Elizabeth Holmes documentary: was the A24 meeting real?

What might be the most important scene in the Elizabeth Holmes documentary, a meeting with executives from A24, was never filmed. It's a reenactment, and that one detail completely changes how you should interpret it.

The A24 meeting where Billy Evans asks for a cut was a reenactment

A24 is the studio financing the documentary. During a meeting with its executives, Holmes excuses herself to take care of her crying children. The moment she leaves the room, her partner, Billy Evans, starts demanding a percentage of the documentary's profits.

However, there's one important detail about that meeting that completely changes how you should interpret it: it wasn't filmed. The entire scene is a reenactment featuring Amanda Seyfried, who previously played Holmes in The Dropout. She appears alongside Christopher Abbott, who plays Billy.

Fielder's prison visit to Holmes was recreated too

And it doesn't stop there. Later in the documentary, Fielder visits Holmes in prison to ask her again whether she knew about the deal. Cameras weren't allowed inside, so once again he has Seyfried recreate their conversation.

During this reenactment, Holmes appears to acknowledge that she knew Billy had been discussing money with the filmmakers. That would suggest she wasn't quite as innocent as she'd been claiming.

Did Holmes say Billy was talking "about it" or "about something"?

Except Fielder starts questioning whether he remembers what Holmes said. There's a significant difference between her saying she knew Billy was talking to the filmmakers about it and saying she knew he was talking to them about something. Fielder can't remember which one she said.

One version suggests she knew about the financial arrangement. The other could mean she only knew Billy was talking to the filmmakers, without necessarily knowing what they were discussing. Suddenly, one of the most important questions in the entire documentary comes down to "a single word that Fielder isn't even sure he remembers correctly."

How do we know these conversations happened the way Fielder says?

That raises a much bigger question. How do we know any of these conversations happened the way Fielder says they did? We weren't there, and we certainly don't have any tapes of them.

Plus, we're seeing actors recreate conversations based on somebody else's memory. Once we see something dramatized on screen, it's remarkably easy to start treating it as something that really happened.