PRETTY PLEASE

Nathan Fielder Reveals How He Got A-List Star to Reprise Iconic Role

The Emmy winner stepped in after the filmmakers decided that something was missing from the story. WARNING: Spoilers for “You Can See Everything” below.

You Can See Everything director Nathan Fielder felt like “the film didn’t feel complete” until Amanda Seyfried agreed to join in.

Seyfried, who won an Emmy for portraying disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in Hulu’s The Dropout, appears just past the documentary’s halfway point. Fielder, who appears in the documentary, revealed in a post-screening Q&A Tuesday night how he and co-director Lance Oppenheim got the star to agree to be in the film.

“When we watched everything and put together that first half, even though something felt complete with her going to prison, the picture didn’t feel complete,” he said.

“We were still having conversations where we were trying to make sense of it that were being informed by other stuff that happened off camera,” Fielder continued. “We didn’t know where we were going to go. And like Lance said, we reached out to a bunch of people, and then when we reached out to Amanda, she was like, ‘Come over, bring cameras.’”

Oppenheim added, “We reached out, but so many people we tried to talk to that were out of the bubble didn’t want to talk to us because they thought that Elizabeth was this toxic personality.” But Seyfried was different.

Seyfried has had little to say about her part in the film. She told a red carpet reporter when asked about her involvement, “It’s interesting, yeah, it’s interesting... I think everything that’s happening is meant to happen [and] everything, everyone that’s in your life is meant to be in your life.”

She later acknowledged the comment’s vagueness, reacting to the clip on social media with, “What AM I even saying.”

Still, the star plays a major surprise role in the film and is already getting Oscar buzz for what could be a historic first acting nomination for a documentary.

“That first moment when we’re in her apartment, that’s the very first time any of us had really spoken with her in person, when she’s watching the footage,” Oppenheim told the outlet. “She even says in the scene, ‘I have no interest in doing this again.’ Then she started imitating her, and that suddenly led to us being like, ‘OK, well, this is interesting.’ It almost felt like she had this unfinished business, this desire to do it again. That led us down a whole different path.”

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He added, “She brought her own baggage into the process too. It was amazing. It’s a testament to the way we made the film.”

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Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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