From Scientology to disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, documentarian Alex Gibney has never met a subject too big or too controversial to tackle.

Then came Elon Musk.

When Gibney was approached with the idea to do a documentary on the Tesla and SpaceX CEO in 2022, his plan was straightforward: Tell the story of how Musk used his businesses to become one of the most powerful figures in the world.

But when he was ready to deliver a two-hour feature film on Musk two years later, HBO issued him a directive a filmmaker rarely hears: Make it longer.

It was 2024, and the breadth of Musk's influence had expanded into the political sphere. With Gibney's subject helping President Donald Trump campaign for a second term, then later spearheading the second Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, Gibney's story had expanded. His documentary would need to, too.

The result is "Musk," an incisive, nearly four-hour documentary that chronicles the personal, professional, and political life of the richest man in the world. From his controversial acquisition of Twitter, which he renamed X; to his relationships with the mothers of his children; to the accidents tied to Tesla's self-driving feature, Gibney's film is a comprehensive look at the scope of Musk's power and influence in the 21st century.

Gibney even found a clever workaround for featuring Musk in the doc after he declined to be interviewed. Playing on Musk's belief that we are all living in a simulation, the director used AI to craft an avatar of Musk, who speaks in quotes amalgamated from his past interviews.

Of course, a man as powerful and outspoken as Musk has already voiced his displeasure with someone else controlling his narrative. After the movie's world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, Musk threatened to sue Gibney's production company for defamation. Musk has also bashed the movie on X, stating: "Gibney just assembled a hit list of people who either have an axe to grind or don't even know me (but still have an axe to grind). He has ZERO integrity. Horrible human."

Hearing from angry subjects is nothing new for Gibney, who was the subject of the Church of Scientiology's full-page newspaper ads decrying his work over 10 years ago tied to the premiere of his documentary "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief."

"With Elon Musk — and he's not unique in this, but he specializes in it — he begins tweeting horrible things about people and the next thing you know, this army of followers and bots starts to gin up the rage matrix," Gibney told Business Insider.

Not that he's rattled yet. With decades of documentaries speaking truth to power under his belt, Gibney has developed thick skin and some top-secret harassment survival strategies.

"Let's just say I've taken some precautions," he said.

For the latest interview in Business Insider's Director's Chair series, Gibney talks about creating an AI Musk, being followed by Scientologists, and his nerve-racking experience in a self-driving Tesla.

On creating an AI Musk avatar and making the movie longer

Business Insider: You thought you had finished this movie in 2024. Was it daunting to go back down the Elon Musk rabbit hole when HBO asked you to?

Alex Gibney: Yeah, it was daunting. We had to renegotiate the budget and all sorts of other stuff. But I got why HBO wanted that. And when Musk hitched his wagon to Trump, it was clear: This is big.

I started out making a film about 21st century power, which in this case involved economic power but also tech power. Now, add to that political power, and suddenly it's a really big story.

Was AI Musk in the original movie? 

The idea of it was. We had put in a placeholder for it, but we were also anticipating that maybe we might get an interview with him at some point.

It was kind of an epiphany to do it this way. It came out of past experience: What's the workaround for somebody who won't or can't talk to you? In "Client 9" and "Zero Days," we came up with workarounds that fit those stories. The key here was to find a workaround that would fit this story. That's how we ultimately came up with the idea of the avatar.

Did it unlock anything in you regarding using AI tools in your work in the future?

I think it will depend on the project. AI has become a kind of suitcase term for everything from Siri to AGI. In this instance, this was a human effort using AI tools, which revolved mostly around sync; in other words, making the lips and the body sort of move with the voice. But there was also designing the room, what he was going to wear, the gamer chair.

The further we pushed it and the more interested we got in AI with the company we used, Makemake A.I., this idea of memes and looking at his own image, that's where we came up with certain scenes where you see the back of his head and he's watching himself. Those were things that we improvised on.

On the qualities Musk and Elizabeth Holmes share and Tesla's image

I couldn't help but think about your Elizabeth Holmes doc, "The Inventor," when watching "Musk." The "fake it 'til you make it" ethos that's baked into Silicon Valley, has that been fascinating to observe? Both Holmes and Musk are founders who are amazing salespeople hoping that what they bet on takes off. 

