance of it.

• 38:59Speaker 05

  I guess it's a question of what is the level you're supposed to operate at in terms of how positively or negatively you're supposed to think about anything in your life? When you think about future events, is it healthier to be like, I see my future as this happy place that's going to be great and great things are going to happen? Or is it better to be like, there are all these things that might be bad and I need to be ready and I need to understand that that is a possible reality? What is the balance? I'm going into zones that are not my expertise. You should talk to a psychologist about this stuff.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  I think if I was going to prison in two weeks, I would understand and accept that I was going to prison in two weeks.

• 39:47Speaker 05

  Her prison date shifted at one point, so I don't know if it puts these things in your head where it's a possibility. But with everyone, there's a gap between what they think the future will be and what it really is, the actual odds. How often is anyone aligned with the actual odds of like a future thing happening? People who are positive, people who are optimistic generally don't stew in the negatives, right?

• 40:15Speaker 05

  She can come across as a very positive person. She focuses on those positive things. The idea of, maybe I'm not going to prison.

• 40:23Speaker 04

  You mentioned a few minutes ago that you did not find her to be controlling.

• 40:27Speaker 05

  Just to correct, she didn't appear to be controlling.

• 40:31Speaker 04

  She didn't appear to be.

• 40:33Speaker 05

  That was my sense, but then, yeah, go ahead.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  I want to ask you about Billy. That's why I bring it up, because he was a controlling presence in the film, and their relationship is a really important part of that. What was interesting to me is that our creative director, when she saw the film, said, "I just thought it was so interesting how she used her husband in that way." And I was like, "What are you talking about? He was using her." We still do not agree about that relationship and what was going on in that marriage.

• 41:01Speaker 05

  Oh, I don't know about marriage. They even muddied the waters with that, like, he'll call her his wife.

• 41:08Speaker 04

  How did you come to understand that relationship?

• 41:11Speaker 05

  That came to be a big part of trying to understand her. But I could say certain things right now that would definitely affect how people enter the movie. I would have to talk about some stuff we explore later. I want people to have the experience you had and your colleagues had. Sometimes people are like, "Oh, the filmmaker thought this, so this is the truth."

• 41:34Speaker 04

  One of the great things about this film is that we don't know what you think. I didn't feel like I left the movie being like, Nathan thinks this, this, and this about these people.

• 41:42Speaker 05

  That's interesting. It's fascinating to watch it back and watch these moments where I'm not even thinking about the production or what's happening. I see myself fully just being in it with them. A lot of it was like, how is this possible that I'm meeting humans that are talking like this?

• 42:01Speaker 04

  Have you heard from either of them, Elizabeth or Billy? I mean, they had certain expectations going into this. They had a story they ostensibly wanted to tell.

• 42:10Speaker 05

  Well, I don't know what their expectations were.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  I don't either, but I have to imagine that they were different than the end result.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  Here's what they said, or what Billy said at times. "I just want people to see the real Elizabeth." And I felt like we could align on that idea. We were like, yes, we are desiring to show as close as we can get. He might have had a different idea in his head of who the real Elizabeth is, but we could align on the idea of that's what we're trying to do.

• 42:44Speaker 04

  He may not have realized that they would also see the real Billy.

• 42:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, although I guess you can see pretty early in the film how comfortable he is being a part of this.

• 42:54Speaker 04

  Extremely comfortable.

• 42:56Speaker 05

  It's hard to tell. I can't really project their motives for...

• 43:00Speaker 04

  But have you heard from them?

• 43:02Speaker 05

  Well, basically, near the end of when we were trying to finish it, there was this increased effort, we felt, to control the process and the project from Billy's perspective. We had to cut off communication. So we haven't actually spoken with him in a little bit or in the last... What's the date today?

• 43:22Speaker 04

  The 27th.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  In the last, like, three weeks.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  Has he seen the film?

• 43:28Speaker 05

  No, not to my knowledge. We haven't shown it to him. I was trying to think if there was a screening that had happened. By the time this comes out, maybe, or probably? I have no idea.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  He'll probably go on opening weekend.

• 43:46Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  There's a body of work about Elizabeth Holmes that's already been made. You're adding to that body of work with this. And I'm curious what you hope to add to the cultural understanding of this person and her story and what she did.

• 43:59Speaker 05

  I guess I don't really think about it on those terms. I think what the movie ended up being to me feels like it goes beyond that in a way. I don't know what it will do to people's understanding of her, but people are really complex. I think that's more of a question for you.

• 44:20Speaker 04

  Well, I can end the interview for us. I think what you were saying about human behavior and people being complicated, that's ultimately what it's about, right? I think in the context of her, she is seen as a supervillain. She's almost like a cartoon character in how she's perceived. The movie reminds us that she's a person, and people are complicated, and that many things can be true about someone at the same time, which is hard for me, because I really don't like ambiguity. But different things can be true about Elizabeth Holmes at the same time.

• 44:51Speaker 05

  One thing that's emerged that's interesting is the way you and your coworkers are having different ideas of what's actually happening in this movie. Each of us has our own life and our own experiences. And maybe it's partially about what we're bringing to it, too. That's how it's going to hit differently for different people. That's why I feel like it's the healthy thing for me to be like, "I don't know a lot," or "I feel more comfortable in a place where I'm..." I don't have the words to describe what I'm feeling right now.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  Close your eyes and try again.

