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The Dropout is Hulu's true crime drama take on Theranos founder and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes (played by Amanda Seyfried)—and it really tries to get under the character's skin.
Where other true crime dramas are happy just to show us how the crimes were committed, The Dropout tries to understand why Elizabeth Holmes did what she did. The show has some theories about why certain events happened.
One example is the story of why Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford at the age of 19. Interviews with Holmes feature a standard narrative as to what happened, but the Hulu show has a different, more controversial take, based on a revelation from Holmes' trial.
Why Did Elizabeth Holmes Drop Out of Stanford?
The New Yorker's feature about Holmes was one of the first to establish the standard narrative—that Holmes had dropped out of Stanford because her vision for her company was too strong.
The piece contains a story of Holmes becoming obsessed with what has become known as "lab-on-a-chip" technology, in which measurements are made with tiny amounts of liquid on a microchip. Using the principles of this science, she thought she had found a way of performing multiple tests using one drop of blood.
She took this idea to a professor, who she told she wanted to start a company. When he advised her to finish college first, the article reports her saying: "Why? I know what I want to do."
She explained to the New Yorker: "I got to a point where I was enrolled in all these courses, and my parents were spending all this money, and I wasn't going to any of them. I was doing this full time."
She dropped out in March 2004, at the age of 19.
However, The Dropout argues that another factor may have been at play when it came to Holmes leaving: her sexual assault at the hands of a fellow student in a fraternity house on the Stanford campus.
In the Hulu series, this event is alluded to in the scene before she decides to drop out. Though Holmes denies that this event had anything to do with her decision to leave when her mother asks, the placing of the two events so close together in the show suggests that the writers are trying to link them.
Per NPR, she contacted the police about this assault in October 2003, five months before she would drop out.
During her trial, Holmes herself also suggested a link between what happened to her and her decision to fully commit herself to Theranos.
She told the court: "I was raped when I was at Stanford...I was questioning how I was going to be able to process that experience and what I wanted to do with my life, and I decided that I was going to build a life by building this company."
Incidentally, later in the trial, Holmes would also accuse boyfriend Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani of sexual abuse, saying that this clouded her judgement during the time when Theranos execs were lying to investors—though, as NPR noted, abuses of this kind cannot be used as a defense in a white collar criminal trial.
Bolwani has denied the accusations.
Journalist John Carreyrou's book on Holmes, Bad Blood, also discussed the impact of what happened to Holmes at Stanford. As questions began to mount about Theranos, Carreyrou reports that Holmes suggested going public with the abuse as a way of generating some sympathy for her, but was advised against it by her counsel.
The Dropout airs Thursdays on Hulu.
Specialists from the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) sexual assault hotline are available 24/7 via phone (1 (800) 656-4673) and online chat. Additional support from the group is also accessible via the mobile app.
