The Illusion of Austerity: How Elizabeth Holmes and a New Documentary Revive the Architecture of Deception

What, exactly, is Elizabeth Holmes’s angle here? It is one of the many confounding questions raised by You Can See Everything, a compelling and widely discussed three-hour documentary directed by Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder. The project, which has drawn hordes of curious theatergoers, leaves answers remarkably elusive. Chief among the mysteries is why Holmes—the disgraced founder sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for the brazen falsehoods that once propelled her to the status of America’s richest self-made female billionaire—chose to invite Fielder and a documentary film crew to live with her. Spending the entirety of her final month of freedom at a rented beach house near San Diego, Holmes opened her doors to scrutiny under the most unusual of circumstances. As Fielder recently admitted to Wired when discussing the project, “This is a question that we are still debating to this day.”

Throughout the film, Fielder’s persistent inquiries are met by Holmes with vague responses, unsettling facial expressions, and a steadfast insistence on her total innocence—framing her actions as naivety rather than criminality. In several striking scenes, the former Theranos CEO can be seen crying or rocking her baby while sporting a bare face and casual garb, completely stripped of the signature red lipstick and black turtlenecks that once defined her public persona. Beside her is domestic partner Billy Evans, a hotel heir who frequently micromanages Holmes as she whisks eggs, attempts to manage her public image from the precipice of incarceration, and brusquely intervenes when on-screen interviews veer away from his preferred direction. All the while, the group mills about a modestly furnished two-bedroom home in Del Mar, California, while an adjacent two-bedroom guesthouse accommodates Fielder. The overall cinematic effect is as disorienting as it is calculated, making Holmes appear surprisingly sympathetic to the viewer.

If one looks past its direct beach access and affluent zip code—where Zillow estimates the unpretentious home is worth roughly $9 million—the 1940s dwelling is remarkably unassuming. Wood-paneled, slightly outdated, and possessing a distinctly rustic charm, its interiors are intensely relatable and far removed from the ultra-luxury spaces Holmes occupied during the height of her corporate ascension. However, Holmes and Evans had not been renting the coastal property for long before Fielder and his cameras arrived. Less than five months before filming began, the couple resided on the grounds of a sprawling, historic Silicon Valley estate that was listed on the market for an astonishing $135 million.

In September 2021, public reports revealed that Holmes and Evans had moved into a residence located on the Green Gables Estate in Woodside, a heavily guarded and affluent enclave situated just outside San Francisco. Rather than occupying the main mansion, they resided in one of six secondary houses that share the massive 74-acre property. The estate’s centerpiece is a historic English country-style manor spanning more than 10,000 square feet, originally commissioned in 1911 by businessman Mortimer Fleishhacker and designed by renowned architect Charles Sumner Greene. The sprawling grounds are punctuated by luxury amenities including a tennis court, a 300-foot-long Roman-style swimming pool, and three standard-sized pools. Holmes and Evans maintained their residence on the estate throughout the duration of her federal trial and remained there at least until November 2022, as documented by multiple journalistic reports. On November 18, 2022, Holmes formally received her sentencing. Years later, the Fleishhacker family ultimately parted with Green Gables in 2025, selling the historic property for a discounted yet still record-breaking $85 million.

By April 26, 2023, production on You Can See Everything was officially underway, capturing Holmes and her family at their rented beach house in Del Mar, a quiet suburb north of San Diego. Shortly thereafter, on May 7, a comprehensive profile published by New York Times alerted the public to their relocation to Southern California, a region where Evans’s family and their established hotel empire hold deep roots. The article captured the disarming nature of her new environment, observing that Elizabeth Holmes seamlessly blended in with the local mothers. It noted that being in her presence made it nearly impossible not to feel a sense of belief or to be taken in by her demeanor.

Yet, if renting that cozy, unassuming beach cottage was a deliberate strategy by Holmes to reshape her public image and project humility, it would not be the first time she deployed architecture and lifestyle staging as a tool for public relations. Tyler Shultz, a prominent Theranos whistleblower, recently highlighted this historical parallel in an interview, pointing out that Holmes executed the exact same playbook a decade prior. In December 2014, journalist Ken Auletta published a profile on Holmes for The New Yorker, writing that her home was a modest two-bedroom condo in Palo Alto where she lived an austere life, purportedly without dating or even owning a television.

The reality of that era starkly contrasted with the narrative of asceticism. At the very moment that profile was published, Holmes was secretly living in a massive mansion in tony Atherton, California, alongside Theranos executive Sunny Balwani, with whom she was romantically involved. Balwani was subsequently convicted of massive fraud and sentenced to nearly 13 years in federal prison. Public records show that Holmes and Balwani jointly purchased the French provincial-style estate in 2013 under a limited liability company for $9 million. Spanning nearly 9,000 square feet, the luxury compound featured crystal chandeliers, dedicated staff quarters, formal gardens, a separate guesthouse, a swimming pool, and an expansive outdoor pavilion designed for grand entertaining. Following the unraveling of their enterprise, Balwani bought out Holmes’s ownership stake in the property in 2018 for $7.9 million before ultimately selling the estate in March 2022 for $15.8 million.

Whether the ultimate objective of You Can See Everything was absolution, humanization, or a complete rewriting of her historical character, Elizabeth Holmes once again utilized a carefully curated domestic setting to shift the narrative. Through the unvarnished lens of the documentary, the disgraced tech executive successfully reframed her final moments of freedom against a backdrop of understated normalcy—demonstrating, much as she had years prior in Palo Alto, that the physical spaces she chooses to inhabit remain an integral part of her enduring public performance.