I think there is a similarity with Elizabeth Holmes. What was rattling around in my head through this was confidence. Musk, like Holmes, was able, through force of confidence, to convince people of things that they knew not to be true. That became a superpower.

The big difference between Tesla and SpaceX and Elizabeth Holmes is that those are real products. The Tesla S is a great car. These reusable rockets are extraordinary, and we show the magnificence of that in the film.

Not to take anything away from him or those companies, but there's also the bullshit factor. The idea of going to Mars and the promises. And you can see how they repeat themselves and get bigger and bigger. Oh, yeah, full self-driving! I'm sorry, Tesla's self-driving option is still a level two system, and over 60 people have died.

(Editor's note: Tesla has maintained that its Autopilot feature requires constant driver attention, and that its vehicles issue prompts warning the driver to stay alert and hold the steering wheel.)

The things you highlight about Musk's involvement in DOGE and suggesting he influenced the election are shocking, but the things you highlight about Tesla got me the most. The battery swapping, the self-driving car feature. Were you shocked by how much smoke and mirrors there are at Tesla?

Yes. It was something that I didn't know when I started. And as you mentioned, fake it 'til you make it. They just faked it. Mostly, it was in order to raise the stock. The economic fundamentals of the company never warranted a high stock price, but if you can convince people that the CEO is a genius and also that it's not really a car company — it's a tech company, so some super inventions are coming down the road — you can persuade people to gin up the stock. 

(Editor's note: Musk and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.)

On almost hitting a child while using the self-driving feature on a Cybertruck

You rode a self-driving car yourself; you did it with a Cybertruck for the movie. 

I did. There was a cut where we included a four-minute sequence of me in the Cybertruck. I went to the San Francisco Tesla showroom and wanted to drive a Cybertruck, and they showed me how to turn on the self-driving feature. I pressed "Go," and off I went to the other side of the city. It was like a 20-minute ride there and back.

What's interesting is for most of the trip it was kind of astoundingly good. But then there were moments when it was astoundingly bad, sometimes in ways that were played to safety. Like, I was trying to merge onto a very busy thoroughfare, and cars kept coming, and if it were me as the driver, I would nudge out there, but full self-driving couldn't figure that out, so I sat there for 10 minutes. Other instances, it couldn't decide what to do at critical moments and almost hit a pedestrian. 

It came uncomfortably close to a child. The child kind of came from the side out of a parked car. It's not something you would anticipate, but it was really scary.

Why didn't you put that in the movie?

Ultimately, the legal case that we spotlight in the movie was a far more powerful deep dive. There were mortal consequences. A woman died. And the deep dive into the evidence itself was so much more powerful. If I had only done a film about Tesla, I probably would have included it. 

On the movie's fate on HBO and the consequences of checking power

The greatest irony in all of this is this movie could have been out a year or so ago, but HBO asked you to make it longer. Now Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have merged, so HBO is now under David Ellison, who once considered bringing on Musk as an equity investor in Paramount. Are you concerned HBO will not air "Musk"?

I was concerned until recently. I'm always on the alert. But I've been told that they will air it and that even David Ellison very well knows about it and promises he will air it. 

You have worked with HBO forever. 

Yeah, I love them. 

So if they are telling you it is going to happen, you believe them. 

But what you learn is, shit happens. [Laughs.] Executives change. Circumstances change, and the next thing you know, it's not what you thought. But, for now, we are making very specific plans about when it's going to come out, which is likely in January. 

Because of where the industry is going — fewer networks and distribution options, and the options available are mostly run by conglomerates often looking for political cooperation — for the kind of stories you tell, are you looking for alternative distribution avenues in the future with your company, Jigsaw?

We have a skunkworks inside Jigsaw to try to solve some of these distribution problems.

In this new environment, films that people desperately want to see are being held back from audiences. The platforms tell you people don't want to see them, but that's just not true. HBO is the exception, but what a lot of the platforms are doing is investing in predictable, least objectionable programming. A lot of the platforms want it to be like the cereal aisles at the grocery market: they are all the same cereal, but different variations between Rice Krispies and Froot Loops. They can predictably get people invested in that mixture of salt and sugar that keeps them coming back for more without providing anything that is nutritious. 

