Forget the NFL. Fielder versus Holmes is the matchup of the season

The NFL can have its kickoff. The more compelling matchup this fall is already here: Nathan Fielder versus Elizabeth Holmes. The unlikely faceoff arrived with the release of the unnerving teaser for You Can See Everything, Fielder and director Lane Oppenheim’s secret documentary about Holmes, the disgraced Theranos founder. In roughly 75 seconds, Fielder and Holmes sit inches apart, staring at each other as Holmes insists she has no reason to deceive him.

“Of course I’m not deceiving you,” Holmes says. Fielder pauses. “OK. Alright. OK, good chat.” Then he asks: “You’re being real right now?” “I’m always being real,” Holmes replies.

The exchange could have come straight from The Rehearsal, Fielder’s HBO series, which explores the increasingly blurry line between practicing for life and actually living it. Except this isn’t fiction.

Holmes is really there. The baby we hear in the scene is really there. And the woman Fielder questions is the former CEO of a company that collapsed after revelations about its blood-testing technology and was later convicted of defrauding investors. Suddenly, the teaser feels less like a trailer and more like a contest.

Fielder may have found the perfect opponent.

Fielder’s work has long revolved around the performance of everyday life. For more than a decade, Fielder has built an unusually specific body of work around a deceptively simple question: How much of what we do is genuine, and how much of it is a performance designed to get through the social world?

In Nathan for You, he adopted an awkward, deadpan persona while proposing increasingly absurd business schemes to real small-business owners. But the joke was rarely confined to the people in front of his camera. Fielder repeatedly exposed his insecurities and willingness to manipulate situations.

He once explained that he deliberately puts himself in situations that throw him off because they produce “the most authentic moments from myself.” He also said audiences are “very good at sensing inauthentic moments.”

That tension became the entire premise of The Rehearsal. Fielder constructed elaborate replicas of people’s lives so they could practice difficult conversations before having them for real. Eventually, the elaborate simulations began revealing something about Fielder himself. As one analysis of the series put it, Fielder’s work keeps returning to the question of whether there is actually a distinction between “authenticity and performance.”

Holmes is well suited to that investigation.

Meanwhile, Holmes’ entire career at Theranos depended on persuasion. She presented herself as a visionary entrepreneur, cultivated an unmistakable public image, and convinced powerful investors and business leaders to believe in a technology that prosecutors later argued she knew did not work as advertised. A jury convicted her in 2022 on four counts related to defrauding investors.

Fielder’s documentary began when Holmes invited Fielder, co-director Lance Oppenheim, and a small crew into her life shortly before she reported to prison in May 2023. The initial filming took place during the 34 days before her incarceration, but the project ultimately became a three-year undertaking. And Fielder says the experience left him genuinely confused.

At the Telluride Film Festival, where the movie was unveiled in a surprise screening, he said, “What I am really excited about is for you to see the movie and tell me what I experienced.” Then came the kicker: “I don’t know why they wanted me there. Why am I there?”

Fielder elaborated that he and Oppenheim repeatedly discussed what they were seeing with the crew, but nobody could agree on what Holmes’ behavior meant. “We’re all smart, and we’re really working at the top of our intelligence — why can’t we make sense of what’s happening in this house?” he said. He still hasn’t resolved it. “I really am struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced,” Fielder said.

You Can See Everything is scheduled to open in theaters Oct. 16, 2026, from A24.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.