Amanda Seyfried Feared ‘You Can See Everything’ Could “Destroy” Her Career, Says Her Opinion of Billy Evans “Only Got Worse”

Amanda Seyfried is finally — really — opening up about her involvement in Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s documentary, You Can See Everything, including why she feared the project could negatively impact her career and her tense confrontation with Elizabeth Holmes‘ husband, Billy Evans.

Following the A24 film’s release nearly a month ago, Seyfried has largely avoided directly addressing her surprise appearance in You Can See Everything. In the film’s third act, she reprises her portrayal of Holmes, the disgraced Theranos founder, whom she played in the limited series The Dropout — a role that earned her an Emmy in 2022.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone published Wednesday, Seyfried, Fielder and Oppenheim discuss the film’s full spoilers for the first time, including how the actress became involved in the project and her experience meeting Evans.

While filming the documentary, which chronicles Holmes’ life in the month leading up to her prison sentence, Fielder and Oppenheim began considering how to continue the film. That’s when they came up with the idea to bring Seyfried into the project. Fielder got the actress’ phone number through his The Curse co-star Emma Stone, and the pair eventually connected over Zoom, where he showed her footage from the film.

“I remember when [Emma] texted, and I was like, ‘Nathan Fielder? Ooh, I wonder if he wants to make something with me?’ My sister is a big fan [of yours, Nathan], and I know a lot of people are big fans of Nathan for You. I’d only seen The Curse. When you said you had 90 minutes of footage for me to see and help you work through, I was like, ‘Oh, he just wants some advice. He just wants us to know about my experience playing her and researching her and going into the mind of that quote-unquote character I portrayed,'” the actress recalled. “After the Zoom, I was totally game to do whatever you needed. It was just your energy [that persuaded me], and how much time you had spent [on this project], and that nobody knew this was happening.”

Seyfried said she wasn’t initially nervous about joining the project because she already had a “strange level of trust” with Fielder and Oppenheim. However, she acknowledged that agreeing to participate without first consulting her representatives wasn’t the typical process.

“I would say there was a lot of risk in the back of my head, and then when I told my agent and lawyer that I had already done it? Not the normal process,” she said. “But I go off and do my own thing sometimes, and nobody had any say or control over what I was doing with Nathan and Lance. My lawyer was like, ‘Well, now we have to retroactively set your deal in place because you need protection.’ We weren’t even considering reenactments at that point.”

Seyfried ultimately reprised her portrayal of Holmes through “muscle memory,” but the actress also worried about the potential professional consequences of participating in the documentary. Fielder emphasized that she had no creative control over the project or the footage that was filmed.

“No approval. Whatsoever,” she said. “There was always this vibration of risk and that sensation of: Am I going to destroy my career in some way? Am I going to get entangled in this, like, wasp’s nest with Billy? Am I gonna say the wrong thing? Am I gonna perpetuate negativity for her? Everything was scary.”

Seyfried also explained why she wanted to meet Evans after watching footage of his interactions with Holmes and the filmmakers.

“It felt dangerous. I wanted answers. We all had this need to understand who was pulling the strings. What he was doing and how he was in the footage that I saw, how you guys were interacting — it felt yucky to me,” she said. “I just wanted any information I could get on Billy. I became this weird Billy detective because I had gotten such strong negative feelings from him in the footage. I felt like I needed to meet this guy. It was exciting to me, and it was scary, and it was questionable.”

Her opinion of Evans, however, “only got worse” after they met. “I do not like him,” she said.

The actress also met Holmes and Evans’ children during the documentary, in a scene that was interrupted by a phone call from Holmes herself, who was calling from prison. Seyfried recalled that the filmmakers weren’t expecting the call to come at that moment, adding that it really was Holmes on the other end.

Oppenheim also pointed to the tense dinner scene between Seyfried, Fielder and Evans, during which Evans criticizes the actress’ performance and they get into an argument over Seyfried’s criticisms of Charlie Kirk.

“The moment that I’ll probably be thinking about on my deathbed is the dinner scene between you and Billy,” Oppenheim said.

“There was no reason for him to get that aggressive,” Seyfried said. “That’s the word I’m going to use, as it’s more diplomatic. If my jaw wasn’t obviously on the floor, you could tell, like, it had come unhinged. I don’t want to provoke him, but at this point, it’s kind of like, the gloves are off. Because this guy has disrespected me in such a way that I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t think so, buddy.'”

She continued, “I don’t like the way he’s using this human being, his wife — the person he says he’s ‘building monuments of love’ to — as a tool. Maybe he does respect her, but he’s behaving like he does not respect her. And not only am I protective of myself, I’m just trying to set the record straight in a way where I’m trying to defend myself, too, while maintaining some kind of rapport with him, so I can stay and he doesn’t kick us out, you know?”

Despite her concerns about the project, Seyfried said she has no regrets about participating: “I don’t regret it at all. I’m having the time of my life right now!”