So the avenue is theatrical, like it was a decade-plus ago. "Musk" is out in theaters through Bleecker Street, and that's powerful because it's a lot harder to put the genie back in the bottle when it's already out there. 

Checking power sometimes comes with blowback. You have experienced everything from Julian Assange leaking the script to "We Steal Secrets" before that movie came out to Scientologists following you around after you made "Going Clear." Do these things wear on you, or do they fuel you?

I mean, given the fact that I haven't stopped, it seems to be fueling me. That said, it doesn't mean I don't need to take precautions. But I'm still motivated by the idea of people with enormous power abusing it at our expense; that seems to be a spur for me. 

When it comes to Elon Musk, he's the richest and arguably the most powerful person in the world, so it can have these devastating consequences. Ashley St. Clair has security because the X platform has a way of directing vitriol at people. And Elon can say it's just free speech, but he knows very well that by doing what he does and by the platform tweaking its algorithm for replies and rage addiction, he knows that his statements are going to be amplified in a really horrible way that may result in harm to an individual.

(Editor's note: Musk, who has called himself a "free speech absolutist," described X's policy in 2022 as "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach," saying the company would limit the reach of negative posts but not delete them. Musk did not respond to a request for comment about his X posts and the company's algorithm.)

Is your experience with Musk's followers different from what you experienced with Scientology?

Scientology is a little different, but people did come up to me in dark parking lots in a way that was discomforting. But what some ex-Scientologists told me was, "What they are doing is they aren't going to put a rattlesnake in their mailbox; they are trying to get inside your head. So once you understand that, just don't let them inside your head." That turned out to be very wise advice.

Scientology was tough, and when my film on Assange came out, the vitriol on Twitter was extreme, and I wasn't prepared for that. What I've come to learn is you have to know your enemy. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

"Musk" is in theaters now.

• John Carreyrou told Business Insider that he loves the new Elizabeth Holmes doc as "a great piece of art."
• But audiences who want an accurate retelling of Theranos' downfall should read his book, he said.
• It comes as people allege that he's "missing the point of the film."

John Carreyrou has seen "You Can See Everything" twice.

The reporter, whose award-winning investigation for The Wall Street Journal helped bring down blood-testing startup Theranos, told Business Insider that he liked the documentary. It follows Elizabeth Holmes, the startup's CEO, in the 34 days before she reported to federal prison in 2023.

The film — co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim — has inspired a mix of reactions from viewers, ranging from shock to boredom to sympathy for Holmes.

Carreyrou doesn't see that ambiguity.

"The film is a great piece of art, but let's not confuse that art with the underlying facts," he told Business Insider.

It mirrors what he's been writing on X. Carreyrou has been pushing back on people who, he said, had accused him of "missing the point" of the film — namely, that Holmes is unknowable.

"She went after Tyler Shultz and Erika Cheung with everything she had," he wrote, referring to the two company whistleblowers at the center of his 2015 story. "I was threatened with litigation on a daily basis for months on end. It was a ruthless cover-up of a breathtaking fraud, and she was at the controls."

He has also reposted a Monday morning interview with Schultz, who said that Holmes "knows that she did something wrong," and alleged that, during the film, she brought out a different device when she was asked to show Theranos' hardware.

The documentary does not retrace every detail of the Theranos scandal or the reporting that exposed it. Instead, it puts viewers inside Holmes' home as she insists that she was wrongly convicted.

For audiences, it's raised bigger questions about performance, self-deception, and whether the film's subject can ever be fully believed.

Carreyrou has told Business Insider that if audiences "have questions afterward or want more context about the Theranos saga, I would encourage them to read my book."

He ended his X post by saying he "loved the film." He also gave a nod to its early Oscar buzz.

"#BestPicture, IMO," he wrote.

• The tech world is buzzing with thoughts about the fresh Elizabeth Holmes doc.
• From "sympathetic" to "uncanny" to "innovative" to "boring — the film is inspiring huge reactions.
• If you haven't seen it, don't worry. We're holding the movie spoilers.

Elizabeth Holmes is back on the silver screen, and the tech world has has thoughts.

Holmes, the disgraced Theranos founder, is the subject of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's new documentary, "You Can See Everything."

Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors after her blood-testing startup falsely claimed it could run hundreds of diagnostic tests from a small amount of blood. She has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Since the film's theatrical release on Friday (it grossed an impressive $15 million in its opening weekend), people who work in and around tech have been sharing their reactions.

And don't worry if you haven't seen the film yet: We're keeping it spoiler-free.

Holmes' legacy

Audiences can't pin down how they feel about the film's central characters.

John Loeber, a San Francisco-based investor and the former CEO of Limit, said the film brought him back to a 2019 party when he ran into Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans.

"Double take. She's not in jail?" he wrote Saturday on X about the encounter. Seeing them on screen was equally "uncanny."

"I have never before seen a movie where I have personally met the leading cast. And I was not prepared for the level of surprise and weirdness in seeing their faces — especially Billy, whom I had not thought about in seven years — on the big screen," he wrote.

Nick White, a former software engineer turned YouTube and Kick streamer, said the film reminded him of "why I left the tech industry."

"There are so many narcissistic, delusional morons in that industry who genuinely believe they're geniuses," he wrote on X.

Last week, ahead of the doc's release, a tech crowd got a sneak peek of the doc at a Manhattan movie theatre rented out by AI startup Extend — Business Insider reporter Henry Chandonnet was there.

That audience couldn't settle on what to make of Holmes, either. Some said she had become a meme. Others called her an utter psychopath, while one attendee said the film had unexpectedly made Holmes seem sympathetic.

Mostly 'great,' a few 'boring'

There's a range of feelings about the film itself.

Songwriter Grimes — whose own artistic career has circled Silicon Valley — called the film "innovative" and called the movie's second half "artistic futurism."

The pseudonymous X user roon, who runs a well-followed techno-optimist Substack from Silicon Valley, called Fielder's filmmaking talent "almost incomprehensible" — but said he was wasting it on "some quite boring subject matter."

John Carreyrou, the former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter whose investigation helped expose Theranos, disagrees. He called it "a great film."

Carreyrou also wrote an op-ed for The New York Times, published on Sunday, about his jealousy around the Fielder and Oppenheim's access to Holmes — and his own worries about personal safety.

But the film, he wrote, is the "#BestPicture," he wrote on X, referencing its early Oscar buzz.

• Nathan Fielder's documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is a bona fide hit.
• The film, "You Can See Everything," grossed $15 million in its opening weekend in the US and Canada.
• It offers a revealing portrait of Holmes, who was convicted of defrauding investors.

Nathan Fielder's nearly three-hour documentary about disgraced entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes is running up numbers at the box office.

The film, "You Can See Everything," grossed $15 million in the US and Canada during its opening weekend, according to A24, the film's distributor.

That's the best opening weekend for a documentary this year. "Melania" had the second-biggest opening weekend for a documentary after its release in January. It grossed $7.1 million.

The film's financial success is matched by viewer reception, too. It scored a whopping 99% among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie-rating site, and a 98% among regular audiences.

Directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the picture offers a remarkably revealing portrait of Holmes, who was convicted of defrauding investors with her blood-testing company, Theranos.

Theranos was at one point valued at $9 billion. It said its product could run hundreds of medical tests using just a pinprick of blood from a finger, but investigations revealed the company was using expensive lab equipment to surreptitiously run the tests.

Holmes, as the company's CEO, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison after journalist John Carreyrou published a withering investigative report in The Wall Street Journal, sparking what eventually became criminal charges.

Business Insider's Henry Chandonnet has seen the film twice so far. He called it "one of the most shocking, revelatory, and oddly funny films" he'd ever witnessed.

"It was twisty and worthy of seeing with fresh eyes," Henry reported.

• Tech companies and venture capital firms are hosting private screenings of the Elizabeth Holmes doc.
• I went to one hosted by the AI startup Extend.
• Attendees I talked to said they looked at Holmes more as a joke than a product of their industry.

Elizabeth Holmes is a black mark on Silicon Valley's reputation. And yet its residents are lining up for the documentary about her.

Tech companies across the US are hosting screenings of "You Can See Everything," the documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Holmes and her fiancé, Billy Evans. Venture capital funds are bringing their founders to the movie. There are Luma events upon Luma events.