• 45:29Speaker 05

  I'm going to give up halfway through this sentence. I think my tutor was right.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  That was the end of my interview with Nathan Fielder, or so I thought. A few weeks after we spoke, I was feeling unsettled. It seemed like we were missing an ending. Luckily, Fielder was free for a short follow-up call late last week, right before the film was released nationally. There was quite a postscript. How have you been?

• 45:55Speaker 05

  I've been pretty okay. How about you? How have you been?

• 45:59Speaker 04

  Great. Since we last talked, reviews have started coming in for the movie, and I wondered how you feel about them and whether you're paying any attention.

• 46:07Speaker 05

  No, I haven't. I saw that a bunch of stuff is coming in all at once, and it's a lot, and I haven't had the time to properly engage with it all. But I'm happy people who have seen it seem to be connecting with it so far. But I guess it hasn't gone out to everyone yet, so we'll see.

• 46:26Speaker 04

  It goes out nationwide tomorrow, correct?

• 46:28Speaker 05

  Yes, tomorrow, and some places today.

• 46:32Speaker 04

  We have some editors going after work. Are you nervous about the wider public reception?

• 46:37Speaker 05

  I am. I am okay. I'm just trying to take it a day at a time, but it's been a long road to get to this point. So in a way, I'm looking forward to it just finally being something that everyone can engage with.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  The last time we talked, almost three weeks ago, you had not heard from Billy, you had not heard from Elizabeth. Has that changed?

• 47:00Speaker 05

  Well, actually, on Friday last week, I looked at my phone in the morning and saw I had two missed calls. And on the voicemail transcript, it said that it was a call from the prison.

• 47:11Speaker 04

  What?

• 47:12Speaker 05

  Yes. And then I saw on the thing, it says, "You're receiving a call from Elizabeth Holmes, and I have not heard from her. She has not called me in over six months. I have not heard from her in any way." But I missed the calls, and then, as I was looking at my phone, a third call came in from the same number.

• 47:32Speaker 04

  Persistent.

• 47:34Speaker 05

  I picked it up. She had mentioned at one point, or someone mentioned, that she has to call multiple times from prison, and you can't call back. So she has to sometimes do that if people miss calls. So I answered the phone, and I said, "Hey, how's it going?" She asked how I was doing. I asked her if she had seen any stuff about the film coming out and how she felt about it all. She told me that she had seen some stuff, but most things she just isn't seeing. So she's heard things, but she hasn't really read anything. And then, at the end, she said to me, "I trust you."

• 48:16Speaker 04

  And what did you say to that?

• 48:18Speaker 05

  I said, "Okay, thanks."

• 48:21Speaker 04

  And then the call ended?

• 48:23Speaker 05

  Well, we talked about some other stuff. She talked about her kids and some updates that are not really my place to share. But then after that, she said again, at the end of the call, "I trust you." And I don't know what she meant by that.

• 48:40Speaker 04

  I don't know either. I'm actually just trying to think about what she might have... I mean, I guess...

• 48:46Speaker 05

  She said it twice.

• 48:47Speaker 04

  She said it twice. Well, the most superficial explanation is she's just saying, "I trust you to tell my story," whatever version of that story she'd think exists to tell.

• 48:57Speaker 05

  I cannot... It would be, I think, wrong to be... This is, again, me just not having the words to even speculate. I don't know.

• 49:07Speaker 04

  And so you're thinking about it, and you just don't know.

• 49:11Speaker 05

  Well, it's in the context of a call that was out of the blue, and I don't know. I didn't even know she had an ability to reach out to me anymore, because I haven't heard anything.

• 49:21Speaker 04

  She's trusting you, Nathan. That's what she says.

• 49:24Speaker 05

  I like to think it. I like to think I'm a trustworthy guy.

• 49:27Speaker 04

  Now, you're going into the film release tomorrow with that additional comment from her rolling around in your brain. Is that messing you up at all?

• 49:35Speaker 05

  I think it sort of makes it feel in my mind that, like, it's continuing to this day. Everything that, like...

• 49:44Speaker 04

  Everything that you experienced that people will see.

• 49:47Speaker 05

  Well, there's a lot. It's just the whole thing is hard to unravel, and every piece I try to interpret... I don't want to create too much meaning to any given moment, but then my mind does try to figure those things out.

• 50:02Speaker 04

  Just when you think you're out, she pulls you back in. You might never escape.

• 50:07Speaker 05

  It hasn't ended, I guess.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  Thank you for listening to The Big Story from Wired. For more of our journalism, visit wired.com or subscribe to the magazine. We'll be back every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday with new stories for you to listen to. This story was narrated by me, M. Eldridge, and Christian Titus. The producer was Neha Joy. Mike Kutschman was our mixing and mastering engineer, and our senior features editor is Jason Kay. Special thanks to Wired's global editorial director, Katie Drummond; executive director of features and special projects, Rehan Harmanshi; and executive director of global audio, Nico Steele. This series was developed by Michelle O'Brien.

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