Elizabeth Holmes Wants a Fresh Start. The Internet Has Questions

~20,000 founders and comms leaders start their week with The Brief.
Join them to get insights into the media, communications, and PR industry.

Elizabeth Holmes is back in the spotlight, and this time, we're getting a tour of her turtleneck-filled closet.

Okay, maybe not literally. But A24's You Can See Everything, the new documentary from Nathan Fielder, follows the Theranos founder in the weeks before she reported to prison, offering an intimate look at the woman behind one of Silicon Valley's most infamous fraud scandals. 

Because maybe the public just hasn't seen the real Elizabeth Holmes yet…?

In 2023, The New York Times published “Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth,” a profile highlighting her motherhood and volunteer work. The sympathetic portrayal drew backlash for giving a convicted fraudster the soft-focus treatment.

Now, with a new documentary showing us an even closer look at her personal life, we're revisiting a familiar PR question: How do you change the story when the original one is still the problem? 

The truth, PR pros, is that there's a difference between introducing a new side of someone and expecting the public to forget everything that came before it.

Everyone loves a little behind-the-scenes content. 

The CEO who makes sourdough! 

The founder who cross-stitches!

The exec who lets her cat walk across the keyboard on video calls!

Humanizing leaders can be smart PR. People connect with people, not someone who calls themselves a “visionary disruptor” in their bio.

But with Holmes, the question isn't whether she's allowed to have a life outside Theranos – obviously, she is. It's why her motherhood and, in the documentary, her marital relationship are getting the spotlight when there’s still a large fraud-scandal-shaped elephant in the room. And this elephant has a pretty extensive Wikipedia page. 

The problem isn't showing a more personal side; it’s when it does the heavy lifting that accountability should be doing.

Think of it as the PR equivalent of putting a throw pillow over a stain on the couch. 

Cute? Sure. Fixed? Absolutely not. 🙅‍♀️

💡 The catch: Humanizing someone can add dimension to their story. It can't substitute for addressing the part of that story that damaged their credibility in the first place.

We love a comeback story. 

The fall from grace, the lessons learned, the triumphant return. 

Hollywood has basically made an entire industry out of getting us emotionally invested in people who've made some truly questionable choices. 

And hey, people can change! We love Robert Downey Jr.!

🚨 The problem is when the rebrand is working overtime to convince everyone of that fact. 

Suddenly, the big reveal isn't how much someone has grown. 

It's how hard they're trying to make us believe they've grown.

Holmes is a particularly interesting case here. The carefully constructed persona, the signature black turtleneck, the deep voice – her public image was practically its own character in the Theranos saga. 

And fittingly, the kind of documentary that follows a person and invites us into their world is actually called a character-driven documentary. 🤭

Yes, we looked that up. Yes, the irony was too good to NOT share.

With a new documentary that invites us to see a more personal side of her, it's fair to wonder…are we seeing a new Elizabeth, or just a new chapter in the Elizabeth Holmes brand?

It’s even harder to ignore that question when Nathan Fielder asks whether she believes she did anything wrong, and she answers, “I did not.”

GIRL 🤦‍♀️ That's a tough place to start your redemption arc.

And there’s the disconnect.

When the pitch is “Look how much I've changed!” and the response to “Did you do anything wrong?” is still “Nope,” the whole rebrand starts to feel like an act. 

Which is especially tricky when the persona you're trying to rebrand was part of the scandal in the first place. Giving it a fresh coat of paint isn’t exactly a clean slate.

❌ Audiences don't need a perfectly packaged apology or a tearful Notes app statement with suspiciously excellent line breaks. 

✅ They need a reason to believe something has truly changed.

💡 The reality check: You can help shape how a person tells their story, but you can't manufacture the growth that makes a redemption story believable.

An exclusive interview. 

A carefully selected journalist. 

A look at the executive's personal life.

It's the celebrity PR bible: give audiences access, let them feel like they're getting the real story, and hope a little proximity breeds a little sympathy. 🫶

Access to someone's private life doesn't automatically provide answers about their professional one, though – that’s where the main character problem comes in.

A public figure's comeback can quickly turn into a main-character moment, with all the focus on their personal struggles, family life, and supposed growth.

There's just one teensy problem with a comeback story centered on you: you weren't the only one affected. Those other people won’t just disappear when you decide it’s time for a rebrand.

And look, there's nothing inherently wrong with curated access. Every interview has an angle, and every documentary chooses what to show. The issue is what that access is supposed to accomplish.

If the goal is to help audiences understand a complicated person, by all means, show them more. But if the goal is to rebuild trust, you need to include the parts that aren't flattering, too. 

Otherwise, you're not changing the narrative – you're just giving the existing one better contour and lighting. 💃

💡 The bigger picture: Access can generate curiosity. Even empathy. Trust, however, requires something more than an invitation into someone's living room.

First, let's be clear: we're not saying executives should be permanently defined by their worst decisions. Imagine if we were defined by the Bump-Its we wore in 2007? 😳 Um, no thank you.

People change. Reputations recover. There are compelling comebacks. But it’s important to note that asking or expecting the audience to pretend the old story never happened? That’s some very wishful thinking.

Before launching an executive rebrand, ask yourself:

What's really changed?

Look beyond the new messaging.

Is there different behavior? Meaningful accountability? Evidence of growth?
…or are you just rolling out a softer visual for the same old story?

What does the audience already believe?

You're not starting with a blank page – everyone’s got screenshots.

Your strategy needs to account for the existing narrative and not act surprised when people bring it up.

What are we trying to accomplish?

Building awareness, improving perception, and rebuilding trust are three very different goals.

A splashy profile might get people talking. A documentary might generate curiosity.

Neither automatically repairs a damaged reputation.

It’s basically strategy 101. Start with the problem that exists, not the story we'd prefer to tell about it.

If the audience is still waiting for you to acknowledge it, no amount of narrative control is going to make that question disappear. It’s gonna be a no for them, dawg.

Anyone else planning on seeing You Can See Everything?! We saw, well, everything, and it was a wild, wild ride we’re still marinating on, to be honest.

And we're gonna need to talk it through, stat. Hit us up and tell us your thoughts (especially about reputations managed by romantic partners)!

Ash & Lizzy

Who's going where and why it matters. Not just job shifts - power dynamics, layoffs, and who's headed out.

🧳 Bobby Allyn has left NPR for Bloomberg to lead coverage of the prediction market industry.

👀 Christiane Amanpour announced plans to exit CNN next year.

🎉 Ryan Barwick is now reporting on Google at The Information.

🎉 Shawn Chen is the new EIC at Gizmodo.

🎉 Pui-Wing Tam is now the Business Editor at The New York Times.

👀 The Verge is launching an app “to build a more direct relationship with its audience amid a considerable decline in website traffic.”

🎉 Nick Wingfield is now co-executive editor of The Information.

🎉 Natalie Wegner is back at The Wall Street Journal covering corporate news.

🤖 Cory Weinberg has joined The New York Times to cover AI and Anthropic.

Get to know Ashley and Lizzy, learn more about The Colab, or pass The Brief along to a friend who should be reading this too.