The irony, of course, is that Holmes makes tech look bad. She sold big dreams with her medical testing company, Theranos, which eventually came crashing down. Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. (She has long said that she is innocent.)

Holmes is the exemplar of Silicon Valley's hucksterism. She's who much of America points to when they call founders liars or scammers.

So, what's with all the tech love? I went to a Thursday screening of the documentary hosted by Extend, an AI documentation startup, to find out.

Inside the Extend screening

A swarm of techies crowded outside theater nine at New York's AMC Lincoln Square.

The screening was set to start at 7. By 6:40, a crowd had formed to talk shop and admire Extend's custom stickers. Outside the theater door, I met Bo Lau, the event's organizer who works in developer relations for Extend.

Lau recently moved to New York and said she didn't want to watch the documentary alone. So, she posted about it on X — and it helped that she already had a following on so-called "Tech Twitter."

"I was like, 'What if I just turn this into a work event so I can expense it?'" Lau said.

The event got 1,400 RSVPs for about 120 seats, she said, and she's flying to San Francisco soon to host another screening. The tickets were given out free, so Extend got no benefit other than brand awareness, she said.

Why was it so popular? Lau said that Holmes was a source of fascination within Silicon Valley, and that Fielder's "awkward humor" matched the awkwardness of tech.

Filing into the theater, I heard my seatmates chat about AI and which tech companies let you work from home. On a brief social media scroll before my three-hour Do Not Disturb, I spotted Lau's recent project: a simulator of Holmes' desk.

Holmes' X account responded: "Impressive project."

Laugh lines, reflection time

This was my second time watching the documentary; the first was at New York Film Festival. The reactions among the techier crowd were mostly the same. There were lots of laughs, both at Fielder's discomfort and Holmes' oddities.

The crowd didn't react strongly to (mild spoiler alert) the big, AI version of Holmes that her fiancé creates after she goes to jail. That struck me as curious; maybe the tech crowd is already used to AI replicas.

There was also a much stronger gasp at the reveal of who's running Holmes' X account. That wasn't shocking; the attendees found out about this screening through X, after all.

We walked to a local wine bar, sipping cocktails while debriefing the film. Two techies that I talked to were split. One came away feeling bad for Holmes, then feeling bad that he felt bad for her. Another thought the film certified that Holmes was a true and utter psychopath.

I asked: Why is tech so comfortable laughing at Holmes? Her boastful visions don't sound too different from those of the current crop of young AI founders.

Maybe it was because the crowd was mostly in their 20s, not yet working in startups when Holmes' reckoning came.

Or Holmes has been detached from her Silicon Valley roots. The techies seemed to view her as more a product of the media — the books, the tabloid stories, the Hulu show — than of their own industry.

One attendee put it to me bluntly: she's turned into a meme.

• A24's new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, "You Can See Everything," is in theaters now.
• Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, it's more character study than straightforward doc.
• The story about the downfall of Theranos has been told — but this one hasn't yet.

Elizabeth Holmes famously does not blink, whether she's pitching investors or, by her own admission, flirting with a guy.

Is her moony gaze haunting or hypnotic? A calculated act or proof of her naivete? At various points in A24's new documentary, "You Can See Everything," I vacillated between each of the above.

A good portion of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's movie could be classified as a provocative staring contest, as Fielder probes Holmes about her life and the demise of her company, Theranos, in the weeks before she reported to prison to serve an 11-year sentence in May 2023.

The answers he gets from Holmes are rarely satisfactory. (At one point, she insists she's never told a lie in her entire adult life; despite being convicted of fraud, she maintains her innocence throughout the film.) But with the camera zoomed in tight on Holmes' every micro-expression and clump of mascara, the movie's power is in the questions it raises in the space between her words.

In these profoundly uncanny scenes, I found myself fluctuating between being freaked out by the lack of emotion in Holmes' vacuous gaze and, to my surprise, pitying her. Then I'd quickly shift back to being freaked out, because what if pity was exactly the reaction that Holmes — a talented, convicted fraudster — was angling for? If she could manipulate her voice to sound more authoritative in the workplace, she could certainly adapt her face to appear more sympathetic onscreen.

It turns out that just because you can see everything, that doesn't mean you know anything. At least not for sure.

