Elizabeth Holmes

Elizabeth Holmes drops out of Stanford as a teenager, convinced she can build a machine that runs hundreds of tests from a single drop of blood. She talks about changing the world with the fervor of someone who means it, practices a deeper voice, wears the black turtleneck, and treats doubt from anyone as something to be outlasted rather than answered.

Amanda Seyfried plays the affect before the substance: the stare that doesn't blink, the voice pitched lower than it should be, the earnest hunger of a kid performing certainty she hasn't earned yet. The show lets you watch a persona get assembled in real time, and Seyfried makes the gap between the performance and the person genuinely unsettling to sit with.