What, exactly, is Elizabeth Holmes’s angle here? It’s one of many questions raised in You Can See Everything, the three-hour documentary directed by Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder that has drawn hordes of theatergoers, to which answers are elusive. Why did Holmes, the fraudster who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for the bald-faced lies that once made her the richest self-made female billionaire in America, invite Fielder and a documentary crew to live with her at a rented beach house near San Diego for the entirety of her last month of freedom? “This is a question that we are still debating to this day,” the comedian recently told Wired.

While Holmes and Evans’s rented beach house is charming and located in an area where real estate is at a premium, it appears more low-key than the place they called home not long before filming began.

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Throughout the film, Fielder’s questions are met by Holmes with vague responses, unsettling facial expressions, and insistence on her total innocence—naivety, even—including the claim that she has never, in her life, told a lie. In many of these scenes, the Theranos founder cries or rocks her baby in a bare face and casual garb (not a red lip or a black turtleneck to be seen) alongside her domestic partner, hotel heir Billy Evans, who micromanages Holmes as she whisks eggs, misuses her public image once she’s behind bars, and brusquely intervenes when onscreen interviews don’t go in his preferred direction. All the while, they mill about a modestly furnished two-bedroom home in Del Mar, California (an adjacent two-bedroom guesthouse hosted Fielder). The overall effect makes Holmes surprisingly sympathetic.

Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, in their rented beach house with Fielder in the days leading up to her prison sentence

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If you look past its direct beach access and affluent zip code (Zillow estimates the simple house is worth $9 million), the 1940s dwelling is unassuming. Wood-paneled and a bit outdated, it could be described as rustic. Its interiors are widely relatable. However, Holmes and Evans hadn’t been renting the home for long before Fielder showed up. Less than five months before the cameras started rolling, they lived on the grounds of a massive estate that was then listed for $135 million.

The main house at Green Gables, also known as the Mortimer Fleishhacker House

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS CAL, 41-WOOD, 2

In September 2021, reports revealed that the couple had moved into a house at Green Gables Estate in Woodside, a well-heeled enclave outside of San Francisco. They resided in one of six houses that share the 74-acre property with the main house: a historic English country-style mansion spanning over 10,000 square feet. The estate was originally owned by businessman Mortimer Fleishhacker, who commissioned architect Charles Sumner Greene to build it in 1911. A tennis court, a 300-foot-long Roman-style pool, and three more normal-sized swimming pools dot the property. Holmes and Evans stayed there throughout Holmes’s trial and at least until November 2022, according to multiple reports. On the 18th of that month, she received her sentencing. (The Fleishhacker family finally sold Green Gables in 2025 for a discounted but still record-breaking $85 million.)

Holmes with one of her two children, who are featured heavily throughout the film. Fielder watches from nearby.

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By April 26, 2023, You Can See Everything had begun filming Holmes and her family at their rented beach house in Del Mar, a San Diego suburb. On May 7 a New York Times profile revealed to the public that they had relocated to the area, where Evans’s family and their hotel empire are based. “Elizabeth Holmes blends in with the other moms here,” the story read. “If you are in her presence, it is impossible not to believe her, not to be taken with her and be taken in by her.”

If renting that cozy beach cottage was a calculated choice by Holmes to shape her image, it perhaps wouldn’t be the first time she took this tack. “She pulled this exact same move when Ken Auletta did a piece for The New Yorker on Elizabeth in 2014,” Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz recently pointed out. In the profile, Auletta wrote, “Her home is a two-bedroom condo in Palo Alto, and she lives an austere life,” adding that Holmes “doesn’t date” and “doesn’t own a television.” In fact, at the time, Holmes lived in a mansion in tony Atherton, California, with Theranos executive Sunny Balwani, whom she was secretly dating and who was later also convicted of fraud and sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison. The couple jointly purchased the French provincial-style house in 2013 under an LLC for $9 million. Spanning nearly 9,000 square feet, it featured crystal chandeliers, staff quarters, formal gardens, a guesthouse, a pool, and a sprawling pavilion for outdoor entertaining. Balwani bought out Holmes’s ownership of the property in 2018 for $7.9 million, then sold it in 2022 for $15.8 million.

Directors Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder

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Whatever story Holmes wanted to emerge from You Can See Everything, it seems she at least wanted to rewrite her character—a feat that she may have accomplished, in part, by carefully constructing the setting.