'You Can See Everything' is not the movie it appears to be

Much like its subject, "You Can See Everything" is a slippery mind-trick of a film — part character study, part psychological thriller, part surrealist thought experiment. What it is not, despite its subject, is a movie about a tech company.

The story of how Holmes went from being named the youngest self-made female billionaire by Forbes to being convicted of defrauding investors as the founder and CEO of the blood-testing startup Theranos is well documented. Holmes has already been the subject of a more traditional documentary, Alex Gibney's "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley," which exhaustively maps the discrepancies within Theranos, and a scripted Hulu miniseries, "The Dropout," which dramatizes Holmes' origin story and attempts to illustrate how her ambitions outpaced her abilities.

Both of those works lean into the prevailing narrative about Holmes, who was often pitched as "the next Steve Jobs" and proved especially skilled at wooing powerful men to her cause.

"You want it to be true so badly," Tyler Shultz, a former Theranos employee-turned-whistleblower, says of Holmes' vision in Gibney's doc. "I was working with these devices every single day, and she could still kind of convince me. When I think back on those conversations, I just think, 'How did she do that?'"

The Holmes we see in "You Can See Everything" is tamer, gentler, and, at times, far more submissive than many headlines would have us believe. Yet even Fielder isn't immune to her strange charisma.

Early in the film, Fielder admits to Holmes that he did a lot of research about her tenure at Theranos. He challenges her answers to questions, at one point telling Holmes, "I don't think anyone will ever believe you ever again."

Yet, as time goes on, Fielder seems alternately bemused and unnerved by the onetime wunderkind — though never to the point of aversion. On the contrary, Holmes seems to draw Fielder ever closer, like a close-up magician with a deck of cards in her hands and a trick up her sleeve.

Toward the end of the film, Fielder's memory is called into question. A friend asks if Fielder is retroactively polishing his interactions with Holmes, perhaps unconsciously, because he's grown to care about her. Maybe he wants to protect her.

Seemingly taken aback, Fielder replies, "I'm not putting my feelings into this. I'm just trying to be accurate."

It's one thing to be told someone is a master manipulator, as "The Inventor" and "The Dropout" plainly do. It's quite another to experience the manipulation firsthand. "You Can See Everything" offers audiences the latter.

During a Q&A after an early screening of "You Can See Everything" in New York, Oppenheim described how he, Fielder, and the crew would swap interpretations of what they'd just seen and heard after the cameras were switched off. "The disagreements were so dynamic," Oppenheim recalled.

It's been over three years since their close encounter of the Holmesian kind, and Fielder said he's still trying to process what he felt in her presence.

"I'm really curious to hear what everyone else thinks, and what they make of certain things," Fielder said. "I think it will actually help me understand."

"You Can See Everything" is in theaters now.

• Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder convicted of fraud, has two kids with William "Billy" Evans.
• Evans plays a big role in Nathan Fielder's new A24 documentary, "You Can See Everything."
• In the film, Evans says he's trying to launch "Theranos 2.0," another blood-testing startup.

William "Billy" Evans emerges as the unlikely star of "You Can See Everything," the new A24 documentary about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. But while Evans is certainly a scene-stealer, the doc doesn't cast him in the best light.

Evans is Holmes' partner and the father of their two young children. The couple met in 2017, and, as Evans says in the doc, fell in love instantaneously.

The couple welcomed their first child, William, in 2021. Their daughter, Invicta (Latin for "invincible"), was born sometime around February 2023, just a few months after Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding investors.

Holmes has said she knew it was bad timing — to put it lightly — to fall in love and start a family. But she didn't want her felony convictions or the perception of outsiders to "dictate how we live our lives."

"Finding your person in the middle of all of this and experiencing that love when you're going through hell is the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced," Holmes told The New York Times in 2023.

In the weeks before her looming incarceration, Holmes and Evans invited comedian Nathan Fielder to observe and document their domestic life. The resulting film, "You Can See Everything," depicts Evans as a dominant force in their home — chiding Holmes for how she prepares scrambled eggs, dictating her schedule, and frequently cutting in during her conversations with Fielder.

Holmes reported to prison in May 2023, but the movie doesn't end there. Fielder continued to document Evans as he worked on a new blood-testing startup, building upon the vision that Holmes had for Theranos.

