The New York Times reporter that Elizabeth Holmes accused of misquoting her in “You Can See Everything” is finally speaking out and defending herself.
Early in the new Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim documentary, Holmes discusses a 2023 New York Times profile in which she claims the reporter misquoted her. The profile quotes Holmes as saying, “They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created,” referring to actors portraying her in film and TV projects, such as Amanda Seyfried in “The Dropout.” Holmes told Fielder that what she actually said was, “They’re playing a character ‘they’ created.”
It’s a question that Fielder becomes obsessive about and that haunts the rest of the film. Now, the reporter who wrote the profile, Amy Chozick, is speaking out to defend herself and the accuracy of her reporting — and explain why she was unable to provide more concrete evidence of the quote.
“As we walked, I told Holmes that I heard Jennifer Lawrence had recently pulled out of portraying her in a movie,” Chozick said. “She looked over at me, and said: ‘They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created.’ As she walked a couple of steps ahead, I wrote down her exact words in my notebook.”
She added: “Every night when I’ve been out reporting, I go through my notebook and put a star next to anything I think is a particularly important moment or quote and I highlight it and flag that page with a Post-it note. This quote was highlighted and the page had a Post-it.”
Holmes’ husband Billy Evans also won’t leave the memory of the quote behind and assures Fielder that they recorded all conversations at that time themselves. Despite that, he also had not been able to find any recording from the time. Chozick added in her statement that she decided not to use a recorder during some of her chats because without it people tend to be more open.
“A lot of people’s most honest, on-the-record reflections come when I turn off my recorder and just take notes,” Chozick said. “I wasn’t going to put a recorder in Holmes’s face as we walked on the beach. I take notes constantly, to jot down important quotes and details and to incorporate my impressions in real time.
She finished: “I generally keep my reporter’s notebooks for a couple of years before getting rid of them. My editors confirmed the quote with me in 2023, and I thought the matter was resolved. I didn’t anticipate that the quote would become a part of a documentary years later. Of course, now I really wish I’d kept that notebook.”
