The Dropout may be about the Theranos scandal, but don't be surprised if you find yourself chuckling while watching the Hulu series.
When I watched the first episodes, which detail Elizabeth Holmes' short-lived success, I found myself laughing, before immediately stopping and asking, "Should I be reacting this way?" After all, the Stanford dropout duped investors into forking over millions of dollars for a product that never really worked.
But showrunner Liz Meriwether told me in a recent interview, "Yes, it's okay to laugh! There's some funny moments."
Of course, she noted that this was never her intention. "I certainly wasn't wanting to make fun of her or make fun of other people in the show," Liz explained. "I just wanted to embrace the sort of awkwardness and the absurdity of her world."
She added, "I was just trying to kind of tell the story as much as I could, based on the facts that I had."
It's this approach to Elizabeth's story that sets The Dropout apart from the many podcasts, documentaries and articles about the subject. For once, viewers can see how Elizabeth, played by Amanda Seyfried, found herself the CEO of a multi-million dollar company without casting judgement.
Of course, it helps that The Dropout doesn't claim to be 100 percent accurate, with Liz saying, "The point of doing a limited series, of dramatizing a true story, is to be able to dig into the elements that as a reporter, you can't talk about. So, I think what sets us apart is trying to think about it from her point of view and trying to understand in a really deep way what her motivations were."
It was also important to highlight the fact that Elizabeth's transformation and increasingly deep-sounding voice was influenced by her role as one of the first female CEOs in the tech industry. While some are quick to chalk it up to her being weird, Liz said, "Hopefully this series asks those questions of why, and sort of what happened with Elizabeth and how much her being a young woman was a part of what happened to her and what she did."
By the way, Liz is by no means excusing the actions of Elizabeth or Sunny Balwani or any of the other people involved. She's simply sharing what happened in her own words, adding, "What I really love about this story as a woman, is that it's a very complicated story around gender. It doesn't seem like there's easy answers and I really appreciate that as somebody who's been writing female characters for my whole career."
And if you find yourself laughing like I did, Liz said it's normal as "there's a lot of absurdity baked into the story."
The first three episodes of The Dropout are streaming now on Hulu.