"The idea is to put the band back together and do it all again," Evans tells Fielder.

Here's everything we know about Evans and his plans for "Theranos 2.0."

Evans grew up near San Diego as an heir to his family's successful hospitality business

Evans is one of three children born to his parents, Susan and William L. Evans, per the Daily Mail.

The Evans family has lived in the San Diego area for generations.

Billy Evans' grandparents, Anne and William D. Evans, founded a hotel management group in 1953 called Evans Hotels. The group manages three properties in the San Diego area: The Lodge at Torrey Pines, the Bahia Resort Hotel, and the Catamaran Resort Hotel and Spa.

After his grandfather William D. Evans died in 1984, his grandmother, Anne, added two of her children to the Evans Hotels management team, including Billy Evans' father.

He studied economics at M.I.T. and tried to launch a healthcare startup after graduation

Evans graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in economics. During summers between school, Evans worked at various financial and consulting companies in California, according to a version of his LinkedIn profile that has since been modified.

He was also a student brand manager for Red Bull, his LinkedIn said, and he completed a study abroad program at Fudan University in Shanghai.

After graduating from MIT, Evans reportedly tried to launch a healthcare startup for transporting wealthy Chinese people to the US for "concierge medical attention."

Although he studied Chinese language and literature in Shanghai, the idea never took off, according to the New York Post.

After that, Evans worked as a strategy and leadership program analyst at LinkedIn until February 2017. Evans then moved to Luminar Technologies, a startup working on radar and sensor technology for autonomous cars, where, according to his LinkedIn, he was a manager of special projects. Evans was reportedly close with Luminar's CEO, Austin Russell, the Post reported.

Evans left his job at Luminar in January 2019. Employees told the Post they suspected the reason was the publicity surrounding his relationship with Holmes.

When asked by The New York Times what he does for work, Evans replied, "A lot of different stuff — investing, starting companies."

Evans and Holmes met in 2017 before her indictment

Holmes had relocated to San Francisco after Theranos shut down all its clinical labs and Wellness Centers in late 2016. Holmes herself had recently been banned from the lab-testing industry for two years. But it wasn't until March 2018 when Theranos, Holmes, and her former business partner-slash-ex-boyfriend, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, were charged with fraud by the SEC.

During that limbo period before Holmes was indicted, she met Evans at a house party in San Francisco, according to their interview with The New York Times. The two were introduced by a mutual friend. She was 32, he was 25.

"To say we immediately fell in love isn't an overstatement," Evans told the Times.

Holmes and Evans were first spotted together at Burning Man, the arts festival in the Nevada desert, days before Theranos fully shut down in 2018. Evans also posted a selfie with Holmes taken at the event, per the Daily Mail.

Evans later told People that he proposed to Holmes in 2018 with a silver snake ring he'd bought at Taylor Swift's Reputation Tour, which the couple attended together.

Vanity Fair reported that Holmes and Evans had a secret wedding ceremony later that year, although the couple told People that they never officially married.

"Maybe we'll get married someday. But our bond is more than a piece of paper," Holmes said, adding, "We bought rings on Amazon before I went to prison."

Evans said he didn't recognize Holmes at first, and was reluctant to start a relationship

In November 2022, Holmes' attorneys filed 130 letters from friends and family seeking leniency in her sentencing.

In his, Evans recounted the couple's love story, including his initial hesitation to pursue a relationship with Holmes, and gave a glimpse into their private lives throughout the trial.

Evans wrote that when he met Holmes, "it was as if the rest of the world ceased to exist."

He said Holmes wore a sunhat and oversized sunglasses to "stay under the radar," so he didn't initially recognize her as the Theranos founder. (Evans told Fielder a similar story, adding that she also wore a Band-Aid on her face.)

"It was strange to feel so comfortable and willing to share with someone who I didn't know. I was captivated by her childish wonder and authenticity," Evans wrote. "We spoke for hours, I lost track of time, and even if I didn't know it ... I fell in love. She pulled out her business card, scribbled her personal cell on the back and then it clicked who she was."

Evans said they kept things platonic for about six months, writing, "I was admittedly hesitant to dive in given all that had been said, Liz had been consistently vilified in every piece of media imaginable."

"The more I got to know her the more I loved who she was," he continued in his letter to the judge. "It was not long before the friendship turned into something more."

