The TV season was also flooded with glyphers, posers and scammers, but Amanda Seyfried was very bad. In Hulu’s miniseries “The Dropout,” she starred as Elizabeth Holmes. Elizabeth Holmes is the shameful founder and former CEO of Theranos, a former hot health technology startup that promised an easy way to test blood with one finger.
Seyfried, the star of movies such as “Mank” and “Mamma Mia”. And “Mean Girls” was able to make a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of Holmes, at least initially. She starts the series as an ambitious college student dreaming of becoming the next Steve Jobs. She is more ruthlessly determined to achieve her goal of consuming all of her.
When her downfall arrives, most viewers — largely — Sayfried Holmes is sorry that the company has collapsed and has left his former friends and colleagues. (But the actual jury wasn’t. Holmes was convicted of four criminal frauds in January.)
On Tuesday, Seyfried was nominated for an Emmy Award as the leading actress in a limited or anthology series or movie. This is the first Emmy award in her career. She talked on the phone from the set of the Apple TV + anthology series “The Crowded Room,” which she co-starred with Tom Holland, about “dropouts,” Holmes, bad dance, and primitive screams. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.
This was an almost eight-hour story that took months to produce. How about being nominated for an Emmy Award?
Details of the 74th Emmy Awards
The 2022 edition of the Emmy Awards, which celebrates television excellence, will take place on September 12th at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.
I’ve been making movies since I was 17, but this wasn’t the case.I almost want to say, it’s different because it was saw.. Often you do things and you don’t see them, but that doesn’t hurt the experience of making them. Now you’re exploring your character in a new way. It was a pretty insane true story, and it was pretty well written. I’m glad it’s like it was and people like it.
Are you surprised at how sympathetic Elizabeth was, at least on the “Dropout” page, compared to what happened?
I wasn’t surprised at all. If you don’t try to understand this person, there’s no point in making this show. To understand someone, you need to have empathy. It doesn’t matter who it is. Everyone’s human. Everyone has a layer.
Few people are in this high stakes situation, but the escalation was obvious as Elizabeth was desperate to overcome the failures one after another.
During the shoot, the way she was able to justify the doubling she made was that she really believed she was sacrificing to actually find the answer. And quote-unquote, save the world. People are willing to overlook a lot to get the big picture.
It’s a light story, but at least I had the opportunity to do a really bad dance. Is it a form of acting in itself?
Well, no. Imagine someone alone in front of the mirror. Then start dancing. The intimacy of being alone and the possibilities of what you haven’t seen — everyone is trying to dress at the age of 13. We can all be involved in it. The dance was a direct line to Elizabeth Holmes’ identity, which was her genius way of entering her.
In the final episode, there is an indelible moment when Elizabeth goes out with her dog. Primal scream.. You must have had to shoot some take of it — was it hard to repeat over and over?
Hmmm. yes. She even asked her if she needed to scream her. Is it like an implosion? What does that despair look like? There was so much pressure that she screamed and the dog was wrinkled, so she took her out. It wasn’t kind to animals. So it was the only take you would see a dog right away — an animal caretaker came in, and I said, I got it. I didn’t know what I was trying to do.
You can’t really explain to the dog what you are doing.
“Oh no, we’re just acting, guys. Everything is cool.” Also, I’m a singer, so I’m very nervous about losing my voice. I was always in touch with my voice coach and spoke especially deeply. Scream, I was just like, I don’t think I can do it anymore.
Do you want to use it after the show? voice In the real situation?
For me, it’s an accent. For a long time I refused to do it. And a few months after the trial, one of the doormen in the building I’m staying in, they are, can you speak out? And I did it. And I, hmm, it felt good. It did me well.