Evans said that he and Holmes struggled to maintain privacy throughout the trial and were forced to relocate multiple times after their home address was revealed.

"This will follow us for the rest of our lives," he wrote. "There is no avoiding the scorn that accompanies Elizabeth Holmes."

Evans was a fixture at Holmes' trial and her attempts to postpone prison time

As the clock was running out with a scheduled sentencing date fast approaching, Holmes requested a new trial on the grounds that a key government witness visited her home in August 2022, expressing regret that his testimony had helped convict her.

The witness was Adam Rosendorff, who was Theranos' lab director from April 2013 to November 2014. Holmes' motion relied heavily on a recollection of the encounter documented by Evans, who spoke with Rosendorff when he appeared at their home.

In an email to Holmes' attorneys recalling his encounter with Rosendorff, Evans wrote: "He said he feels guilty, it seemed like he was hurting. He said when he was called as a witness he tried to answer the questions honestly but that the prosecutors tried to make everybody look bad (in the company). He said that the government made things sound worse than they were when he was up on the stand during his testimony. He said he felt like he had done something wrong. And that this was weighing on him, He said he was having trouble sleeping."

The judge agreed to postpone Holmes' sentencing to hear Rosendorff out, giving Holmes a small victory, but it backfired on her when Rosendorff stood by his testimony in the hearing, saying, "She needs to pay her debt to society."

Rosendorff explained that he'd felt bad for Holmes because of the possibility that a child would grow up without a mother, but he stressed that his testimony was accurate.

Evans relocated to Texas when Holmes reported to prison

Holmes is incarcerated at Federal Prison Camp, a minimum-security women's prison in Bryan, Texas. The facility is located about 100 miles from Houston, where she grew up.

"You Can See Everything" documents the family's move from California to Texas in the days before Holmes turned herself in.

Evans and their two children are able to see Holmes on family visitation days. However, according to People, conjugal visits between Holmes and Evans are not allowed.

"It kills me to put my family through pain the way I do," Holmes told People in 2025. "But when I look back on my life, and these angels that have come into it, I can get through anything. It makes me want to fight for all of it."

For his part, Evans told People, "Everyone tried to break us, but instead we forged an unbreakable bond," calling Holmes his "best friend and soulmate."

Holmes has continued to maintain her innocence, though her conviction was upheld last year after a failed appeals process. Her sentence has since been reduced several times, and Holmes is now set to be transferred to a halfway house next year.

Evans said he's planning to launch 'Theranos 2.0' with input from Holmes

In 2025, The New York Times and NPR reported that Evans had raised millions for a new blood-testing startup called Haemanthus.

In marketing materials reviewed by The New York Times, Evans described Haemanthus a "the future of diagnostics" and "a radically new approach to health testing." The materials describe the company's goal as "human health optimization."

Evans will solicit Holmes for advice on the new venture, but there are no plans to give her a formal role at the company, according to NPR. As part of a 2018 settlement with the SEC, Holmes is barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for a decade.

Evans' LinkedIn lists his current role as CEO of Haemanthus since October 2022.

"You Can See Everything" offers a closer look at Evans' biotech ambitions. He repeatedly insists to Fielder that Holmes did nothing wrong at Theranos, that her vision still deserves to be executed, and bristles at the suggestion that her failed company "used the wrong technology."

In one scene, before Holmes reports to prison, she completes a full-body scan. The scan is used to create an AI-generated three-dimensional avatar in her absence; the avatar looks and sounds like Holmes, but it's controlled by Evans, who says he also has power of attorney.

Evans tells Fielder that means he's able to make decisions on Holmes' behalf regarding her voice and likeness: "I can literally do whatever," he says.

Evans also admits to Fielder that he runs Holmes' X account, which has been active throughout her incarceration. When Fielder expresses doubt that Evans is acting in his fiancée's best interest, Evans claims he uses lines and phrases from Holmes' letters to craft the posts. He adds: "Some things that she doesn't frame as for the internet, I put there."

In other scenes, Evans says on-camera, "I've got vengeance in my heart," and says Holmes would describe her legacy as "building monuments of love for me."

Paige Leskin and Sarah Jackson contributed to previous versions of this story.